Monday, March 6, 2017

The Gospel blesses families!!

Bonjour family and friends!! 

It has been another great week here in Luxembourg. This week we had a really good lesson with Melanie (the lady we met at the grocery store.) We taught her the restoration and she actually knew everything we were going to talk about because she had already looked it up on the internet.. yikes. We answered some of her questions and cleared up some misconceptions. At the end, we invited her to be baptized and she said yes! We are excited to keep helping her progress and grow her testimony of the restored gospel. She was a total miracle!
We had a lesson with one of our investigators but when we showed up, she wasn't there. So Instead, we decided to go knock on some doors in the neighborhood right next to hers. The second door we knocked on was golden! We started talking with the lady who lived there and come to find out, she has actually read the Book of Mormon, twice!! She was a professor of religion and has a friend in the states who is member. She was actually at home that day because she happened to be sick. We talked with her for a minute and talked about the Book of Mormon. There are a lot of things she doesn't understand. She invited us to come back next week and talk with her more! When we left her house I thought, "how does someone read the Book of Mormon TWICE and feel nothing?!" Then I remembered the promise the prophet Moroni gives us at the end of the Book of Mormon. "I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost."  We are promised to know for ourselves if the Book of Mormon is really the word of God if we ask with a sincere heart; in other words, honestly wanting to know. We also need to have real intent; in other words, we are willing to act upon and accept the answer we receive. Even though this lady has read the Book of Mormon twice, in two different languages, she will not necessarily receive her own testimony of the divinity of the Book of Mormon because she hasn't read it with the actual desire to know if it is true. I think she has read it out of more curiosity and wanting to gain more knowledge. I really do know that Moroni's promise is true, anybody who reads the Book of Mormon with a sincere heart and real intent will receive a confirmation that is truly is the word of God. I have seen this promise fulfilled in my life and in many lives of the people around me.

This week we had a lesson with a new amie named Andrea! She was actually found by my old companion in Brussels a couple weeks ago but she lives here in Luxembourg. They gave us her number and we were able to set up a rendezvous. Since we don't have a building, we have to use the homes of our members to teach our amis because it's still too cold to have a lesson outside. It's usually not that big of a deal because we know the person before. In this case, we had never met her! My companion and I didn't really think about how we were inviting a complete stranger into a members home until just a couple minutes before... So then of course we both start freaking out thinking that we might be inviting a crazy person into their home! I sometimes wonder how funny it probably is for Heavenly Father to watch us freak out and stress out for no reason. A couple minutes later, this really classy lady in a business suit, with a box of chocolates comes walking up! It was Andrea. She is originally from Hungary but she is working in Luxembourg as a banker. She was such an awesome lady. We went up and had an amazing rendezvous with our members and her. Apparently, her dad died in the past year and it has been really hard. Our member actually had both of her parents pass away before she was 21 and so she was able to bear a really strong testimony. We were planning on talking about the restoration but we never got past the second principle of "gospel blesses families" because we literally talked about it for 45 minutes. It was interesting because that is something that we usually spend just a couple minutes on. At the end of the lesson, she said, "Wow I really needed that." I have never had a lesson quite like that but it was a good reminder of the importance to teach people not just lessons. She left with a renewed motivation to improve the relationships she has with her family members! That's not at all what we originally were planning on teaching, but Heavenly Father knew her needs a lot better than we did!

Love, Sœur Johnson

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