Week 71, 2/14/2022

 BACK TO THE GRIND

Happy valentines day to all my beautiful potatoes out there. 🥔🥔❤

Honestly I totally forgot about valentines day until this morning...ya it's not the most exciting holiday as a missionary. 

Anyway! This week I was officially thrown back into "real life" missionary work. I've been spoiled hanging out with YSA at the University of Florida for the last 6 months, and now we're back to the grind. We pretty much spent the week visiting A LOT of people which is never super fun. But every night that we got back to the apartment, I knew that I had given it my all and I tried my best. We also taught a lot of crazy people (whats new?) and saw some miracles! 

Just showing a little LOVE - this is called giving someone a "Heart Attack"

The crazies:

Crazy #1

We met with a scary man who will go unnamed. He had met with the sisters before so I thought they were actually teaching him, but it turns out that he just wanted to Bible bash with us. :( His argument was pretty funny though, he said that the Bible is incredibly accurate because we have the original scrolls that it's interpreted from....however from those "original scrolls" we now have around 20 versions of the Bible! And these versions are all very different from each other, I'm talking all the words and sentences are changed and different from each other. Yes I do love the Bible, but there is no question that being tampered with through the ages have definitely affected its accuracy. Sorry scary man but your argument is crazy. 

Crazy #2

We were teaching a very old lady who we thought was understanding the lessons. Turns out she's very crazy. Her husband left to go to the store and a few minutes later she said, "shhhh he's still here, he wants us to think he's gone but he's never really gone." I was pretty freaked out! She also googled 'who is Nephi' during our lesson and started quizing us on Nephi instead of reading the Book of Mormon with us. Ya I don't think we'll be teaching her anymore. 

Most the traffic in Nocatee is golf carts, and they don't even golf!   It's hilarious

Miracle #1

The missionaries in this area have been friends with a lady named Tracy for a long time. She's so cool, we go to her Bible study every Tuesday night. She goes to a church in Jacksonville and loves it there but she also loves the missionaries! Well she took us out to dinner on Thursday and we talked a lot about mission life and about her faith. Eventually I brought up the Book of Mormon, but I figured missionaries had already tried to give her one and she wasn't interested. But she was actually very interested! I asked her if she would like her own so she can read it and she said absolutely.  She's always wanted one but no one had ever given her a copy. I was so surprised, she's had missionaries in her home for over 10 years and none of them have given her a Book of Mormon! She said that she was going to read it cover to cover and will ask us all of her questions. We were so excited! The Book of Mormon is so important for people's conversion and I think this will be a big step closer to Christ for Tracy. 

Other Miracles:

We are teaching two 9 year-olds the lessons before they get baptized and it's made me realize how simple the gospel truly is. There are definitely parts that can get complicated, but the doctrine of Christ is simple enough for a child to understand and its simple enough for us to follow. 

We also had another dinner with a nonmember who recently befriended the missionaries. She not very religious but we had a great conversation about Jesus Christ with her. It was obvious that she hadn't thought about anything religious in a long time, and I think that conversation helped to spark some curiosity in her. That was really cool to see the Holy Ghost work in the conversation!

After dinner she invited us to a super bowl party where it turns out some other people we know were going to be there. Soooo we went! Haha we just showed up for a few minutes and talked to people then left. So no we didn't see Eminem or Snoop Dog, but we did talk to a lot of nonmembers and we set up a few more dinner with them! I'm telling you, people here are so nice to us! 

The work is starting to move forward here. I'm sad that I won't get to see a lot of it pan out but I'm also grateful to just be apart of it! 

It was definitely a "thumbs up" week for me.  Hope yours was too.

Well I hope you all know how loved you are! ❤❤🥔 and I hope you enjoyed my less than exciting email today 😅 I also hope you know how important your relationship with Christ is. If you're unhappy, or you can't see a light at the end of the tunnel; think about how your relationship with Christ is. I promise that the closer you are to him the happier you will be. And when I say "close" I mean the more you learn about Him and the more you're actively trying to use his Atonement. He won't take our trials away, but His Atonement makes bearing them easier. It's that simple I promise! 

Have an amazing week, love you all!

-Sister Bonny ❤🥔