July 28, 2014
Dear family and friends!
Let's start with the rat death count. Well, we found one more this week. And it was INSIDE the church. That was a first. Sister Bae found it. I didn't know a person could scream that loudly! I thought she was dying, but then I saw the rat. Yup. Bangeojin Branch 7 Rats 0
In Bangeojin, we have a kids English class. Primary age children can come with their parents, and that's been a great way to find people. We have a few mothers who come regularly and we have members who come to help us out occasionally. One of those mothers is Sister Kim Hyun-Sook. (Although all our investigators are Sister Kim, they ARE different people.) She has two young sons, both primary age, and she's slowly gained interest in the gospel. She came to church for the first time last week, and on Saturday for our spiritual message in kids English class, we taught the Plan of Salvation. Sister Kim had a lot of great questions, and we invited her to come to our branch activity that evening. And she came! Partway through the activity, she asked to talk to us in another room. She was dropping us. She said she was so confused and that she wasn't really sure what to do because she's attending another church. Sister Bae and I... had no idea what to do. Sister Bae and I asked her questions to find out more about her concerns and testified. It was pretty intense. The Spirit was so strong, and we tried our best to follow it with our questions and testimony. Slowly, Sister Kim began to change. A new light came into her eyes, and over 20 minutes, our conversation went from her dropping us to her asking about church attendance to us settling her concerns about baptism. The next day, Sunday, she came to church with her sons and had a wonderful experience. She asked us to visit her this week to help her study the Book of Mormon, and that is a miracle.
While Sister Bae and I were talking about Sister Kim, we started talking about what it means to be a TRULY progressing investigator. You can have investigators who keep all their commitments, and you can feel it changing their life, but you can also have investigators who go through all the motions, but something's still keeping them from TRULY progressing.
Aren't we ALL investigators to Heavenly Father? He wants us to progress and reach our full potential as His children. What is progression? In investigator/missionary terms, progression is when the investigator is actively keeping their commitments and thereby repenting as they change their life to live in accordance with the gospel; progression is repentance. Sometimes we think, "I'm doing okay. I don't have anything to repent of." That is when we stop progressing. Repentance is actively and consistently choosing to change our lives and improve ourselves; we set aside our sins, our mistakes, and our will and we cultivate faith and Christ-like attributes in order to live according to the gospel more fully. Are we progressing investigators? Am I a progressing investigator? I hope so! I'm so grateful for a Heavenly Father loves us enough to ask us to repent.
I love you all so much! Have a great week!
Love,
Sister Bonney
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| Sister Kim Yoon-Ja's baptism |
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| me and Sister Bae on P-day couple weeks ago. :) |
