The song of the righteous is a prayer unto me

 

Dear family,

Well its been another week working in the Lord's vineyard. Unfortunately we ran into more sour grapes this week than sweet ones. By the end of the week all but about 3 of our investigators dropped us and told us to never come back. Two of the three  girls we had on date to be baptized at the end of this month (who had both gotten their prayers answered that the church is true) told us that we are no longer allowed to come to their house. And the other girl that was on date moved to Livingstone, a city 5 hours away where the church hasn't been started yet. Needless to say it was a bit frustrating. So we ended up spending a large portion of the week tracting. I don't think I have ever had so many people be so blatantly rude to us! Usually even if they aren't interested, people are at least nice about it. But for some reason we just ran into a lot of very grumpy people this week. But it wasn't all bad, we found a couple potentially awesome families to teach. Now the trick will be turning the potential investigators into progressing investigators. We are praying things will start to pick up soon!

 

A highlight of the week was getting my new companion! It was sad to see Sister Vea go but my new comp is awesome. Her name is Sister Fokoto. She's from a small town in South Africa not far from Mafikeng. She actually reminds me a lot of some of the members I served with there so its been fun. She is hilarious and she is a hard worker. She speaks 7 different languages! And she looooves to sing. She's really good at it too. Most of the time when we are walking from place to place we just sing. She sings alto and I sing soprano. I've been surprised how many of the hymns I know by heart! For companionship study a couple nights, we have just spent the whole time singing. She bought a children's songbook and I have been teaching her all the ones I know. She joined the church as a teenager so she never learned the children's songs. My testimony of the power and spirit of the hymns has definitely been strengthened this week.

 

Another highlight of the week was doing service for one of the members. There is a member in one of the other branches who works at the distribution centre. Her name is Sister Teki but all the missionaries just call her Grandma. She is pretty much the greatest member ever. She used to be a preacher at a pentacostal church and was even about to start her own church when the missionaries found her. She's been moving forward ever since then. Sometimes she gets stacks of pass along cards from the missionaries and just stands on the streets giving them to people inviting them to church. She seriously is the best. While we were on our way home one night I got the feeling we should stop in and say hi to her at work. (The distribution centre is just inside the chapel) We had a few minutes to spare so we decided to go say hi. We found her inside struggling to figure out how attach a certain type of file to an email and we were able to help her figure it out. We asked her if there was anything else we could do to help and she invited us to bring the elders the next day and come help her reorganize the store room of the distribution centre. The next day we spent almost the entire day there helping her. We ended up not only reorganizing, but rearranging and deep cleaning too. It was so good to go and help her. Service really does bring joy!

 

The funny moment of the week was that a bird pooped on my face. Yup. It was great... Mostly it was just funny because of the irony of it. One day before it happened I was walking with Sister Lyon and we passed under some trees. She told me she hated walking under those trees because she was always afraid a bird would poop on her. I kind of teased her and told her how unlikely that was and how the chances of a bird pooping in the exact place where she was walking at the exact time she passed that exact spot was super unlikely. Well, the very next day, in almost the exact same spot where I had teased her about it, a bird pooped and it landed in my face... karma sure is a kicker isn't it?

 

My favorite scripture this week was Romans 8:32. It teaches us that God already gave us the most important thing to him- His only Begotten Son- so there is absolutely no reason he would withhold any other blessings from us. The only thing that can take that away is our own disobedience.

 

I love you all and I hope your week is full of exciting summer adventures!

Lots of love, Sister Gehring

p.s. I'm sorry if there are always a lot of typos in my emails. I try to type quickly so I have more time to say all I want to say but sometimes that means I make a lot of mistakes. And I usually forget to proofread before I send the emails.