4/4

Lots of great lessons this week. Good reminders, revelation for a quickly coming future. Evidences that God is STILL there and probably isn't going away any time soon.
 
After a good appointment with our investigator and her member husband, I commented to Sister Cope that Marivic (who is from the Philippines) might feel more comfortable at church if she had a Filipino fellowshipper. There are no other Filipinos in Barnegat that I am aware of, and I pretty quickly dismissed the thought, mostly because the gospel should convert anyone regardless of ethnicity or any other background. But still, the idea persisted. It couldn't hurt. I asked if there were any other Filipinos in the Branch that she knew of. She said no. And then suddenly I said, "Sister, we should pray to find a Filipino family! Wouldn't that be great? We could baptize them, and then they could fellowship Marivic, and then she would get baptized, and then there would be Filipino people in the Branch!" She quickly responded, "Linger-Longer would suddenly become 10 times more delicious!" We both laughed at my idea and started reminiscing about purple yam bread and pan de sal bread and other Filipino treats we became familiar with in Jersey City. And I forgot about it. And then, yesterday, we were knocking around less-active members not far from our apartment, and guess what we found??? A Filipino family. Amen.
 
The other day we were teaching Laura, whom I told you about a couple weeks ago. She is the one for whom I was chastised by the Spirit recently and told not to give up on. Yet again we were trying to read the Book of Mormon with her, and the poor woman couldn't settle down and concentrate on ANYTHING. She makes me laugh so much. Nothing short of a video camera could convey to you what our appointments with her are like. But anyways, she suddenly paused and looked very pensive, then began telling us of a conversation she had with her mother the night before. "I've been thinking about this for a couple months," she said, "and I was thinking about God and I think He must have sat down with me before I came here--with all of us--and given us the opportunity to live. And He told us that it was gonna be hard and we were gonna go through a lot, but He would let us do it if we wanted--He'd say, 'Go for it! You can do it!' And some people probably chose not to come, because they were afraid to, but we chose to come, and He told us that we wouldn't be able to remember Him, because we would just have to accept everything on faith..." I cut her off there and told her very frankly that ours is the only church I'm aware of that actually believes and teaches exactly what she is talking about. She couldn't believe it. We recapped what she had said in LDS-speak, supplemented with a few scriptures, after which she was so overjoyed that she had gotten something right that she left us sitting on her couch and ran downstairs to tell her mother, shouting as she went, "I can't believe this! Mom, I'm a prophet!" I love her so much. Just goes to show that the Spirit really does inspire, teach, and prepare people to accept the gospel.
 
Those are only a couple examples of the amazingness that has been my week. Sister Cope and I have been very blessed lately. I love my missionary life. I love the gospeI. I love Jersey. I love the people here. I love the pizza. I love the food in general. I love the weather of late, and all the little blossoms popping up everywhere. And don't worry. I love you too. :)
 
Sister Black