Week 18

Weekly Update:

Hello everyone! This week was awesome! It was pretty hard, but AWESOME! I feel like we grow the most in trying times :)

Again, I won't be able to share a bunch this week, but I will share some highlights!

Sister Wade and I were downtown waiting for the bus, so we started talking to a guy sitting nearby. I think he was a little weirded out, but it doesn't matter because EVERY DAY IS AWKWARD! << I live by that statement now! So it turned out this guy who I will call John was waiting for the same bus as us! As our bus pulled up and opened the doors, the other Sisters (Sisters Walborn and Bradshaw) walked off the bus and asked if we wanted to go to lunch with them. As we were standing there debating whether to eat lunch or get on the bus and keep talking to John, the bus drove away. We automatically said, "Sorry! We will go to lunch another day!" and sprinted off to catch the bus at the next stop. We were SO out of breathe as we came to the next stop just to find out that stop was CLOSED. You're kidding, right? As we looked so exasperated staring at the bus that we thought would pass us by, the bus driver opened the doors quickly and said, "Hop on! I can't leave the Sisters behind!" MIRACLE!!! We were able to continue or conversation with John, and invite him to learn about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. John accepted, and he attended church with us this week! He is loving learning about how through the Atonement, we can be forgiven of mistakes we've made and become better people! I am so grateful to know Heavenly Father is taking care of His children. I saw His hand in my life and Carl's life that day. 'Twas an amazing day :)

Another lesson that just blew my mind happened on Friday. We scheduled an appointment with someone we met who is a devout Seventh Day Adventist. We met with him a couple times before as he had tagged along with one of our original investigators. We decided we wanted to meet with him alone this time. I was sort of nervous for the lesson (yeah, I know...O one of little faith...), but I soon found out there was so reason to fear! The Spirit was sooo strong in that lesson. We found out that--I'll call him Tim-- Tim was going through a rough time because he couldn't quite figure out what the truth was. He had pronounced himself non-denominational because he hadn't found a church he completely agreed with yet. HOLY COW! Heavenly Father was preparing Tim! We read James 1:5 while talking about Joseph Smith, and I had a prompting to explain what "upbraideth" meant. I ignored the prompting because Tim is so fluent in the language of the Bible. The prompting came again, so I told him that the verse is basically  saying that if we have a question (lack wisdom), then we should ask God. God is going to answer us! God is also loving and "upbraideth not" means that God isn't going to judge or condemn us because we lack wisdom! As soon as I said this, Tim's eyes lit up! "WOW! Thank you so much for explaining that! I always skipped over that word, but this is like revelation!" I'm so glad I followed that prompting of the Spirit! We invited him to pray and ask God his questions because we figured out that it's okay to ask God questions because He wants to help us!!!

Well, that's all folks. I hope you all have a good week! I'm looking forward to this new week! Let's start with a smile on our faces AND a love of God and of all men! Love you!

Love,
Sister Sparks