Missionary Challenge

Sunday January 8, 2023.   

Email #66   HAPPY BIRTHDAY SOPHIE

 

Aloha Everyone!

 

We three senior missionaries in our store are now back on our schedule of opening the store.  It felt good to get back to a normal schedule this week and work normal hours again.  We now have a full-time manager.  This is the first time since I have been here. She was just hired and began a few days ago.  I have felt like we have needed that for a long time.  For the past few months we have had a student as a part time manager and two other students to be “leads” in helping her.  They are wonderful individuals but they are students and school is their priority—as it should be.  It will be nice to have someone in charge at the store full time.  Four new students were hired.  We now have more employees than we need but the I-works students need to have jobs.  I’m excited to get to know these four young people.  Our new manager is a mother of four-- ages ranging from nine down to four months old. The first morning she came—she had been at the doctors with all her children who were sick.  I felt so bad for her.  She was getting used to a brand new job and had to leave four sick children at home to go to work.  It caused me to be thankful again for the blessing of being able to be home with our children while they were being raised. 

 

Thursday evening, we had the young sister missionaries over for dinner.  They are darling young women with strong testimonies and wonderful spirits. We had a great conversation about testimonies and of baring testimony of Joseph Smith.  They referred to Elder Stevenson’s conference talk.  They gave Scott and I a two-part invitation.  Part one: To pray for an opportunity to share the Gospel with someone in the next two days and then (part 2) bare testimony on Sunday in sacrament meeting about our experience we had and also bare testimony of Joseph Smith and the restoration.  We accepted the invitation. Scott and I began praying for an opportunity to share the Gospel.  We wondered how it would come to pass.  Scott works in an office who are all members of the church and rarely gets out of the office in a day.  As you know, I am not allowed to wear my missionary badge at work or talk about the church unless asked a direct question about it.  But we were up for the challenge. 

 

At the end of my shift on Friday, I was working at the register and a couple from California checked out with some purchases.  We began chatting and I found out that she is a schoolteacher from California.  I told her that I formerly taught music at an elementary school.  She asked me if I was doing that here and when I said no—I am a volunteer here, the questions really began.  I eventually told her that I was serving a mission for our church and that there were about 60 other seniors serving at the PCC as missionaries.  I talked about the purpose of the PCC and the students that come to the school from the Islands to get an education.  The more I talked, the more interested and impressed they were with the whole program and that our church would do this.  She said—whoever started this was amazing.  I explained that it was a former leader of our church—David O. Mckay who had the inspiration of starting a school of higher learning here. She said that she wanted to look this man up and read about him. They left the store knowing that I loved the church, and they were impressed with the church and wanted to know more. It wasn’t exactly a true testimony shared but I counted it as a win.  The tender mercy was that no one was in line behind them so we could talk without interruption or feeling like I had to hurry it up. 

 

I learned two things from the challenge from the missionaries. First—that Scott and I needed a nudge to begin praying for opportunities to share the gospel.  We did that all the time when we first came on our mission and eventually lately, had gotten out of the habit. At some point, we accepted the fact that our mission was a “work” mission and quit praying for that opportunity to open. Second—It made us aware of watching for and expecting opportunities to be there.  Everyone we talk to is potentially someone who might be open to hearing about the church and the Gospel. 

 

I love the Gospel!  I love belonging to a church that inspires us to want to be more like the Savior.  I know He lives and loves us. 

 

Have a wonderful, happy week!

Much love,

Sister Bleak, Mom, Grandma

 

How I have seen the hand of the Lord in my life this week:

*Jarom worked at our store today for just a little while but was able to fix Sister Wingert’s string,

*Belle caught a HUGE mistake we made at the warehouse. We were able to correct it before it got worse.

*I felt the spirit as we shared feelings about our testimonies with the young sister missionaries. 

*Sister Johnson put “extras” in the ukulele folder for the week.  That really helped me on prep time.

*I was able to share my feelings about the church with some non-members

*The spirit was strong at our district meeting at the visitor’s center.