Daily Archives: February 18, 2013

Bromeliads – Elder Smoot’s Letter!

We went to the Fort Lauderdale chapel today to take part in a district meeting. As we walked in there were bunches of bromeliad leaves on the ground. This caused me to look up into the very old trees that surround the chapel and I saw lots of these plants growing above. I took some pictures but they really do not show the number growing all over the trees.

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Zone Conference Pictures…Spiritual Experience from Missionaries

Here are two pictures taken at the Zone Conferences with Elder Haleck…Click on a picture to enlarge -hope you can see your missionary! You can also put it into some photo such as Preview and enlarge it as big as you need to.

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Here are a couple of missionary experiences that President Anderson shared in letter this week.

From invoking the Spirit at the first contact to Baptism in such a short time takes all of “our heart, might mind and strength”:

 â€œTen days ago we were biking down a street that we felt inspired to bike down and saw this lady walking out of her house. We contacted her and blessed her home right then. The Spirit was very strong and she told us that was exactly what she needed at that time. Then we testified of Christ and invited her to be baptized and she expressed very little desire to do so. She told us of how she lived in Utah for six years and has many Mormon friends, met with missionaries for a long time and that we wouldn’t be able to get her because she’s Catholic. But we continued to testify and she committed to come to church. Then the next day when we followed up with her we solidified her coming to church and as we were leaving her cousin Carlos walked out and was leaving but very quickly we invited him to come to church. Then that Sunday they both came to church! After Gospel Principles we testified and set both of them with very soft dates for the next Sunday. But the next time we saw them was Tuesday and Lucia said, ‘What do we need to do to get baptized on Sunday?’ They both had a complete change of heart through the Spirit of God. They were baptized yesterday and as we put our trust in God, he allowed all to work out.”

 

Remember service, talk to everyone,  “ faith, hope, charity and love, with an eye single to the glory of God, qualify [us] for the work.”

 

“We were on our way back to our car… when we saw a woman and her 3 kids working on getting some groceries from the apartment complex parking lot into her house and the kids weren’t being very cooperative and she looked frustrated. Me and my companion felt prompted to lend her a hand!  Fleur was very grateful for our offer to help, didn’t accept it, but we were very, very persistant and she finally allowed us to help her.  So we helped her out, left her and her family with a prayer of peace and strength in her home (turns out she was a single mother and needed the prayer), and invited her and her 9 year old daughter to be baptized next Sunday!  They said ‘Yes’ and we invited them all to come to church this past Sunday and her kids really wanted to, but the mom was not really swayed.  She said ‘We’ll see.’ So yesterday in church, halfway through sacrament meeting, me and my companion were sitting in disappointment because no one had showed up to church …   But halfway through … she came in with her 3 kids…they were looking sharp! We went to Sunday School, and it was about ‘When ye are in the service of your fellow beings, you are in the service of your God.’, which the teacher had prayed about teaching the night before because the manual has not come in yet.  He didn’t know what to teach, but prayed, and this is what he was prompted to teach.  During the lesson the teacher called up a member and this woman to each come up and to share an act of service that was rendered to them this past week.  After the first member, Fleur got up and told of the experience she had the day before when me and my companion helped her out.  She was very very emotional about the little act of service we had rendered to her and I was choking up because the Spirit was there so strong as she told about this.  Fleur said that as a single mother, she feels like she has so much weight on her shoulders and our act of service lifted that.  She said that she has not attended a church for 9 years, but that this act of service changed that this Sunday because she came.  She said her and her family didn’t have church clothes to wear Saturday because they have never been to church, but because we promised that she could attend church this Sunday, she put forth her effort to come.  She bought church clothes for her and her kids Saturday night, but she said ‘If it rains tomorrow, I’m not going’.  It began to rain Sunday morning and she was like ‘Well, that’s my answer, I don’t need to go.’  But as soon as she thought that, the rain stopped.  And then that instant, she got her family ready to go to church and it didn’t rain the rest of the day .  That experience of our little act of service, had made such a big impact on her life…to bring her to come to worship God at church after 9 years and to help her prepare for baptism.”