Time is Running Out

April 8, 2019

Hola!!

This week was kind of a blur, I feel like Monday was yesterday. A lot of people cancelled on us, but something that I realized is that often times when someone cancels an appointment, it's because God needs us to be doing something else. He has a divine plan and purpose His hand literally guides us everywhere. 

Mormon.org

This week we got an assignment to go try and find a lady on our branch roster that no one had ever heard of. We knocked her door, and an old man named Michael answered that was clearly not interested, but we gave him a card and told him to call us if he ever wanted to learn more about the Church! The next day, we got a call from a random number and it was Michael!!! He saw "mormon.org" on our card and said "He didn't realize we were Mormons" and realized that he actually had a lot of questions about our religion. His internet doesn't work (that or he doesn't know how to use it) so he asked if we could bring him some literature so he could learn more about it. Wow!!! So I guess there are still good things about having an outdated mormon.org pass-a-long card. He wouldn't have known who we are if we didn't have that link on there!

Shawn.

In the same outing that we found Michael, we were heading back to our car when we saw a dude with a cowboy hat reading the paper on his front porch. I didn't particularly want to talk to him and we were already running late to dinner, but the Spirit wouldn't stop telling me that we needed to. So right before I unlocked the car door, I was like "Come on. Let's go talk to this guy." His name was Shawn. Turns out Shawn is a MEMBER. He hasn't been to church since he was young and we don't even have him on our branch records. He was very friendly! Although he isn't ready to start coming back to church, Heavenly Father lead us right into the path of one of His lost sheep. When I heard in conference that Heavenly Father is aware of all of His children and knows where every single one of them are, I thought of Shawn. I'm so thankful I listened to that prompting from the Spirit! 

Omaha Ice Cream

Another cool thing that happened this week was that we got a referral from a lady named Paula in Utah. Her phone broke, so she called a phone repairman and he happened to live in Omaha. She told us that they had a good conversation about how good the Ice Cream is in Omaha, "and obviously that lead to me telling him that I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." (Word for word what she said). They talked about the trail center, and apparently he had been there before for the Gingerbread festival they have in December there. He said he had noticed how kind everyone was there, and he wants to learn more about the church!!! Wow. This reminded me of Elder Ucthdorf's talk this weekend - reminding us how important it is to bring the gospel into our everyday conversations, in normal and natural ways! Anything and everything can lead to a conversation about the restored gospel. Even Omaha Ice cream! 

Unfortunately every person I've talked about in this email so far we had to refer to the elders because they are all English speaking. But it was still so cool to see God's hand everywhere throughout our week:) 

Time is Running Out

Did it hit you guys as hard as it hit me when President Nelson said this??? The second coming is around the corner! Last night after conference we went and did some finding. There was a huge Hispanic family sitting out on their porch last night so we went and talked to them. The dad's name was Alex. We had the deepest conversation with him about Jesus Christ and His Atonement for us. I felt the Spirit as Alex bore his testimony to us that only through Christ can we be saved. He talked about how vital repentance is and that we have to allow His Atonement to cleanse us within. He even talked about how there are so many churches on earth that have different beliefs, but there is only one God. That lead to a perfect conversation about Joseph Smith and we shared truths of the Restoration and the Book of Mormon with him. After all of this, he could not accept that we read any other book than the bible. We left the conversation feeling so heart broken. He is so close. He knows he has a Savior that loves him and his core beliefs match up almost perfectly with ours. But he does not know that he is missing out on saving ordinances from the restored Priesthood authority that we have. I feel like I finally understand the sons of Mosiah when they say: 

"Now they were desirous that salvation should be declared to every creature, for they could not bear that any human soul should perish; yea, even the very thoughts that any soul should endure endless torment did cause them to quake and tremble." (Mosiah 28:3)

It makes sense to me now. TIME IS RUNNING OUT people. I wanted to just grab Alex by the shoulders and shout that at him. But unfortunately we shouldn't do stuff like that haha. 

Apparently we took 0 pictures this week so sorry about that. Love you all. Thanks for the support and prayers!

-Hermana Hansen