We had a good week full of recent convert and less active work! We hardly went street contacting this week, which is weird because usually that's all we do! But we still passed out a whole box of mormon.org cards which has 500 cards in it. So yeah that tells you how much we contact haha :)
We got a few investigators this week. One's name is Koa and we had a lesson with him, but he's just one of those people that loves to learn about religion and visit different churches, but isn't willing to actually act on their knowledge or change. He kept telling us about how when he parties and gets drunk its his favorite time to pray... So we'll see how that goes.
The second one is Ahmad, he's from Saudi Arabia and barely speaks english. Hahaha he probably had no idea what we were saying, but we taught him about Christ because he grew up Muslim but doesn't even know very much about that. It's crazy to talk to people who have such a totally different view of religion and God. We have another lesson with him this week though!
Then we met with Ian again, the guy i told you about last week. We had another lesson with him and taught him about repentance and talked a lot about pride vs. gratitude. It's kind of cool to think about, but pride and gratitude are opposites. Pride is the root of all sin and gratitude is the root of all Christ-like attributes. So if we want to become less prideful, we need to be more grateful. :) Ian came to church yesterday too, but he is kind of hard to work with. He's fine in lessons and agrees with everything we teach him, but as soon as we leave he thinks about all of these political issues he has with the church and its leadership. So I don't know how much longer we'll teach him, but we'll see.
Also, i just want to take a moment and say that I've been freaking out all week because Taylor Swift announced her new album and released a new single. AHHHHH. Not okay. One of our recent converts showed me the album cover and I almost died. And yes and i am secretly praying that i hear her new song in the grocery store or something.... Hahaha so enjoy it everyone while i sit here taylor swift-less. :(
On Friday we had a giant zone conference with Elder Anderson who is in the second quorum of the seventy! It was so good.
President and Sister Wilson talked to us first and president talked about how questions are such an important and sacred part of our gospel. People think that we as a church don't like people who question our beliefs but that's not true at all. Joseph Smith had a question. We all have questions. And we encourage everyone to ask questions and seek answers from Heavenly Father. President also talked about the differences between Nephi and Laman. When you think about it, they both did many of the same things. They both followed their father into the wilderness, left their home and wealth, went to get the plates from Laban, built a ship, etc. But the difference was their attitude. We can't just do God's work with a grudging heart. We have to do it cheerfully! And when you look at the differences in Nephi and Laman's character, you see that Nephi's attitude ultimately made him a much greater man. So i just loved that. :)
Elder Anderson talked about a lot of things because he left it open to us to ask him questions. But he talked a lot about how when we teach investigators, first we have to teach them the doctrine and give them "head knowledge", but if we don't use the spirit to touch their hearts and give them "heart knowledge", then they will never be truly converted. So first, we teach their mind, then their heart, and then the spirit gives them desire, and when they have desire we invite them to act and accept commitments, then when they keep commitments their faith grows, then we repeat this process until their faith is strong enough to repent, and when they have faith and repent they will want to be baptized. So it's kind of a cool way to think about the conversion process.
Then that night, Elder Anderson had a fireside for investigators and recent converts and we got to go because we had recent converts there! So that was good.
Anyway, school is now in session! We call campus Babylon because of all the crazy people. Literally so many half naked people and all that. Plus, I've never been in one place with so many hipsters before. Richmond is crazy. One day we straight up had a 20 minute conversation with these two girls because they kept arguing with us, saying that we should be able to use drugs and hallucinogens to have visions of God. We were like.....nope! So yeah we see people walking around with beer, machetes, all sorts of crazy stuff. There is lots of people to talk to though, so its exciting! This week we're going to set up a lemonade stand so that will be fun :)
Sorry mom, but i only have like two pictures this week. Hahaha. One is of the side of the police station that's next door to our institute building, and it has this weird metal thing that's supposed to be a police man. And the other one is just the city as we were driving over the James River. I'm sorry! I forget to take pictures and have no time to! It's so unlike me. But I'll take some today and send them next week. :)
Today we are going to lunch with a recent convert named Katie in this place called Cary-town. It's supposed to have all these cute shops and restaurants, so that will be fun. :)
Things are going good here though! Still humid. Still hot. Still makes my hair weird. But its fun :)
Love you all and miss you!
xoxo Sister Fowers
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