Racking up the miles/Missing our study time
This week has been all about travel. The Zone decided to take its temple trip on Tuesday. So they had to have district meeting on Monday. We used the day to get things ready for the week except for the time we were at District Meeting.
On Tuesday we left for the temple at 6:00 A.M. It is an hour north. We took elders with us. Elder Sheffer is a set apart veil worker at the Fresno Temple, so he did that after the session. Then we went to the LDS bookstore and there were a lot of elders there. We got gifts and supplies. So we were only able to work the afternoon. We missed our study time again.
On Wednesday we went to the grape vineyard. It is north of Fresno, so it takes about an hour plus to get there. We raised water lines and tide loose canes for the morning and had lunch in Fresno. We were back to work about 3:00. The neat part of this trip is that someone else drove and paid for the gas. That is a rare thing for the senior missionaries. Another treat was that Jamie Hansen, the man in charge of the vineyard talked to us for quite a while. He told us of several spiritual things that happened in the vineyard. This vineyard supplies all the raisins for all of the welfare and humanitarian service the church does. It is a huge vineyard. There are about 38,000 volunteers that work there each year. He said they had one day where 10,000 volunteers came. He talked of a wayward daughter who came to help him in the summer while she was out of school because she wasn't being very kind to her mother. She caught him praying aloud out in the middle of the vineyard without him knowing. It touched her and she changed. She served a mission in Russia and is now married. He told us several of her mission stories. Every missionary in her mission had been beaten up at least once by the police or military. The Zone leaders experienced the police put drugs in their apartment and then busted in on them in the middle of the night and arrested them in their underwear. They put them in a cold cell with no food, in their underwear, beating them on a regular basis so that they would sign a confession. It took the mission president three days to get them out. Elder Uchtdorf told them, when he visited, that he helped select each missionary for that mission. They had all been carefully selected. He compared them to the brothers of Ammon who were tortured and put in jail. Bro. Hansen went on to say he hadn't known what made the change in his daughter until the night she reported to the high council after her mission.
Thursday we had to be out teaching early and often. We had tons of lessons and tried to squeeze study time and preparation for the next meeting into the little spaces between lessons. One of our investigators was fired from her job. She saw it as the Lord blessing her. She was able to move her baptism up from June 30th to May 26th. She has a strong testimony.
Friday was a normal day and the study time was wonderful. During companionship study we did a role play of the lesson we were to give at the 6th ward combined meeting. Elder Sheffer found an amazing talk given by Henry B. Eyring at the April Conference in 2003. It was entitled A Child a Disciple. We practiced switching off, 50-50 like missionaries are instructed to do. That has been one of the hardest things to do for us because we are both school teachers who are used to teaching a whole classroom of students solo. We are still learning every day and we are grateful that the Lord is patient with us.
Saturday was out doing "Mormon Helping Hands". We planted grass in a new park along the river. We had to be there at 8:00 and got back to work just in time to go to the two baptisms and dinner. We have had dinner almost every night this week. It has been wonderful. We went to Exeter to visit. This is a town that is on the edge of the stake and we haven't worked much in that ward yet. So we are stretching in that direction a bit. We pray daily for the Lord's guidance.
Sunday we picked up Victor and Stephanie Eastland to go with us to the 6th ward to teach the third hour. We asked them to share their testimonies. Victor was baptized little over a month ago. He was adopted from an orphanage in Kazakhstan and Stephanie is from the Philippians. The talk we were using was given by Elder Eyring who years ago came to Visalia and spoke to the Saints. He gave them a prophetic promise, many of the people here have told us about it, that said people would move to Visalia not knowing why and it would be for the purpose of finding the Gospel. He also told them that there would be more stakes here.
Victor and Stephanie were visual proof of the fulfilling of that prophesy. After the meeting we thanked them for sharing their testimonies and taught them that as they share their testimony it would strengthen them. Victor said, "That is just what I was thinking." He went on to say that he was feeling so much more confident in his life. They are such a sweet couple and they just found out that they are excepting their first baby.
We are learning that we must pray and ask for charity. With it we see others as Christ sees them and fear will be gone when we are made perfect in love. With charity there is no fear in sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
We love you all. God Bless Elder and Sister Sheffer
Fresno Temple with Zone
Mormon Helping Hands
Two Baptisms -- We helped to fellowship these two men.
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