Hey Y'all,
I cannot believe it is already August! Time flies so fast out here when you are having fun. S.Reheis and I are doing well in Rochester. This place is so different from Flint. Its probs the wealthiest area in our mission, or close to it. I hope you have had a good week and summer! Not much is happening here but boy was this week kinda crazy. Including the miracle below, we also went to Detroit to so the service project we did last year again. Life Remodeled. They pick a neighbor hood or neighborhoods in the ghetto of Detroit and go in to clean up the place! It is actually so cool. We were there on Thursday and got to clean up a number of abandoned houses. Our whole mission did it, each zone of different days and so there were tons of missionaries there. It is an awesome way to get the churches name out there!
Okay so our miracle this week is kinda a long sad story. His name is Jobe, we found him on Tuesday approx. 5 days after he moved into town. I have been praying to find the elect and that they will specifically have some kind of animal with them. (Because Sister Reheis loves animals so we stop every one we see) Well Jobe had a ferret which was new, so we went over to talk to him. He has had a really hard life, both of his parents died 4 years ago in a house fire along with his little brother, and he moved to the US after that. He told us about how he was atheist but how he has seen so many signs and good things that point him to believe that there is a God, despite his knowledge otherwise. We talked with him about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and bore testimony about the Book of Mormon. We promised him that if he read it he would be able to know God and Christ more. He took a copy and we set up another appointment for Saturday. When we met up with him on Sat he had done some good and bad research about the church and had 101 questions about Kolob and planets and all these other obscure things. We taught him the Plan of Salvation and used lots of Book of Mormon references to teach. (we backed those up with our personal testimonies again) We invited him to church and he said he would think about it. Well guess what?!?! He came to church! 45 min early! He had a really good time at church and even bore his testimony in Sacrament meeting. The bore his testimony on how meeting us was a miracle. When we called him Sunday evening he opened up to us about a lot of other scary stuff that happened in his past and how he didn't understand why God, if He really loved him, would allow those kind of things to happen. We scheduled an appointment for Monday and told him we would study it out more from his perspective and answer him then. Well we went contacting in the park after that and at one point sat down on a bench. Jobes question was ringing in my mind the whole time we were out, as I sat on the bench the words in JSH rang in my head. "12 Never did any passage of scripture [or question from investigator] come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again and again, knowing that if any person needed wisdom from God, I did; for how to act I did not know, and unless I could get more wisdom than I then had, I would never know; for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible.
13 At length I came to the conclusion that I must either remain in darkness and confusion, or else I must do as James directs, that is, ask of God. I at length came to the determination to “ask of God,” concluding that if he gave wisdom to them that lacked wisdom, and would give liberally, and not upbraid, I might venture."
I thought of the first vision and literally could not hold myself back from reciting it quietly to myself. I realized that no matter the amount of answers or words or scriptures I threw at Jobe, it would be his choice. He needed to pray for himself. That's what Joseph did, that's what I did, that's what we ask everyone to do. We talked about that as a companionship and decided that is what we were going to focus on in our meeting with him today. Well late last night he texted a lot of mean things and dropped us. But he is still my miracle of the week because he helped me strengthen my faith in a loving Heavenly Father.
I hope you all have wonderful weeks!
Love Sister Witt
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