Heavenly Guidance

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Yesterday I was able to have dinner with Heidi, Joshua, and Isaiah.  Yes, it was only at Chik-fil-A but it was wonderful to spend a couple hours with her and the boys.  They brought along a couple kisses for Grandma.  It did wonders for my spirit.  Today I was further uplifted by being able to attend the temple again.  It gave me much time to reflect on just how very much our Heavenly Father and his son, Jesus Christ, our Elder Brother, love each one of us.  I cannot imagine a love as perfect as Christ's that would enable him to come to earth, show us how to live every law with exactness, and submit himself to the designs of evil men; that he would suffer and bleed from every pore because of the transgressions of others, and then die for us so that we may be forgiven and come back into the Father's presence if we would repent and promise to follow Him.  Greater love hath no man than this.

I have also reflected today on a thought that has crossed my mind many times in the last couple weeks.  To help us identify where we will focus on our visits each day, I put the ward list into a spreadsheet and then mapped it out on Google Maps.  I then listed the sisters in clusters of 10-14 people according to their neighborhoods.  In each group there are anywhere from 3 to 9 sisters that we believe are active members.  Additionally, there are maybe half a dozen that we have not met that we believe are less active.  We have 12 groups in 2nd Ward that we want to see by the end of the month.  We pick a different group each day and try to get appointments with about three active sisters and then call on the less active sisters for the remainder of the day.  Because of our planning or maybe in spite of our planning, we have felt the Lord guiding us in our visits.  He has helped us find houses when we were ready to give up because the addresses are not clearly marked.  And he has helped us find at least one person each day with whom we can have a meaningful visit and an invitation to return.  Sometimes the visit starts out a little awkward while they are deciding if they want to talk to us, and then they begin to tell us what is in their hearts.

Sometimes we have downright surprises from the very beginning.  One such incident happened on Tuesday, two days ago.   We knocked on a door in the early afternoon and received no answer.  We returned to our car, got in and buckled up.  I started the engine and put the car in reverse and began to leave.  Just then I saw movement on the glass of the front door as if the door had been opened ever so slightly.  Then the sister appeared in the doorway, and she was motioning to us.  We got out of the car and went back.  She saw our nametags as we introduced ourselves.  She said she was so happy to see us.  She asked if we could please come back.  She has actually been thinking more about the Church and about coming back.  She thought we were there to see her because of an unfortunate experience  she had with the young Elders a couple weeks ago where she was deeply offended.  We said we knew nothing about it; we were just visiting the members to try and get to know all of the sisters.  She said it was not a very good time to talk right then, but she wanted us to return.  We set an appointment for Friday and left with a promise that we would return.  I can't tell you how good it felt to have someone be excited that we had shown up at their door.  I can't wait for our return visit.

On Wednesday, our first appointment was later in the day so we tried to use our morning effectively by starting with some less active visits.  We had seen all of the sisters on the day's list and still had nearly an hour before our first appointment.  We grabbed our ward list and tried to decide where we could go that wouldn't be too far away.  We had been working on Group 6 but instead of going to Group 7 we skipped to Group 11 and randomly picked a sister who was less active.  We knocked and a sister came to the door, but it wasn't the sister we were looking for.  She said, "no she doesn't live here anymore."  We have heard that plenty of times.   I repeated the full name of the sister we were trying to find and she said go ahead and come in.  Then she explained that the person we were looking for was her daughter.  We asked this sister what her name was and learned that she was also a member, a less active one on our list who really needed our visit that day.  When we left, and headed for our next appointment, we pondered the wonderful fact that in spite of our shortsightedness and indecision sometimes as to who we should see, Heavenly Father is aware of each of those sisters' needs and He is guiding us to them.  After we go from house to house where we find no one home or no one interested, He guides us to the ones who need us.