Defender of the Dakotas: 63 - Grenora the Great

A recent convert in Dickenson

Darn no time! Well. You have a bunch of pictures. haha.

At the beginning of the week there was MLC.

That's the meeting that all the leadership in the mission goes to, aka Sister Barrett goes and I'm stuck with someone else for a day and have a blast doing missionary work with them.

Sister Capson (Left) and Sister Shaver

Sister Shaver and Sister Capson serve in Dickenson. Sister Capson is STL.

Sister Shaver and Sister Sanderson

So I was companions with Sister Shaver!

And I don't have time to talk in detail about this awesome lesson that we had with this guy who was African. But we got in because we were with a member and we shared the restoration film with him and we committed him to come to our church and he comitted us (them) to come to his church.

It's Sister Shaver's dream to get invited to the black church!

She's so excited!

Our Grenora trip on Thursday was awesome. Grenora is kind of like Ray, except for it's in 1st ward.

Our Relief Society President and her councilor took us up there on Thursday.

First time I've been.

The trip up there was fun!

And then we arrived

We went there to see all the people listed on the ward list.

We met one of the ladies outside her house and that was a good visit.

No body else on the list answered. But!

We knocked on the door of this one trailer. No one answered the door we knocked on, but there was a boy next door who heard and poked his head out of the door and said:

"Whatcha doin'?"

"We're seeing if this person's home."

"Oh, ok." and he went back inside.

Well, no one was answering and so we decided to knock on that door that the boy poped out of and see if they knew anything about their neighbor (and perhaps teach them about the gospel)!

"Hi, is your mom home?"

"Yeah. Are you selling cookies!?"

He noticed the plate in our Relief Society President's hands.

"Moooom! Mom! I love cookies! Mom!"

When short little less than five foot mom came to the door on the phone she stopped.

"Oh..! The missionaries are here! ..I'll have to call you back. The missionaries just showed up at my house."

So, we didn't meet the member that lived in that listed house, we found another lost sheep, Chelsea. And her step son, Melvin Adam Johnson the Third! haha. He's a cute one. As well as her younger step son and her youngest, her toddler of a daughter.

"I was wondering with the oil boom how long it would take for you to find me."

It's been hard for her to stay active because she has moved a lot and she has had bad experiences with members attending church in the past.

We shared with them the Because of Him Video. Melvin was just asking all sorts of questions, so excited at this video about Christ, and he wanted to watch it again. We went around and told what we liked about the video. Chelsea said she liked it because it helped her remember the lessons she was taught as a kid. And the video of Because He Lives started playing automatically. As Melvin watched, he was so intent, tears were in his eyes. He leaned to the 1st Councilor Sister.

"Why am I crying? I feel so happy."

"You are feeling the Holy Ghost."

I looked over and gestured to Sister Barrett to look too. Melvin had his eyes closed, his hands pressed together.

The first councilor asked him why he did that. He said, "I don't know. I just do it sometimes at night when I need help or something."

Sooooo close to the spirit.

We gave the two boys book of Mormons and they wrote their names in them.

Chelsea knows it was not a coincidence that we came. She was actually thinking beforehand that she needed to come back to church.

She didn't come to church because her husband made surprise family plans. We will be in contact with her. It was such a blessing to meet her, and that she knows the relief society president too now! How AWESOME!