Hey family!
I'd say it's been a pretty good week! Partly because we didn't have to tract much, but mostly because we have been getting ready for some awesome activities! I think I mentioned in my last email that we are starting to get creative since we are in desperate need of people to teach. We have joined forces with one of the ward missionaries who lives in our area in order to one day reach our goal of creating a branch in Bellevue. Will, the ward missionary, is super motivated to get the members involved with missionary work, so it's been awesome working with him. His dedication to the missionary effort has truly been an inspiration to me! I'm hoping we will see a huge change in the work in response to our new approach.
This coming Saturday we are doing a service project for an older lady in our ward. We have invited some less-active, active, and even a couple non-members from the Bellevue area to do some yard work for her. I am already witnessing how doing service can be a great missionary tool. We had a lesson with a less-active man in our ward this past week, and we had an interesting conversation with him. Let's just say this guy has some pretty extreme views about the world, and he does not have any intention of coming back to church. He basically hates America and believes that the church is not doing its job of warning the people about the evil going on in our country (not just wickedness, but conspiracies). Haha we had a fun time talking to him. We seemed to keep saying, "Ok...but what does this have to do with the gospel?" Anyway, he also talked about how he doesn't feel the church is like it used to be, where people are always looking out for each other. We then said, "That's funny you say that because we actually want to invite you to a service project to help out an elderly lady in our ward." After our invitation there was a complete change in the tone of the conversation. All of the sudden he got really excited and said he would be totally willing to help. Even though he's not willing to come back to church, his involvement at this service project is a great step in the right direction.
This coming Sunday the members in our area are doing a fast for missionary work. Then, we will be doing a short devotional and break-the-fast at a local park. From the members we have talked to about this activity so far, we have gotten a really positive response. We are still figuring out what we want to be said at this devotional, but we are going to ask Bishop Nye to be our "key-note speaker." Sister Strate and I will probably each share a brief testimony and talk about the vision we have for this area. In planning for this activity we found out that over fifty percent of the members in our area are converts, and we want to use that statistic to our advantage. We may have all the converts raise their hands, which will hopefully remind them that missionary work DOES WORK. We will end by committing them to bring someone to church by some date we set, possibly the end of October. If everyone follows through with this commitment, we will have THIRTY new families at church in the next couple months. Can you imagine? We are praying for a miracle. I am excited to see things happening, and I hope this activity will inspire members to get involved.
I hope all is well with you guys! I miss you often, but I am loving my time as a missionary. It's hard at times, but this is the greatest experience anyone could ever have. Love you!
Love,
Sister Denney
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