There are no coincidences when you are on the Lord's errand

Malo 'etau ma'u 'a e pongipongi ni!

This week was full of miracles, and I want to share only some of the miracles I get to experience every day as a servant of the Lord.

Austust 13th

After P day was over, we went to an empty area on our map and knocked on all the doors and asking everyone if they knew of any Tongans that lived close by. (Just a day in the life of a language missionary.) After 2 hours of this, I kept getting the feeling that we were waisting the Lord's time, so we decided to pray. We prayed to be able to be guided to someone who needed us. After the prayer, we looked at our map and saw a dot that we hadn't noticed before. We went to the house and found that person. Linda is a recent convert who was confined to a hospital bed in her living room due to some health issues. Right when we sat down, she said: "what is a sin?" She is such a sweet lady and loves to ask questions.

August 14th

Sister Tatafu (my companion) and I went to a member's house and ran into a missionary in our ward who had just returned this week. Her name is Sister Tatafu! And guess where she served? THE PILLIPPNESS! We spoke Tagalog to each other and have since taken her with us to a lesson we had this week. There are no coincidences on the Lord's errand.

Austust 15

This has some backstory, so the first day we got here and the first house we went to we were trying to find a recent convert. The Elders before us had put no notes on the situation, so we just went to the house. We found the dad, and we mentioned that we had the record of his son because he was baptized. That was news to him. We walked away from the house feeling like we might have accidentally told him something that we weren't supposed to. Well, on the 15th we found out that his dad was a pastor and that his biggest fear was telling his dad that he had been baptized into our church. We felt terrible, but I think the Lord might have led two ignorant missionaries to that house before we had a chance to find out the situation so that the dad could find out and the son wouldn't have that burden of secrecy. I was told everything was okay with them, so that's good!

August 16th 

On this day, the zone decided that we wanted to have a goal of finding 30 new people to teach by the end of the week (Sunday.) That came down to 3 people a companionship that we needed to find in 4 days. At this point in the week, Sister Tatafu and I had 0. We had spent the morning knocking on doors and our morning appointment fell through. We said a prayer and asked God to help us find someone to teach. By dinner time we hadn't found anyone, and after dinner was Sport's Night, so we thought we didn't have anymore finding opportunities. We showed up to dinner at the Fiftias and Sister Fifita's cousin was there who recently moved here from Hawaii. She's methodist. We got to know her throughout the dinner. she really liked us and the message that we shared and agreed to meet with is on Monday! 1/3 

August 17th

We got a call from a missionary in another state. She had a very strong prompting to reach out to the missionaries in her sister's area. She was able to share concerns about her sister and she asked us if we would make Nutella cookie bars for her sister. (It seems random, I know, but the missionary made them all the time for her sister before she left). It was so cool to see how God was working through his servants across two different states to make this sister feel loved during a hard time. He had lined a bunch of stuff up for this to happen (like Sister Tatafu and I recieveing Nutella in the mail a week before.) It was such a huge testament that God is a aware of all his children.

We also taught an awesome lesson this day to a sweet Samoan man that was also an answer to a prayer, but that's a long story so the point is that by this day we had found 2 out of 3 people we needed to read our goal!

Austust 18th

We went out tracting with the mission president's wife.

We went to a member's house who hasn't been to church in a while; we had tried to visit many times with no luck. He was there, and we found out his daughter was getting baptized that day with her cousin and he invited us to come to it and the party after! We met SO MANY Tongans there and by the end of the evening, we had found another person to teach! 3/3

Finally, yesterday we found out that the zone exceeded its goal. We have found 32 new people this week (compared to 8 last week)!! It happened through A LOT of prayers, dilligence, and hope while searching. It is amazing what happens when you turn everything over to the Lord and let him guide you.

I love you and and remember to look for the miracles in your life!!

-sister gray