Perfectly Perth: The Abundant Life

Hello!!

It has been an amazing week. I am so happy to be here in Bellevue (not bellview sorry) with Sister Johnson!! Sister Johnson is from Malaysia. I love her. She is so great. And hilarious. And weird. Like me! Bahaha! ;)

So we reopened the area and I'm excited to see how this goes! I have faith that miracles will happen only if I have faith and diligence!!

We have a new investigator, Gerry. He is a big, mean, and scary motorbike man with the long gray beard and all. Just kidding he is a big teddy bear. He was a former investigator and has been to church 20+ times. I think we found out his need/concern. He does need to gain a testimony that this church is true and that the Book of Mormon is true, but His deeper concern is feeling of guilt/shame/regret from the past. We had a powerful lesson on the Atonement and used the Book of Mormon to teach him different principles! It was great.

The elders referred us to a 91 year old lady that lives in our area. Her name is Ineka. She is originally from Holland. She has had a very hard life. I feel so bad for her. The amazing thing is that she still does her weeding and she sometimes takes out her rubbish bins by herself. She said, "Sometimes it's hard b/c it's pretty heavy." She doesn't give up. She kept saying, "I can do it!" She said she would like us to teach her how to pray. She is a bit deaf, so when I said the prayer at the end of our visit I was pretty much yelling and it was great. Haha! What a sweet lady.

I'm excited to keep finding new people to teach! There are a lot of less active women with non member husbands! We visited with some of them this week, and I feel like they have heaps of potential. We will follow the spirit.

Our second day here, we asked the Elders if we could get our area book from them. They dropped it off at the church. We decided to bike there so we could talk to people on the way (we do have a car cause our area is MASSIVE). We got lost. We went all the way into the elder's area on accident and we had to call them to ask for directions. We left our map at the flat... I thought already I mastered the art of double checking...nope.

We ended up biking for three hours and at the very end, when we finally reached the church, a man we stopped to talk to was actually a former investigator! He is searching for comfort and happiness in his life and he actually walked with us to the church grounds. When we were standing there, I felt like we were standing on holy ground. It felt different. We got his details and he said we could come by! Maybe we got lost so we could see him when we did. Or maybe, because we got lost, God put Him in our path. I'm glad we talked to him.

We are in the Greenmount ward. It is fantastic! They are so welcoming and friendly. I am excited to bring our potential investigators to church and to meet with the members so their friends and family can come into the fold too!

"Sincere prayer is the heart of a happy and productive life." H. Burke Peterson

That is so true...

I love you all. Have a fantastic week!

Love,

Sister Beardall