Patience and Humility

Hello. :)

So I have tried to come up with more creative ways to say hello but no success yet. So how is everyone? I hope life is great and that everyone is enjoying the lovely weather. The weather here is very nice. Usually its just right in the middle. Not too hot...not to cold... with a nice breeze :) I'm hoping that will help me stay my original color. I have already decided I will have to stay in for a long while for this tan to fade :) But anyway this week has been another great week! We are still doing lots of finding each and everyday in hopes of finding people that will really help establish the church. This mission in the past has had quite a hard time because missionaries were kind of just doing what they thought would help. Mission before was just about "finding, teaching, and baptizing." Therefore there have been thousands of people baptized in Africa and many were not truly converted because they didnt truly understand the gospel and now there are so many less actives. Now the mission is trying to emphasize us teaching people that will truly understand the gospel and will help establish the church so we are trying to focus on people that are more settled and educated so we can have stronger leaders here in the church. So that is somethings that me and my companion have really been working on this week and let me tell you it is sooooooo hard! Honestly it is so much easier to teach those people that are poor because they are humble and they listen and as we try to find more educated people we definitely get more rejections. 

Being here in Malawi has taught me more patience and more humility. I definitely felt it this week as we knock on gate after gate; door after door and we got no after no. It was something I definitely had never experienced before. Me and Sister Rawlins have been trying to be more courageous and have been feeling slightly more discouraged. It is hard when people say they don't care about what you have to say and they don't take the time to listen. But we had an experience this week that truly was great. I have been here in my area for over a month with little to no success. Most people wont even open their gate for us and so one evening we decided we were going to knock on doors in one of the nicest areas around. Big houses, fancy cars, all of that. So we start knocking and man we didnt know what to do. No one was letting us in and we were just getting more and more tired and discouraged. We had walked all day and we were tired and all of that. So it was getting kind of dark and our ride was coming to get us. So we were going down this road and there was one more house at the end. So at this point we could turn around and head back to our car, or we could keep going and knock on this one last gate. So I tell myself okay after this gate we will go back. So we go up to the gate and knock. So immediately it opens and the guard asks us what we want and we say that we want to share a message about families. So to our surprise he goes and talks to the people in the house. So a little while later, a young man comes out and he asks us what we want so again we say the same thing and we tell him that we want to share it with his whole family. So he goes in the house to tell his parents. 

 I think my heart about stopped! Never had a person even come out f the house before! So then we see a women come out of her house. A business woman all dressed  and she comes out and talks to us. We tell her we want to share this message about families with her and she is super friendly and sweet. She tells us to give her our contacts and she will call us because she wants to know what we are sharing with people. So i know that for some of you thats not a big deal. Someone just tells us that they want to learn more, but for us it was definitely a sign of our Heavenly Fathers tender mercies. When we feel as though there is nothing else we can do our Heavenly Father shows us that he loves us and that this is his work. We have to trust that he knows who we are and where we need to go and he can guide us. I honestly can say that I know that miracles can happen. They haven't ceased. God hasn't forgotten us and he won't because we are his children and he loves us.

I know that this is our Heavenly Fathers work and I know that he has his hand in everything that we do. I know that as we trust in him that we will see miracles and he will be able to show us those miracles. I love him so much. I know that his gospel is true. I know that this is the only true church on the whole earth and that we have the restored gospel. I know that and I will never  let that go. I pray that everyone will continue to share that gospel with everyone around them so that we can all someday return to live with our father again. I love you all and I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Love
Sister Scott