SISTER MELISSA RICHARDSON WEEKLY LETTER
JANUARY 27, 2014
Greetings real world!
The iPads have appeared! All of
the mission leaders (zone leaders, district leaders, etc.) have gotten
them! They are pretty nifty. The area book program the church created
is incredible. It is the daily planner and the area book and the ward
roster and maps of the area all in one. And it is all synced with your
companions. It's pretty great! We are counting down the days until the
rest of us get them..only about 8 days until then! The church gives them
to us to keep for the rest of our lives and they give us a nice
protective case with it as well.
It is hard to seperate days! Everything just kind of runs together and I don't remember what we do when.
We
had a really cool miracle happen this week! Sister Sullivan and I were
walking back from an appointment where the investigator had stood us up
and cancelled...and we decide to go talk to these people that were out
by their car. We talked to them for probably about 2 minutes total, but
we invited them to church and swapped phone numbers. And what do you
know, in walks Evan (name changed) to our gospel study class on Tuesday!
We were so surprised and happy! People don't realize that as
missionaries, we are just used to people not showing up to things when
they say they will. But he was there for our class and LOVED it. We
gave him a church tour and all the members in the building for youth
activities and such that night were very welcoming and friendly! One
brother even came up to Evan and invited him to go fishing with him this
week. Miracle! And then guess what, he followed through and came to
church on Sunday! Wow. This guy (Evan) is a miracle. And we are so
excited to keep teaching him!
Every time we have a dinner appointment with the
Elders, they always have a competition between them of how much they can
eat. They try to get us sisters into it as well...ha never works.
They are crazy, but great. One of them might have eaten 14 french
toast the other night.
My favorite part of missionary work continues to be
working with less-actives and we've done some great work with it this
week! I love just feeling impressed to see a name on a paper that noone
knows anything about, and then going and finding and "rescuing" them as
President Monson says. Listening to their issues with the church and
then helping them feel the Spirit and feel invited and welcomed at
church again. It's a long, slow process at times, but always worth it
when it eventually pans out. It's a challenge to me to have them fall
in love with us missionaries and the gospel all over again. Kill them
with kindness kind of thing.
We had a curveball lesson with an investigator the
other day. We were going along great, felt like it was going well. And
then we invite them to baptism and then they told us a reason why they
didn't want to be baptized....wabam through us for a loop. We were
silent for 15 very long seconds...trying to figure out what to say next.
It's funny now, but was very stressful then! Definitely included lots
of praying for words to come to our mouths from the spirit and they did!
We had stake conference this past weekend and it was
great! Lots of talking about missionary work! It's the perfect era to
be a missionary because everyone is becoming more motivated to do it.
We had a moment the other day where we felt like
spys. One of the members in our ward works at a real estate office.
Where there is also a less active and an investigator that work there.
So we decided to just go and visit that work office and try to see all
those three people at once! They were all happy to see us and it was a
fruitful visit!
I loved spending stake conference with the deaf
people. ASL makes so much more sense than English sometimes. English
just has so many superfluous words that all mean the same thing in
varying degrees. I love English, but ASL is nice at times too. And
signing the hymns with a huge group of deaf people is the best
experience. On Sunday, all of the deaf families were in the rs room for
the broadcast translation (because it was a broadcasted stake
conference from Orlando). And the translation video kept freezing...it
was so funny. All the deaf people would freak out and mimic shaking
these people's heads in frustration. It was hilarious. So we kept
switching back from this video translation to turning on the sound from
the chapel and having a member interpret. Back and forth. Kind of
distracting, but it all worked out.
We are planning an activity for all the deaf
members! Something that they can come to for fellowship purposes but
also something they can bring their deaf friends too. No talking
allowed! Only signing. We are going to play volleyball at the church!
It's going to be on the day after Valentine's day, so we are going to do
sugar cookie decorating for the kids as well and I"m sure food will be
involved too, whether it's just desserts or is lunch. We are so
excited! Can't wait to see some of these members play volleyball...I
have a feeling that they have hidden competitive sides. People usually
see deaf people as quiet, calm people...but that's just because you
don't understand what they are saying. They are just like hearing
people can be--sarcastic, witty, competitive, embarassed, kind...you
name it.
All 4 of us missionaries had dinner with the
Bishop's family last night. We were sitting around trying to figure out
a way to better help the ward with the missionary work. The spirit
popped an awesome idea into my head that we are going to implement! So
people have been talking a lot about how the invitation in missionary
work is where the success is. Not in a baptism...but just in inviting
and giving people the opportunity to exercise their agency and accept
Christ in their lives. So we, as a ward, are going to have a goal of
1000 invites in the month of February! And as a "performance enhancer",
the Bishop is going to get a jar with 1000 M&M's in it. Every
invitation will be rewarded with an M&M. People will report on
Sunday and get their reward/performance enhancer. Bishop is going to
bring up that jar and introduce it on Fast Sunday/the first sunday in
February. Hopefully everyone, including kids, will get into it! Should
be fun!
So ever since we've come here, I've been wanting to
get a tour of the Florida school for the deaf and blind..the residential
school that almost all deaf people in this town go to or work at,
including all the deaf members of the ward. We finally made it happen
today! This morning as part of our P-day, we had an AWESOME tour. This
school is incredible. It's a private school that is free to florida
residents. They have so many cool resources for those kids! There are
600 kids that go there and they are just normal kids that happen to be
blind or deaf. They have basically everything any other school would
have including all kinds of sports teams and dance teams and music and
art resources. Their education program is incredible...with small class
sizes and great teachers and great learning tools. They have
psychologists and social workers. It's a huge campus with beautiful
buildings with several gyms, indoor swimming pool, dorms for the kids
that stay there all week, bowling alley, auditoriums, library, football
field. All students get a laptop computer that they keep for the year.
70% of their students go on to college/university/technical school.
Being fluent in English and reading comprehension is a big focus too.
It was so impressive. It was cool to see videos of their dance
troupes...they sign instead of singing and dance by feeling the beats of
the music or just memorizing counts with the moves. It was cool to see
the blind part of the school too. Braille is so incredibly cool and
crazy! The machines they have to type braille and all the braille
books...blew my mind. And the kids were just normal kids..but just
learned in different ways whether they were deaf or blind relying on
either sight or hearing to learn. Also, search on youtube for goal
ball. It's this sport that only blind people play. It's like human
bowling and seems super intense. We saw their goal ball court. They
use a ball with bells in it...and I don't exactly understand how the
game works...I think it's one of those things I'd have to see to
understand rather than just having it explained to me. We saw Brother
Price, a deaf member from our ward at his office. We also saw Brother
Snow who is the head librarian! He was so happy to show us around his
library and tell us about his job. I've talked to him about books a lot
before...so he has a special place in my heart because he loves reading
too. He had remembered that I had told him that I LOVE classics. So
he took me right to that section and showed them all to me. I loved
being able to help these members feel important and valued as we were
interested in what they did in their everyday lives. The school invited
us back to their open house where the blind band will perform and also
the deaf dance troupe. Great finding activity! I've officially decided
it's my dream job to work there at FSDB as a psychologist, or a place
like it. Hooray!
Well my friends, the church is still true and God
still loves us, and thank goodness that never changes! The gospel of
Jesus Christ has the power to change our hearts and our families if we
open that door to let Him in (Revelations 3:20).
Also, look at my blog and tell me what you think! You can even comment on the blog too :) song ofsisterrichardson.blogspot.com
Be better today than you were yesterday! Praying for all of you and love you all!
Sister Richardson
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