Virginia Chesapeake Mission

Virginia Chesapeake Mission

Monday, March 9, 2015

The Lady with the Leopard Cape

Hello Everyone!

This week was extremely busy! We had zone meeting on Friday and we taught a fair amount of lessons and our car had some maintenance done on it and the weather was amazing! Also, our Mission President has put out a standard of excellence which involves talking with as many people as possible about the gospel. So this week we did an exceeding amount of street contacting! And it all started last Monday night with the Lady with the Leopard Cape.
The plans we had set that night fell through and we decided we would go to the waterfront and see if there were any people we could talk to there. And there really weren't many. But we decided to get out of our car anyway and do our best! After about five minutes of walking around, there was a lady walking towards us on the sidewalk. When she was about a short stone's throw away, she crossed the street to the other side. But that didn't stop us! We said hello to her and asked her how she was doing! She said fine and that she already knew who Jesus Christ was. After we stated to her the wonderful truth that we had a prophet on the Earth today, she started talking with us. To make a long story short, we talked with her for quite some time about some pretty crazy stuff! She told us her name and, as the subject of this email suggests, she had some sort of a leopard cape on. Anyway, she kept referencing Revelations and some manner of apocryphal books. We listened and described to her some of our beliefs and offered her a Book of Mormon. She didn't want it and a short while later we parted ways.
At that time we decided to go try meeting with one of our investigators who seems to be rarely home. After knocking on his door, he opened it and invited us in! We had a wonderful lesson with him covering a broad spectrum of topics, but mainly focusing on the restoration of the gospel. The Spirit was very strong and he has a desire to know if these things are true. And he believes and understands several passages of the Bible just as we do, like the three degrees of glory and baptisms for the dead, both found in 1 Corinthians 15. I won't go into too much detail, but it will suffice to say that it was a wonderful lesson and he has a lot of potential!
Now you might be wondering why I told you that story. Well let me tell you! After we talked with the Lady with the Leopard Cape, I kept thinking..."why did we talk to her for so long? Perhaps we should have just left earlier." Later I realized that one reason may have been that we weren't supposed to go over to our investigator's home yet. If we had only talked to her for a short period of time, we would have gone to his home earlier and he might not have been home, and we would have missed that whole lesson we had with him. Nonetheless, the truth that stuck out to me from this entire experience is that the Lord's purposes will come to pass. In His way and in His time. Sometimes we may not understand why the Lord asks us to do certain things, but I know that when we follow Him in faith, we will receive so much more happiness than we can by any other way. The gospel is true. God lives. And it is by obedience to His commandments that we shall receive eternal life. D+C 14:7
I love each of you and hope you all have a fantastic week!

With Love,
Elder Rogers