This has been such an amazing week! The Book of Mormon experiment was amazing! Between all of the missionaries participating we were able get in contact with 1,500 people!! The displays were placed at parks, colleges, and busy shopping centers. People would read one page in the Book of Mormon and highlight all the names of Jesus Christ or Heavenly Father that they found on that page.
I got to participate at the display at the College of the Canyons for three days. It was so weird to be be wearing pants, without a name tag and going by my first name! I will be honest though, I loved every minute of it (well expect when kids wanted me to come hangout with them and I had to explain to them that I actually was a missionary and couldn't.)
We all got clipboards and would walk up to different students and ask them to participate in a social experiment. Most of the kids thought they were reading the bible or would ran away the minute you said religious experiment. My first day I was standing on a sidewalk trying to get people to talk to me as they walked from class, and it was not working.... I realized I needed to make a new game plan. I looked around and noticed there were people sitting on the grass by themselves everywhere. So I broke all social norms and started sitting next to these people and starting conversations with them, and thats when I started getting people involved.
It was so cool to watch people read the Book of Mormon for the first time. Seeing the light come on in their eyes... was stunning. I noticed a girl sitting way down this hill by herself and I felt impressed to go talk to her. I invited her to do the experiment and she accepted. She read the page and started asking me questions about it. I felt impressed to tell her about God's love for her and it lead to this huge conversation about all the struggles she is currently going through. I was able to talk to her about her Savior's love for her and she asked me if it was okay if she got a Book of Mormon!! She told me she had been looking for something like this for a while and had had no success in finding it. The spirit was so strong. When it was time for me to leave she asked me for a hug and she can't wait for the missionaries to come talk to her. Sadly she lives in the Glendale Mission so I can only hope that those missionaries take good care of her because she is so ready for this gospel. Because there is opposition in all things I ended up getting the other missionaries in trouble because apparently when you do displays at the college you can only stay in a certain area and that means that Sister Howard can't go sit on the grass and talk to people. Satan will stop at nothing to stop people from hearing the truthfulness of the gospel.
Monday we were at a Lawersons' house for dinner, and we hear a knock at the door. They answered and our ward missionaries leader, Brother Leavitte, his family, and Sister Roos, and Sister Fletcher's family members started caroling to us, and gave us a beautiful christmas tree!! Then Sister Fletcher gave us a long loving hug from our moms. We may or may not have gotten teary eyed. I have such an amazing ward!
So you might have heard about all the fires that are going on here right now..... well one of them was pretty close to my apartment and a lot of the ward members from both my wards that we are over were evacuated! Our apartment was super, super, smokey so I made my companion pack a suitcase and we slept out in our living room so we would be ready if we needed to be evacuated. The traffic was crazy because of all the roads that were shut down, but it starting to calm down and we were never evacuated and all my ward members are safely home now! The fire was only 4 blocks away from our apartment.
So Saturday morning I drove my companion and two other sister missionaries to Chattsworth where we got to go help at Operation Gratitude! Our whole zone went. We got to make care packages for the fire fighters, police officers, and military service men. It was so cool to see all the missionaries and people who showed up to serve. Some things that we put in the bag were toys, wipes, M&M's, energy drinks, hand warmers, etc.
At zone activity some of the elders brought ropes and were teaching us how to rope chairs! I can proudly announce that I can officially rope chairs!!!! The things you learn on a mission....
Well love you all and hope you are all doing well!!
Don't forget to Light the World!!! love, Sister Howard
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