MiRaCLe

First I'm going to tesifty that Heavenly Father keeps his promises even in the most stressful inconvient circumstances. This week I felt like the wind swept us off our feet. Usually scottish winds are all directions but the wind this week caught us off guard. I'm not actually talking about wind, more like challenges.

This week we were in Edinburgh for follow up training with all the new missionaries. We found out a week in advanced and scheduled accordingly. On Monday we receive a phone call from our Zone Leaders informing us that we were going on EXCHANGES with the Edinburgh sisters and it would take place on wednesday. Needless to say we spent most of monday and tuesday re-scheduling and planning for the exchange (exchange experience will be next week when i can upload pictures).

A little background. President Brown trained us on teaching 20 lessons a week. He showed us a promise from L. Tom Perry saying that if we taught 20 lessons a week we would double the baptisms in our area. I've been in East Kilbride 7 months and I've always taught at least 20 lessons each week. Our trip to Edinburgh and the exchange as well as planning day and p-day we didn't have a whole lot of time for lessons. We had about 3 1/2 days taken away. We were worried about achieving our goal, but did our best to plan our appointments. Saturday night we planned for sunday and realized we didn't have enough lessons. We thought of someone we could visit (pretty soild appointment) and went to bed.

Sunday morning we go to Stake Conference, come home phone the lady who usually is soild and she informs us that she doesn't want a visit.......oh no. Along with all of this Sister Hopkin and I managed to catch colds from other missionaries. Each of us catching different colds from two different missionaries. However, we both were determined to get 20 lessons.

After studying and planning we head to our appointment, had a great lesson and head up to a less active. We had about an hour of time to either find someone to teach or try by less actives. We choose less actives because that is what we are focusing on. Long Story short our less active wasn't in and we only have 45 minutes. Time was running out. I was sick, sore, coughing, trying to stay upbeat when inside I was desparetely wanting to go home, get warm and take the longest nap.

Instead, Sister Hopkin and I prayed and asked for guidance. We tried by another less-active who didn't answer their buzzer. We stood there for a couple of mintues trying to recieve inspiration. A lady walks up to the door and asks us if we are here to see someone. We say yes and she lets us through. We chap the less-actives door. The wife (non-member) answers the door. We say "Hi wer..." interuppted she says "NO, not again, you always come around at this time." We say "we are looking..." interuppted again with "NO, this is my house and you're not coming in, go away!" and slams the door. We stand there wet and stunned by a harsh rejection. We heard the wife yell with anger "It's the mormons, they always come around this time. What did i say about them." We look at eachother with sadness in our eyes knowing that we probably were not going to reach 20 lessons when all of a sudden a man opens the door, it's the less active. He takes one look at us and we could see the sorry in his eyes for his wife's behavior. He says "you're wet...come on in" We say "are you sure?" he says "yes, come in"

We walk in the living room and meet the wife, again. She is stiff as a board and hardly looks at us. We officially introduce ourselves and end up having a great conversation. As soon as we started asking questions about their family and about how they met etc... the wife's appearance changed within seconds. As soon as her countenance changed i felt more comfortable. We were rude and came around dinner time (I guess the missionaries in the past always showed up around dinner and expected to be fed). We apologized and told them we wouldn't take much time, just that we wanted to get to know them.

Things were winding down and we managed to share a scripture, our testimonies and have a prayer! Basically we had a lesson! We left feeling so uplifted we thanked our Father in Heaven for hearing our cry. I knew Heavenly Father would keep his promise, but I didn't know how. I'm so grateful to be a missionary and be a witness of his tender mercies.

It was a great way to end the week. The church is true, God is real, and prayers work

Have a great week!

~Sister Garlock