August 9, 2010
LONGEST WEEK OF MY MISSION....... but wow what a big BANG for the finale of the week!!!
1st thanks to all the letters and love notes....so appreciated!! :D I love you! There were so many miracles that happened this week, even though it was so tough, and some really funny things and crazy wild things too....ok here is the gist:
Panaira bread YUM with members the VIETS LOVE THEM who by the way dad and family know your brother in TEXAS!!! they are so cool, they said that one day he's going to invite them down to have a BBQ and invite us over and visit!!! :) YEAH!!! they are great friends and I was so excited to see them and know they knew my JUDKINS FAMILY HERE IN TEXAS!! I also met Jessica PACK and Maureen PACK Meagan’s mother's sister and cousin!!! MEAGEN they are so cool and Jessica totally looks like you which is weird cause your not blood related, but I LOVE HER!!! and her boy is so cute too...they saw me sitting in the foyer and she kneeled down and whispered to her son "that's sister Judkins" I was like ugh.... then she said hey I'm Meagan’s cousin!!! I was so excited I probably knocked her down and scared her son. and then we talked it was a miracles cause that Sunday (yesterday started our very hard ) I was asked to give a talk which I'll tell you about after this story of the crazy CHINESE people and the motorcyclist! SO back at Pinara Bread, I invited Sarah, behind the counter to take a card and told her about us having prophets and apostles, then one of the guys went over the his friend put his arm around his and said...these girls are Mormon.....I was like oh crud....then Houston (the guy that said that) said "I just got baptized on Sunday!!!" I was thinking "yeah right" ...no but really he did, the AP's had taught him and he was awesome!!!! so cool! so we chatted and got our lemonades and ate.
Ok so after a little chatting with the Veit family I saw a bunch of people outside the window of Panaira Bread and I was like "what's going on?" so then you know me I've always got to be where the action is...I told them to come with me and see what’s going on and we walked outside and saw a motorcycle smashed and crumbled and a really crappy truck pulled over with these 2 Chinese people freak'n out over a popped tire. Then I start going up to EVERYONE asking "what’s going on" so the story was they heard this big rev like a motorcycle trying to speed off the freeway and in front of the truck and then the BANG!!! He apparently got his front tire of his bike caught in the truck's back left tire and flipped the bike a few times and the guy flipped over the car and then landing in the ditch, then jumped up and jumped into a car and drove off!!! Weird, then I saw him coming back out. His arms were all bloodied up and his side and legs and OH MAN IT WAS AWESOME! But I was thinking man 1. Why isn't he even in pain and why is his pupils the size of quarters and eyes blood shot and can't sit still.... and then I looked at the Chinese people and they weren't even worried or wondering if he was ok or anything they were just yelling about how he was so stupid and smashed into his car and popped his tire!!! Ha ha!!! So funny in their broken accent!!! Their expressions are priceless. So funny I stayed out there for a while and then the ambulance came and cut all of his clothes off!! Ha ha!!! Poor guy, here he is all bloodied up, Chinese people yelling at him 100+ people staring at him and he's lying on the grass helpless while these ambulance people are cutting his clothes off....poor guy. So we left and that was what we thought was the end of that...
That night we went and played monopoly with our favorite neighbors Nichole and Steve the Baptists who are moving to Salt Lake COOLEST FAMILY EVER!! Like my extended Baptist family/....and then sis Mullins answered the phone and was like "ugh, what? Oh, here’s sister Judkins." I was thinking who this....maybe an investigator is!? WELLL!.....I was wrong...it was the guy at Panaira Bread not the one that got baptized but the one he put his arm around and said "these girls are Mormon." he said hey this is ----- what are you doing tomorrow?" I was thinking oh no...Here we are playing a game of monopoly with our Nichol and her boys and I'm being asked out on the phone. Ha ha!!! I had to laugh in my mind. But it was so funny....I said "well ----- we are preaching the gospel to those who would like to hear about Jesus Christ" he said. "Oh yeah...so what are you doing tomorrow" ha ha!! Poor kid, I don't think he was all the way there, I'm pretty sure he had a few drinks...."As missionaries" I started "we teach people about Jesus Christ, do you want to learn about his gospel?" he said..."ugh....ugh....well Houston’s teaching me"....: I said "ok well if you want we can all schedule a time to have a lesson..." oh man. I didn't expect that to happen on my MISSION!!! Ha ha!! So funny....but who knows, maybe he is really interested in the gospel or will be at some point.
Members of the church just kept popping up that day!! OK those were the funny and exciting moments of the week!!!
Now to the miracles: this past Sunday I was asked to give a talk on converts and their testimonies. Well the entire week my mind was in a stupor of thought, I just couldn't get the right words out or anything. So I was getting anxious, Sis Mullins had hers done days before, so I felt un prepared. But I knew there was something very specific I needed to say and so I studied. On our way to our Sunday meetings I had prepared a hodgepodge of things, and then it clicked, the song came on in the car " I heard him come" there it is, this is what I was suppose to talk on.
I started scribbling down the words to the song, then remembered a story that stuck so strong in my heart in Luke 15 about the prodigal son (which I would challenge all of you to read and ask for personal inspiration for the Lord to you specifically!) and I thought of what Tyler Minetto said in his final Letter home about D&C 18:15.... Ok....I started writing and praying in my heart for my slowness of speech not to distract from the message Our heavenly father wanted his children to hear.
So I stood up and started to speak. I expressed my gratitude to the youth speakers and their testimonies and how finding people are very much like tackling them down. Then I began to tell them how I had been in a stupor of thought when asked to give my talk on converts and their testimonies and I expressed to them that 2 hours ago I had changed my entire talk and had felt prompted to do so. My heart grew warm as I said those words. I expressed that I was going to speak on: "How we can be Truly Converted" because at one time or another in our lives we are all converts, weather we are born in the church and have to find our own testimony, or have found the church, or we at some point knew the church were baptized and have fallen away for a time. we all have the choice of when our true conversion will take place. The spirit burned hotter as I said these words. And read the parable of the Prodigal Son. How he wanted to find "happiness," in other ways the same way his father did. We know the story; he wasted his money and was feeding swine when he realized that his father's servants eat better and so he decided that he would ask his father if he could be his hired help saying: Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee. And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants." Luke: 15:17-18...what sorrowful words to speak and for a father to listen to....so the son wondered back home ready to beg his father for mercy...."But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and RAN, and fell on his neck, and kissed him." the son tried to say he was not worthy for his love, but the father said to his servants bring forth the BEST ROBE, and put it on him and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet and bring hither the fatted calf and kill it and let us eat and be merry for this my son was dead and is alive again and he was lost and is found."
My eyes began to water as I expressed how many of us hang our heads down feeling unworthy to talk and be with our heavenly father...but the point here is that he took courage and humbled CAME back to his father to beg for mercy, but before he even said anything before he even reached him.... the father "RAN" to him and fell on his neck and kissed him. how many of us forget that the father will succor his people. the root word for succor is "to run to" in
"And he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, and according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor (Run to) his people according to their infirmities."
I then finished with the 2nd son how he was sad, and stayed out of the party,” therefore came his father OUT, and entreated him" expressing his love and gratitude and telling him that "son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine." And finishes with. “It was necessary that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again: and was lost and is found."
I then read the words to I heard him come. I saw his very face, I wondered who would come into this place....where dead man walk and were the dying talk of life before the curse upon them came......
He looked on me....he must have felt my gaze, he came towards me, through the crowded maze and I a leaper, with shame hung my head, till someone said. JESUS is his name....
"are we not all beggars?" Do we not all hang our heads, and will not the father still come to us through the crowded maze...but first we must gaze, we must be humbled and come unto him and when he sees us come unto him he will RUN to us and fall on our necks and kiss us!
The scripture that comes to mind is "I cannot forget thee, for I have engraven thee upon the palms of my hands"
I expressed my love of knowing this and then ended with what a deer missionary and old friend said about D&C 18:15 "and if it so be that you should labor all your days and bring but one soul unto me how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my father!" how humbled I was when I heard how he finally understood what that scripture truly meant at least to him, because for 21 years I thought that one soul might just be on my mission, someone I saved by teaching them the gospel. But no! In fact it's exactly the opposite. He expressed how he felt that his 1st convert was HIM. I with a heavy heart and trying to hold back hot tears welling up in my eyes from falling expressed how deeply I know that this is as true for him and it is for me. That if I am not truly converted to my savior and have the burning testimony of his atonement and the love and mercy my father in heaven has for anyone that turns unto him, HOW CAN I HELP ANYTHING!? Let alone anyone. I know the gospel is true and that the word of god is not just in the bible and book of Mormon but will continue coming forward throughout all time and we will come to know and the words which will come from the ground will testify of the ONE and only Savior of the World and of the one that sent him; our Father in Heaven and the one true GOD. Brothers and sisters, I will end with this "Behold, you have my gospel before you, and my rock and my salvation. ask the father in my name in faith believing that you shall receive, and you shall have the holy ghost, which manifested all things which are expedient unto the children of men." for behold how great shall be your joy if you bring but ONE SOUL ( pointed to myself at this time) unto me". In the name of Jesus Christ Amen.
I received words from several people of the gift that I have with speaking and how they really needed to hear that....how incredibly humbled I was to know, not one of those words were mine. Not one, I will take no credit. But I will rejoice in my God, who runs to his children. One child specifically needed to here what the Lord had me say. And she gave me a letter expressing how she knew that my talk was changed specifically for her. and that some issues she's been struggling with were answered with words and scriptures she's heard thousands of time, but now look at them a different way... she expressed her love and gratitude to me for listening to the spirit. WOW! I am so blessed that the Lord entrusted such an important task to me. How humbled I am. I feel happy.
I love you all, so much, my heart is full, and my joy is overwhelming. Thank you for your support! Thank you for staying strong in the gospel! You’re such examples to me!
-Love you all from here to Home
_Sister Judkins
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