Week 101 - Miami, Oklahoma

 Hey all!

This week we found a new friend who's going to join the Church! We were out visiting people in our records who used to be taught because I couldn't walk around knocking doors all day on my ankle (it's a lot better now thanks to prayers and an ankle brace) and we decided to knock the three closest doors to one of them who didn't answer when Rhonda came to the door. She said she used to go to a ward in Minnesota and would love to try church again here. We were able to introduce her to a member just four hours later and they hit it off right off the bat, with that member offering a ride and inviting her to do family history after church the next day. Rhonda said she planned to be baptized in Minnesota but wasn't able to because her husband didn't want her to, but now they're not together anymore. Our member told her she might need to be a member to make a full familysearch account but she said, "No worries, I'm planning on joining anyway." You love to hear it 

This was a huge tender mercy for Elder Eilander and I because we'd just lost one of our closest, and coolest friends the night before. We'd been meeting with him for months and his work schedule was finally cooling down enough that he was able to come to church, plus he had gotten an answer about the Book of Mormon and decided that if he was going to make a covenant with God and join the Church, he wanted to be prepared to keep it for his whole life. We decided to go over the questions we interview our friends with when they decide to be baptized and confirmed, and unfortunately one of them triggered some bad PTSD from his law enforcement career and he ended up giving us his Book of Mormon back and asking us to leave. We were pretty torn up about it, especially since I'd been meeting with him for months, but being able to meet Ronda showed us yet again that the Lord will always compensate us for the unfairness of life when we are faithful to Him.

We had tons of other cool stuff happen this week like a church tour with a mom and her son miraculously working out way better than we could have planned it (and we totally forgot to plan it whatsoever whoops, God just made it happen) and an awesome exchange where I got to serve with my good friend Elder Hammer in Pittsburg, Kansas for the day, but I'm kinda wiped out. Three weeks to the finish!

Love, Elder Rigby 

Week 99: Victory Lap - Miami, Oklahoma

 "I'm T16, going on 17"

Hey all!

Greetings from my seventeenth transfer in the mission field! I was sooooooo close to not writing an email today, but I can't stop now when I'm this close to the end. The work has been going so well here in Miami lately, and Elder Eilander and I are best buds already, so this week has been an absolute blast. We have multiple families we're working with who are progressing on the path of discipleship amazingly and have seen miracle after miracle while working with them.

Whenever you're able, I'd appreciate it if you could please pray for:

- Cindy, Ray, and Tim

- Brent and his wife (haven't met her yet but she's having surgery tomorrow so she needs extra prayers )

- Nestor and Yoly

- Jason

- Robert

Here are some miracles from among the folks we've been teaching:

1) A lady we met at a farmer's market told us her adult son had just begun his journey with God and asked us to help teach and baptize him! He, his mother, and his stepfather all came to church last Sunday and absolutely loved it. They're familiar with the church and happened to be longtime family friends with a sister in the congregation we felt inspired to bring out with us to their first lesson! We'd never had her on a single lesson in the past, but the Lord told us to give her a call and that we did. Didn't take long for us to figure out why when we got to the lesson 

2) We were stuck in the rain with nothing to do after all our plans fell through, so we prayed to the Lord for guidance and He impressed us with this thought: "What would you do right now if it weren't raining?" I HATE getting wet in the rain, so in that kind of weather we almost always go visit friends who we're teaching or who have been taught before. In the sun, though, we knock them doors like there's no tomorrow. So, knock doors we did. Elder Eilander picked a street that felt good to him, and despite it having been one I'd knocked twice before in a massive area with plenty of neighbors to find people in, we decided to go there again. After some time knocking in the rain, we met a friend whose coworker is a member of the Church and has told him a little about the Gospel! 

 This is a big deal! Because an ordinary member of the Church decided to share his faith in Christ with a friend, that friend was prepared to receive us. You can give that same help to the missionaries in your home area by loving, sharing, and inviting others to come unto Christ. 

This is what the Savior has to say on the subject in 3 Nephi 18 of the Book of Mormon:

...For unto such shall ye continue to minister; for ye know not but what they will return and repent, and come unto me with full purpose of heart, and I shall heal them; and ye shall be the means of bringing salvation unto them.

3) Felt prompted to talk to a guy in Walmart while we were shopping and we've since taught him three lessons! He came to a study class last night and the members decided to switch the plan up and spend the whole time telling him their individual conversion stories of being led to the Lord's fold.

4) The bishop of our congregation just reached out to us about a member family with a young son who the family would like to have the missionaries teach! Luckily enough, we're the missionaries haha. 

5) My dear friend Michelle from Fort Smith, the first friend I was ever able to personally baptize, just reached out to me tonight after I hadn't heard any news from or about her in months! She's doing great :)

~

Alma 28:14 (BofM):

And thus we see the great call of diligence of men to labor in the vineyards of the Lord; and thus we see the great reason of sorrow, and also of rejoicing—sorrow because of death and destruction among men, and joy because of the light of Christ unto life.

Jesus is real and His Church is alive! He loves you so much—really and truly.

Love,

Elder Rigby

p.s. Don't try to get a cactus cutting bare-handed