Εβδομάδα 25: A fight for the Sisters

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Hey all!
Had exchanges with Sister Campbell again! Soon as 6 PM hit on Monday we were back to work! We grabbed the car to take the whiteboard to the beach for some finding with the other sisters and our Larnaca elders. It took us a while to actually start "whiteboard finding" since we kept finding people to talk to on the way there and had so many great convos, ALL IN GREEK!! Haven't had real convos in Greek in foreverrr! We ended up handing out 2 Greek BoMs! We eventually made it back to the whiteboard where the rest of the missionaries were. Found a guy from Fiji that was raised a member. He loved talking to all the missionaries and said he wanted to buy us all something, so we just got some juice and fresh fruit. We hope he comes to the music night we're having soon and back to church again!
Next day exchanges continued and Sister Campbell and I had a blast together! We did some service cleaning the park again and were literally dripping sweat after 5 minutes, 90% humidity is a killer! The Indian workers at the car wash across the street kept bringing us bottles of cold water and were being total flirts. But hey, it's free cold water we'll take what we can get! We met with a guy name Mbye, another African friend. Turns out he's Muslim but still accepted the BoM and said he'd read it. It was fun saying bye to him because of his name. We're just like, "Bye Mbye!!" Ya'll gotta try it, it's great haha.
It's a fight for the sisters over here! Both Nicosia and Larnaca are just flooding with investigators, it's amazing! So right now there aren't sisters in Nicosia and the elders there are constantly asking us to go up there because they desperately need us. On Sunday we drove up after sacrament meeting and had an incredible day!! The elders had us teach 3 of their Nigerian friends (Rosemary, Ernnest, and Dennis) who have come to church for the past 2 weeks. Sister Kruger and I introduced the Book of Mormon and taught the Restoration, and it was AMAZINGGG! It was once again a very Spirit filled lesson which are my FAVVV, and at the end they all wanted to get baptized!! August 24th is gonna be a partyyy if they all make their goal!! After all this excitement we went to visit Fatima, a less-active Filipino member. She lives in a home FULL of Filipino women (like at least 30) and when we walked in the flat they all excitedly welcomed us and invited us to eat with them since they all had the day off so on Sundays they party haha! I found a women who just got here from Cebu who speaks Bisaya! Now I'll get to tell James! We went in a quieter room with Fatima and got to know her. Turns out she served a mission in the Philippines, was a temple worker, and was raised in the church. But she's at a point in her life where she's desperate for a family and willing to give up all her standards for that. My heart just sunk, it was so so sad. Her boyfriend doesn't even speak the same language as her and they communicate through google translate. Never would that have EVER crossed my mind that people would date and not be able to communicate! She hasn't attended church because she knows she is unworthy to partake of the sacrament. But we made sure to remind her that she always had a family with the members and was always welcome. That conversation with her showed me even more so how important exercising our faith and enduring to the end truly is!
Oh yeah on the way to Fatima's I apparently didn't realize I was driving on the wrong side of the road until a car was coming straight for us! Little bit of a panic attack! But neither Sister Kruger or I saw that it was a one-way road! Sister Kruger got a good laugh at that and I'm just grateful that we both didn't die!
So we came to the conclusion we'd go to Nicosia once a week now to help the elders teach the women investigators and less active investigators there. BUT we also need sisters here because LARNACA IS BOOMING! It's a great thing to have so many investigators but it's also really hard because we have so many people to try to teach each week!
We met with Priya, from India, and she is now preparing for her baptism on October 19th! She has recognized the need for the gospel in her families' life and how she wants to raise her soon to be born baby in the church. Martin, another investigator from Cameroon, has also chosen to begin preparing for baptism and we have a date set for August 18th! Its truly amazing seeing how the gospel changes people! I love seeing our investigators progress and come closer to our Savior as well as have a deeper understanding of who they are and their purpose in this life.
On another note, pretty sure Sister Kruger and I met Satan in the form of a 50 year old Muslim named Sayde. If there was ever a time it was very hard to feel the Spirit it was in this meeting with this guy. All he did was just bash on our beliefs and the Book of Mormon and wouldn't let us get a word in. He clearly did not want to hear the message of happiness we wanted to share with him. We knew the lecture we were getting from him was going nowhere and we just decided that since he wasn't going to listen to anything new, we would just bare our testimonies. Because you can't argue with truth right?? We testified to him that we KNEW we were daughters of God and that gave us our identity. And that we KNEW that God loves all of His children and has a beautiful plan for each of us individually and it's ONLY through His plan that we will be with our families again. We basically bore out our hearts to him and he just totally 180-ed it on us and was so disrespectful. He was yelling at us in Arabic... which I don't even know whyyy because he knew we couldn't understand him... and just laughed at us and treated it like a total joke and told us we were not daughters of God and we will never see our mothers again. At this point he had hit all the limits and crossed all the lines. I was so over done talking to this guy so I pretended like I got a phone call and that we had a meeting to get to so we could get out of this conversation. I never want to meet someone like that again, it was like we were looking into Satan's eyes the whole time we were talking to him, don't know why we even gave him the time of day we did give him. So after that we found some more Africans to talk to since we can always count on them to be nice and they helped us to remember why we love missionary work!
Few note worthy highlights:
1. successfully fit a watermelon in my little bike basket without breaking it!
2. Back up over a bird...my bad :'(
Spiritual thought comes from 2 scriptures...
1. Acts 1:28 "Then Agrippa said unto Paul, almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian"
2. Joseph Smith History 1:25 "... For I had seen a vision; I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it, neither dared I do it"
I want you'll to think if you are "almost persuaded" like king Agrippa or are you all in like Joseph Smith and Paul? So what does it mean to be all in and how can we do it?
Being all in isn't a destination, at least in this life.
It's a constantly exercising faith that Heavenly Father is by our side and helping us. If we didn't have faith, then we would think we could do it all by ourselves, but we have to have faith IN CHRIST because we alone are not enough, and I can testify of that. We have to be doing our best everyday to repent and actively follow Jesus Christ. We need to keep progressing and having that desire to change!
So... are you ALL IN?!

LOVE YOU ALL!
Love,
Sister Gale

PICS!
1. Sis Kruger and I just caught a beautiful look out over the Nicosia as the sun was setting!
2. Partying it up at the Filipinos place!
3-5. Some more gorgeous shots of our visits in Nicosia
6-9. Exchanges!










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