"Hi Sister Sumsion" - Elder Nelson

HI!!

So this week was Stake Conference and we had an apostle come, Elder Nelson. It was a great experience and we had three investigators come who got to see the apostle speak. After the meeting everyone went up to shake his hand. When I went up to talk to him, he gave my nametag a weird look and asked what it was. I told him it was in Mongolian. He told me that country is a great place (we went there last year to dedicate their first stake). It was so cool!

Anyway, you know that family we were teaching and how they wouldn't get married. President told us to drop them at interviews if they still wouldn't get married. Well, that night after interviews, we went over to their house with the resolve to do as he asked. But Satan sure puts up a good fight. First, they had bought pizza for us and then they got each of us a necklace, that says "Jesus is Love". Satan was not going to make this easy for us. We've come to love them and see how they've gained a testimony of the church. So we sat there eating pizza, and shoving our face with food because we were stressed out. They had gotten all these things for us and we were going to have to say we couldn't come over anymore. After they were done eating we pulled out a calender for the month of January and laid it on the table. We then told them to pick a date for baptism and for marriage. Ron said that he wouldn't do it so we started to resolve concerns one more time. We made it very clear to him that sex outside of marriage was a sin. We told him that God had answered his prayers to get married. He told us that he knows that. We told him that the best way to break free from his past bad experiences was to marry the woman who had been with him for four years and who loved him. He told us that over the past few days, he had been praying for help and he has realized that, that wall (fear and pain from experiences) was gone. He told us that the thing holding him back is that he wanted to do it his way by fufilling his dream (perfect wedding, proposal, etc). Then one of my favorite scriptures came to mind (Mosiah 2:20-23) which lists a portion of what God does for and has done for us and that all he asks from us is to keep his commandments and then he promises to give us more. So I poured my heart and soul out to him and told him that God has given him EVERYTHING and that He even sent his perfect son to die for his sins! This was the first time that I truly spake from the heart and bore my sincere testimony in a lesson. I said, with tears in my eyes (of course-I always cry), that all God asks from us is to keep his commandments and that can't even scratch the surface of what he has done for us. I pleaded with him to try, try to pick a date. When I spoke to him, I could feel the overwhelming love that Heavenly Father had for him and I hadn't really experienced it in this way before. So I laid my heart out on the table and told him to pick a date. The Spirit was so strong! We probably waited a good minute while he looked at the calender and he was soooo close, so close to picking a date. I could see the fight going on in his head. But then he decided to slap his Savior in the face and told us that he couldn't do it. He didn't want to give up his dream. I felt like my heart broke. I haven't had that feeling very many times. He loved his Savior and he knew that this was the true church and he really wanted to get baptized and to be with his family forever. But he was giving all that up for a dream to have a perfect wedding on his timetable.
So then Sis. Ellison told him and his girlfriend that we couldn't meet with them (I was just trying to keep it together with bursting into tears). We would stop by every so often but we couldn't come over every night to teach them. It was probably the hardest thing i have ever done or experienced. I didn't feel sorrow for myself and how I was missing out on two baptisms (which would have been my first) but how they were missing out on the blessings and how they were disappointing God. As we left, I could barely hold it together and when we got back to the car, I broke into tears. While we were driving back to our next appointment, Sis. Ellison just comforted me in the backseat. I know that I sound pathetic but they were so close! If they had been married they would have been baptized by now, that's how close they were.
The thing I learned from that experience was that I realized what potential I have as a missionary to teach and to love.
Satan is not making my mission easy for me. But I know that the blessings will come for enduring it well. My mission has been one trial of my faith after another and it will just get harder. But I can see how God is putting me through the refiner's fire and turning me into my greatest potential, into a diamond.

Love you all! The church is true so keep the faith because that is all the God asks of you!

Love, Sister Sumsion