Dear All,
We had a Fireside yesterday I may or may not have told you about. I had some singing parts and was the Narrator. Quite an awesome program and along with it there is a cool story.
We were told by a ward mission leader about a man who was extremely less active and was afraid to go back to church. The mission leader wanted us to go by and say he sent us. We went by, his wife answered the door and told us he was around back in the shop. We went around knocked and he yelled "come in" we walked in "Can i help you guys?" he asked. (I'm absolutely confident that what happened here was not me) We opened our mouth and the Spirit put words in it. We were willing to say and do whatever was necessary to have this brother feel the Spirit, though a twinge of fear was initially in our minds I pushed it out immediately.
"We were asked by Brother Jenkins to stop by. We Have a special message for YOU about repentance" It was silent for a few seconds.
"Right now is not a good time guys" he was with a couple of friends drinking and smoking. I looked to the floor looked back at him and said, "Remember that our Heavenly Fathers love is never too far away from anyone."
"We're fine," he said, "thanks though.... I'll probably see you again, but we're fine."
The Spirit whispered many things so even though he was expressionless I could sense a smile and a spark of hope. I could tell the natural man in him was pushing off the desire to speak to us more. We left and went to the car but the Spirit was not done speaking to us.
"Elder we forgot something"
"What?"
"we didn't invite him to the Fireside, lets go back" so we started back. (I failed to notice that Elder Clay was a somewhat scared the entire time, I'm sure he may have felt we were going to walk in and not walk back out of that shop.) We walked right in, and said "Weforgot to invite you to this Christmas program."
"I told you I'd see you guys again" he said and asked for my name. We introduced ourselves and he was friendly.
What added more to our surprise was later, when we were talking to our ward mission leader about it and he asked, "When did you go over? was it on the 5th?" We confirmed that it was and he showed us a text from [the man] that said "Thanks" what added to our Joy was the fact the brother was at the fireside! His being there fueled my desire to put my heart and soul into the parts that I had.
He was friendly and we talked with him after wards (I didn't want him to leave without seeing how he felt about it) and he enjoyed it a lot. We plan to stop by and invite him to Jameston ward Christmas party.
I feel we have accomplished much even though we are not expecting any baptism dates. We look forward to bringing people closer to Jesus Christ, and hope they never look back on their past.
Elder Hedgecock
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