small but mighty

Orrajt!

That's how you say "hi" in Maltese and it's pronounced like the word

"alright". Y'all now know as much Maltese as I do😭🙌🏼🙌🏼

"P daayyy near the sea"

Anyways this week was pretty good. UNBELIEVABLY HOT AND HUMID (please

send me some ice or something cause I'm dyin) but really good,

actually. Recently in our finding we haven't been seeing a ton of

success, but we've done our best and God has blessed us in other ways

for that. We received three different referrals this week! And we both

know that's only because we've been working hard at doing our best.

For us it's kind of cool just to see how even when our finding hasn't

been the greatest, God is able to move his work forward anyways. He

just needs willing hands and changeable hearts.

So let me tell you about the referrals!

The first is Keith and we had the funniest phone call with him haha.

We'd called him twice before with no luck and couldn't find his

address, but this time he answered.

Keith: Hello?

Us: Hi Keith! We're missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of

Latter Day Saints. Some of our friends sent us your contact

information saying you'd like to know more about our message and we'd

like to meet with you. Is now a bad time to talk?

Keith: Well I'm on a glacier walk in Greenland right now...so...

(sounds of shoes on what sounds like snow and ice"

Us: Ah. Okay. We'll call you back later then.

Ahahahaha it was a lot funnier in the moment. We're looking forward to

meeting him when he comes back from his vacationing though.

"Why hello beautiful"

The next referral was Solomon who, unfortunately, hasn't been able to

meet with us and only answered his phone once before the number

stopped working. Not much to say there. The last referral though was

def one to remember. We got a call from a woman named Veronica saying

she'd like a Book of Mormon so we went on Friday to meet her and her

husband Daren at their house. Getting past the formalities, we got

down to the serious stuff and asked why they wanted a Book of Mormon.

They mention it's because they've been studying a lot of different

religions lately and they want to know the truth. We hypothetically

ask if God told them this book was true if they'd change their lives

and be baptized...and they said yes! We thought that was a really good

indicator of a sincere heart and real intent. Buuutttt as we went

through the lesson it felt a lot less like she was there to learn and

more to just slam on our beliefs. And despite our best attempts at

explaining doctrine clearly, at the end she told us that she knows the

only book we need is the Bible and that she thinks we've been deceived

by the devil. Greaaattt. But they're open to meeting again so we're

hoping and praying that God softens their hearts (but really just

hers...the husband was honestly v cool) and that they'll be more

prepared to accept our testimonies.

It did lead to an interesting discussion though between me and my comp

about how true our church is. She argued pretty fiercely and tried so

hard to prove all of what we were saying wrong through biblical

passages, but in the end, we came out of it even stronger in our

testimonies of Christ's restored church. How could this not be true?

Also...we've got an investigator on baptismal date now!!! Her name is

Haley, and she's the coolest 14 year old you'll ever meet. Her sister

Aicha (pronounced eye-shaa) was baptized a month or two ago, and since

then her little sister has been wanting to be baptized herself. And

she's made so many changes to her life too! She use to have a piercing

on her face, but she removed that and for her, that was like saying

"hey missionaries why don't you baptized me already huh? I'm ready!"

but we were a little slow on that one haha. We officially extended a

baptismal invitation though this week and she gladly accepted for the

14th of October. We're excited for her!

Other noteworthy things from the week:

- we are lunch with an older single sister in the branch who's going

back to England this week. She's been here for two years and is going

to miss it soooo much but it was nice to sit down and eat and talk

with sister Shaw.

- we had DDM and we have the sickest senior couple (the Thompson's) in

the whole dang world down here and they're from Australia! We have DDM

in their house and she always makes SO MUCH GOOD GOOD for lunch right

afterwards and imma just say that 6 months to sexy just got a lot

harder lol.

- had an activity this week with the ysa and the youth in the branch

where we wrote cards to all the families or individuals in the branch

and then played a game where you stick a contraption in your mouth

that prevents you from closing your lips and then you've got to read

cards to your teammates until they correctly guess what it is you're

trying to say and I don't have pictures of it but there's a screenshot

from a video my comp took lol. Enjoy✌🏼

"Oh hello ugly (pic from the activity night as promised)"

- had a munch and mingle after church in mosta (gimme two seconds and

I'll explain what that means) and got to eat lots of food and talk

with all the cool members and I'm loving it

- had my first Maltese lesson and wanted to pass out cause this

language is so difficult🙂

- we helped a woman come to church who hasn't been to church in

something like 5 months and it was a v positive experience for her AND

for us:)

Annddd now for church. So! There's just one branch in all of Malta,

but there's two meetinghouses. One is down south in fgura (pronounced

fff-gu-rah...that's where I'm at) and it's for the members who live

down there. There's not enough though that come though to be it's own

branch (we had two members in church yesterday...not including

missionaries, the branch president, and an investigator...yeah it's

pretty small). Church down in the south goes from 9 to 10:30 and then

we travel from there up to Mosta where the other meetinghouse is for

Sunday school and an additional sacrament meeting with everyone else.

Okayyy now that that's out of the way...

So in church yesterday we had the relief society president come down

from the north to speak to us and she gave a talk about being small

but mighty. She related experiences from her life about being in small

branches (she's from England but lived in wales for most of her life)

and how oftentimes it's easy for us to look around and question how

this will ever grow. And it's difficult. It's hard to stay strong in

tiny branches. But the lord works miracles when the members of his

church remain faithful. It's also easy to sometimes think "I'm just

one person. What can I do?" But she reminded us that although in our

own eyes we may be small, in the eyes of the Lord, we are mighty. And

that's all thanks to him. I thought it was a really inspiring talk and

thought I'd share just a bit of that with you.

Annddd that's it for today folks. And thank you all for the birthday

wishes! It meant a lot to me on the big day, so thank you!

Have a great week homies

May the glory be to God

"The main street in Valletta, the capital of Malta. Pretttyyyy"

Anziano Hansen