This week. Hm. Well I'd say the most difficult part of a mission is trying to figure out how to put what happened during the week into an email, but I'd be lying. So I'll just play it safe and say that's hands down the most difficult part of P-Day!
We just had some great things happen this week!
We go to this place called Crossroads for service every week. It's essentially an old English army barracks that would be the coolest place to go paint-balling in the whole world, that has been turned into a place where people bring all their second hand things and we check them, clean them, box them up and send them to people that need them. A bunch of schools come and they teach them what it's like to be a refugee, but we don't help with that kind of stuff, we're in the warehouses boxing stuff up and such.
So anyways. There are all these people from all over the world who are refugees that come to HK, but have to wait 7 years before they can work. Seven years is a long time, so lots of these people come to Crossroads and work as volunteers so they have something to do during the time they're waiting to be able to get a job. We go every week and it's sweet to get to meet these people from literally ALL over the world!
We've been working with this lady name Hope from Uganda (shout out to Grandma and Grandpa Robinson!) She's AWESOME. We are not allowed to openly preach the gospel at Crossroads, but everybody knows who we are and that we're missionaries. We've been getting lots random questions from people though and it's been fun to watch the curiosity grow about this "weird" group of 20ish year old "kids" that are in HK to talk about Jesus Christ.But back to Hope. We walked in and it's just us Sisters and her in this warehouse folding and boxing clothes and she looks at us and says, "Hey, you've been coming around here for a long time! Why haven't you told me about what you believe yet?!" We were taken back a little, but were able to have a great conversation with her about the gospel. She's VERY interested. She's Christian and has many of the same beliefs that we do. She's dying to read the Book of Mormon and to start meeting with the International Elders. The other Sisters also sat by a guy at lunch who had seen missionaries in Africa and wants to start meeting with missionaries and come to church.
Before I was a little wary about going to Crossroads because at first I thought it was kind of a waste of time. Don't get me wrong, it always feels great to serve no matter what, but the fact it takes out half a day once and week and that we weren't allowed to openly preach the gospel initially made me feel like it maybe wasn't the best use of our time.
Boy was I wrong.
It brought a whole new meaning to President Uchtdorf's quote: "Preach the gospel at all times and if necessary, use words."
Just going about doing good and serving didn't initially bring huge, obvious missionary opportunities, but through consistency of example and striving to bless and be a disciple of Christ, the opportunities come and THEN you open your mouth and the Lord lets you know what words need to be shared.
So that was real cool.
Some other great news: one of our investigators we've been meeting with for a few months has progressed at TON these last few weeks and accepted a baptismal date! His name is Paul. I told you about him earlier, but in case you forgot, we met his mom a few transfers ago and she started coming to English class. We tried to teach her but she had absolutely no interest, but kept coming to English class. We were visiting a less active who lives in the same chyun as her a few months ago and she invited us up to her home. That's when we met Paul! He initially had quite a bit of interest and started meeting with us, and bam, now he's progressing and got a date and doing great! It's amazing how He makes it all work.
I was looking through some old emails and found one from a friend who sent me his last email home as a missionary. One line hit me pretty hard. He said, "When we truly love the gospel, it won't be hard to live it." I've thought a lot about that this week, as it has a lot to do with lots of the people we're teaching right now. I'd like to add that that and say, when we truly love the gospel, it won't be hard to share it - because the best way to share it is to live it!
Love you all! Have a fabulous week and keep preaching His gospel!
Love ya!
Sister Robinson
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