A few weeks ago Kevin was set apart as the ward mission leader. As we were leaving the bishop's office the 1st counselor said, "Oh, and we would like your family to talk in sacrament meeting on the 15th about missionary work." I just gave a talk in June so this opportunity didn't sound even fun to me. Like I said, I've been in a bit of a spiritual slump lately. I'm thinking this is the exact reason these opportunities keep coming. Heavenly Father certainly must have a sense of humor. We all talked and made it through and got a lot of compliments. I hope that they did feel the Spirit. I did. I had Kevin help Heston with his talk. He just told what a missionary should look like and had Heston point to his short hair, his white shirt and his tie and at the end he said "I want to be a missionary some day." I wrote a talk for Stetson about things he can do to prepare to be a missionary like reading scriptures, praying, inviting friends to church and learning to work hard, etc." Austin read a couple stories, one was about 3 boys on a basketball team who were an example to their coach and he got baptized because of their example. The other story was I'll find you my friend. Austin even felt the spirit today and started the tears. So when I was next in line my whole talk was through tears. It is rather embarrassing, but I think I got my point across. I talked about the ways we can be member missionaries without a full time call to serve. I was able to tell about one of my dad's baptism's in Germany, Rick Bradford. He was baptized by my dad after having received dozens of missionary lessons. He and my dad clicked. After he came back to the US he made bad choices and fell away from the church. His children were not active in church as a result of his falling away, even though Shirly, his wife, was active. His bad decisions led to an early death, but recently his ex-wife had an experience where she was told by someone that Rick was ready for his temple work to be done and that their son Brett should get it ready. Brett went to the bishop to get access to Family Search online. Not long ago Brett called my dad and said he was getting ready to go to the temple in July and asked my dad to go with him.
I also told about my parents going to Arizona and meeting Heidi Shaw in a clothing store. She offered them coffee and cookies and when they said they were LDS and didn't drink coffee my dad felt he should bear his testimony of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. He asked if she'd like to know more and she did. She had moved from Omaha to Arizona as she felt she should but didn't know why. She took missionary discussions and my dad went back to AZ and baptized her and mom talked at her baptism.
Kevin also gave a good talk about Samuel Smith being the first missionary and how the missionary force has grown since then. He also read the story called The Measure of a Man which was about a guy flying from Florida to Utah and how he saw one missionary who was heading to MTC all polished and in new clothes. Then he saw across the isle a tired missionary who had worked hard and had a suit that had a few holes that had been hand stitched, his shoes were worn out from the miles of walking and his hands had scrapes and scars from knocking doors and how that missionary's service and countenance resembled that of our Savior.
Now, you are wondering what I mean in the title...a sand storm. Let me explain. Thursday night we went to Annabella to the city council Christmas party honoring Kevin's dad as the outgoing mayor after 12 years. He had asked Austin to play a couple songs on his guitar. For some reason that night Austin was really nervous. I think because Kevin had asked him to say a few words about how Grandpa had supported him with him learning guitar, but he was unable to because he was so emotional. He was almost in tears through the 2 songs and did cry when he finished. On our way home that night he said, "I wasn't crying, I had sand in my eyes." So today when I was talking he leaned over to Kevin and said, "Mom has sand in her eyes." Kevin during his talk told about this sand storm and how we all have lots of sand in our eyes. It was kind of funny.
So, on a good note, we made it through the talks and hopefully I'm good to go for quite a while. I always do learn something when I speak, which is the reason and I love the Spirit I felt today which is just what I needed.
Glad the talks went well.
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