Grace

Last Monday, I felt so lost. Today feels very different. I can't say that I really understand what it was that we did differently, other than that I have started to rely a bit more on Sister Marks to help with making and executing plans. Last week was a week of tender mercies and miracles. Everything just came together so well, and I know that it came together because Heavenly Father wanted it to. 

We wanted to make sure that Terry knew that we loved HIM, not his numbers, so on Wednesday we brought Claudia to his apartment for a lesson that was preceded by our cleaning up his apartment a little bit and just talking with him. Then we used Claudia to help him realize what a blessing the gift of the Holy Ghost would be in his life. We were also able to learn that the real reason why he did not come to church on Sunday 5 August.

 At the end of the lesson, Claudia committed Terry to come to church on Sunday. She was more than a little manipulative ("So, Terry, are you going to come to church on Sunday and be confirmed, or are you going to break our hearts?"), but her style of manipulation is utterly without guile. Terry laughed and said that he would be there. We brought Claudia to his apartment again on Friday afternoon and read 3 Nephi 17:5-9 with him, which was the perfect length of a story. We used the Daughter of Jairus picture from the Gospel of Jesus Christ pamphlet to segue into some inspired questions that helped Terry relate the story to his own life. It was great. There was a perfect balance of member testimony, Book of Mormon testimony, and picture testimony, all adapted to Terry's individual needs.