Miracles from loving, serving, and teaching

For the past two weeks or so, we have been helping Nicole T clean and organize her trailer, in preparation for having her home blessed by a Melchizidek priesthood holder. What's cool is that she has donated to the ward five bags of good, barely worn clothing that can be sold at the Young Men's Yard Sale.

She also gave us a bag of baby food that she did not need.

 

 

She wanted it to be sold at the yard sale, but people don't really buy baby food at yard sales, so we thought about who we know that could use rice cereal and jarred baby food. We thought of Nicki and Matthew. We asked Nicole if she would like to go with us to deliver the baby food and teach a short lesson to Nicki, and she said she would love to.

Nicole does not have the strongest testimony in the world, but she contributed to the lesson. Nicki shared that she was going to accompany her friend to the doctor's office that day, and Nicole asked for the name of her friend.

"Jessica," answered Nicki.

It turns out that Nicki's friend is the ex-girlfriend and "baby-momma" of Nicole's husband.

That was ironic. But Nicole assured us, "She cool. We cool."

Everybody knows everybody here in Natchitoches!

On the way back, Nicole asked us if we could stop off at her mother's house. We asked Nicole if she thought that her mother would be interested in hearing about the gospel of Jesus Christ, and Nicole said that her mom was open to it.

So we got to meet Nicole's non-member mother, teach her the Restoration, give her a copy of the Book of Mormon, invite her to read it, and get a return appointment for two days later. What's cool is that this all started because we loved, served, and taught Nicole. Then she decided that she wanted to share that experience with her mother.

We also got to meet some of Sister Johnson's Brazilian friends this last week. We spent three and a half hours on Wednesday helping Sister Johnson make about 150 Brazilian h'orderves (called coxinhas, or "little chicken thighs") for her friend Denise's wedding.

 

 

She was pretty overwhelmed with the herculean task of cooking chicken, shredding it, making dough, shaping the chicken thighs out of the shredded chicken and dough, breading the cones, frying the cones, and then putting them in party paper, all while taking care of their three year-old daughter. Sister Hartshorn and I took turns helping Sister Johnson in the kitchen while the other one entertained Lisa in the living room. (All four people were visible to each other.)

 

On Thursday evening, we attended the wedding, and we were asked to help the bridesmaids fix some of their wardrobe malfunctions with our amazing sewing skills (I threaded a needle and then sewed on a button).

 

We are hoping that Sister Johnson will arrange for some additional meetings with these friends in the future. 

It was pretty cool to get an almost immersion-like experience in Brazilian culture.  I never learned how to make coxinha when I was living in Tucson!  It's pretty cool that I got a chance to learn about such a traditional Brazilian food while living in northern Louisiana.