Stories from members that caused me to grow!

Story #1

I had a very interesting Sunday. NO pictures just lessons I learned.
I was working with  the Relief Society President in one branch. Helping her to understand the schedule and reasons for the lessons taught. What materials to use etc. I then began trying to get across to her how important it was that she and the teachers spend less time just talking about the title of the lesson or Defining relief society. (It takes the entire class period some days and they never move on in the lesson.)
This has been a real problem ...to me.... and I thought I was going to help her because we never get to the lesson.
I also told her the other items to use for curriculum instead of Daughters of our kingdom every week.
Well she said to me 'Sister Wollenzien (we were having this very intimate little conversation as she is pretty shy. )She said sister I had this very spiritual experience about this... You see many of the sisters here that are investigating the church are afraid of the word SOCIETY. When they found out this was the name of the women's organization they would leave the church or quit investigating. They would take many people with them. They believed the LDS church was a cult. (There are several groups called 'Society' in the area. They are very awful and do horrible things to the people of which I wont mention. It includes stealing children.) She said one lady in the branch who was a member a long time was told by these women that because she was in a cult(R S) she was going to die. Well the lady was older and she did get sick and died. This really shook the women up. So she was wondering what she could say to the women in her RS about this. She said 'God then told me in my heart just that I should give a talk.. I directed to look at the manual ''Daughters of our Kingdom' and she said 'God told me that I needed to give them a talk on this very  lesson.'  She then turned to the lesson in the book and showed me exactly what lesson it was. It was called Worldwide Circle of Sisterhood.
She said 'I did that I gave a talk on this and many of the sisters were there'.  She Said 'so after the lady's funeral many people came back to Relief Society and were not afraid of the church anymore.
Boy was I dumbfounded.

I knew of these groups in MOZ and other African countries but didn't know how they existed or if they existed here.  Can you imagine this dilemma in your community of sisters?

 She had received this very spiritual experience that was just for her and her sisters and he used the perfect book to guide her.  And I was just about to crumble that. What if I had handled it differently. This is the second time she has impressed me with her closeness to the spirit. Me a dumb senior sister who thinks I know the 'right way'.  S

She is an endowed member of the church for only 3 years. Her husband is not a member . She is there every week and so spiritual. I have really learned (thank goodness in the first month) that I will sit back more often and just listen.
 So she loves to use Daughters of our Kingdom. She loves the women in it. It leads them. For now that's ok.  Begining this Next year we will figure out how to use it and the prophets in her way.
I was just thankful I sat myself down and listened to her. I have some real repenting to do .

Story # 2

My second story  is a younger man with bad eyes was asking me about glasses and he just busted forth and said to me 'do you want to know what happened to me?'
HE went on...'many people in our community did not like that we were told to wash our hands and use these disinfectants. They didn't think we should follow this advice and our church was helping with this advice.' (all the washing stations and cleaning stations) HE said 'the people in my community said that we should have faith and just trust God. They said the LDS were sicked because they did not trust GOd . THey worshiped other things and if we had enough faith in God we would be saved. They all told me the LDS will die from Ebola because they are not trusting God..You will see all you LDS will die.'  (this was a really big problem in some areas where traditional healing is still practiced)
The boy said He believed in what the church was telling the members to do. He said it was really hard. He said 7 people close to him who told  him this died from ebola. and more. but specifically 7 close people in his area.
He said no LDS in our area died. We were all saved because we followed our church leaders.
The church actually lost very few members to ebola. very few.

 Just one of the not so gory stories of Ebola.