Sister Missionaries

A couple weeks ago we got to have the sister missionaries in our home for dinner. I love having them over and I really miss having the missionaries in our home more often like we did in Hilton Head, but we have to share them more here in Idaho.

There are 3 sisters together in this area and now we have another sister who is from Samoa. I felt like having Sister Aleki here last year was such a gift to our family and now to have another sister from the same area is amazing. Her name is Sister Sojelo (pronounced so yellow). She is actually from a different part of the island. While talking to her I made some comment about not being able to communicate with her family back home or if her family can email her, etc. She kind of laughed at what I said saying, of course, we have computers and TV, etc there. I told her all I knew about was the little girls' birth family and how they couldn't email because they had no computer, in fact, no electricity. She kind of laughed about that as if it wasn't really true.

So after dinner she wanted to see pictures of the girls' birth family. As she was looking at the pictures she kept saying, "they are really poor." Later on in the back yard, she walked over to me and said, "Their family is so poor. These girls are very lucky to be here." I told her I thought everyone on the island lived that same way because that was all I saw, but she assured me that her family had a normal house, with walls, electricity, etc.

The best part of their visit was after dinner when we asked them to leave us with a spiritual message. The older kids all were gone somewhere, so it was just Harold, the girls and I left. As we sat around the kitchen table, the sister missionaries bore their testimonies to us. Then Sister Sojelo spoke very plainly and strongly to the little girls. She told them how blessed they were and how Heavenly Father was looking after them. She told them that they were chosen to be here and to learn about the gospel and to live the gospel so that they could help their birth families back in Samoa. She told them that they had a very important mission and that they were missionaries chosen from all the people back in Samoa to be here and that their work was very important to Heavenly Father. She reminded them to be strong and to do what they were told by us and by the prophet. I was so impressed by what she was saying and how she was saying it. It gave me a renewed strength to help Leah and Nikki be those strong missionaries she was talking about. I want to help them so that they can bless their families back in Samoa.

This sister missionary made such a huge impact on me even though she was speaking to the girls and it couldn't have come at a better time because we had just had a hard weekend finding out that Leah had been surfing into horrible websites and showing Nikki, places she had been told about by a friend at school. It was such a shock to me and really woke me up to my role as a lionness at the gates of my home. The evil influences from the world can so easily creep into our homes and sometimes it doesn't just creep in, it literally pushes down the downs and throws itself into our faces. I had wonderful talks with the girls and many changes were made in our home, but then to have the sister missionaries with their powerful spirits come into our homes and leave us with such beautiful messages, it became a tender mercy I will never forget.

I am extremely blessed any time I can be reminded of who I am, my purpose, who my children are and who they can become. We all need these reminders constantly and you never know where they may come from, but I do know that if we are standing in the right places at the right times with the right people, these gentle nudges and reminders from Heavenly Father, these beautiful and much needed tender mercies, will come and our lives will be enriched.