Anything Can Happen

"Open different doors. You may find a you there that you never knew was yours. Anything can happen if you let it."  

-Mary Poppins

Here's me with a snowman during snowmageddon 2 weeks ago.
I think round 2 is heading our way this week!

I love how sweet moments from my childhood pop into my head daily. Man I miss watching Mary Poppins with my family when I was younger! This quote came into mind many times this week as it was put to the test.

First off, I love this quote for the image of opening different doors. Because as a missionary, we literally open quite the variety of doors...

But it's not about knocking on doors. Mary Poppins really talks about changing yourself and stepping out of your own comfort zone to do so. I found myself doing this more than just a few times this week. It'd be pretty safe to say that missionaries step out of their comfort zone every single day! I'll share with you a few experiences that made me really realize that, "anything can happen".

Sister Pribyl and I were driving back from an investigators home on Friday. We had a few extra minutes before another appointment when we stopped at a neighborhood intersection. Sister Pribyl turned to me and said, "Where should we go now? We need to find more people." At the time I was looking down a street that I had a strong impression to follow. But for some reason, I was so afraid to do it. Whether it was nerves or laziness or whatever, I don't really know. All I remember is that I just didn't want to open that door. Then quickly before those feelings could really start to doubt my faith I responded, "Well then turn here." By "opening that door" we went on to find a new investigator who had been visited by missionaries months before, wondering why they never came back.

Why was it that such an easy thing to say seemed so hard for me to do? It would have been so comfortable to just show up early for that appointment. But NO! The Spirit's all like, "Sienna, I need you to try your faith: Now go & do!"

Another experience happened just yesterday. We were driving back from church when I pointed out a man cleaning the side of the road. It was obvious that he was only trying to do the community a favor. The road was completely littered with wrappers and cigarette butts. Sister Pribyl asked almost the same question, "huh, we see him all over Douglasville, should we go?" Then again, the same feeling came over me and I tried to make excuses not to go. But before I could say no, the words "turn in!" came out of my mouth. We got out there and helped "Denson" clean the road for 2 hours in our skirts. He was incredibly grateful for us. As he took a Book of Mormon he called us "angels from heaven".. haha. He told us that he'd always remember the day that God sent angels to help him. What was just a simple act of service for us was a powerful answer to another. The cool thing about opening this door was that God let me know that we did the right thing to stop. While we were cleaning I found a fortune cookie fortune which said.... 

It was only a few hours later that our investigator who has been seeing missionaries for 4 months accepted to be baptized! 

So I learned that Mary Poppins was right. I learned that it is within my power to do what the Lord asks me to do! And when I do it, I find that my trust and confidence in Him gets 10x stronger. I'll leave you with a missionary-ized version of the lesson I learned this week which is to "Follow the Spirit and step out of your comfort zone. You may find a you there that you never knew was yours. Anything can happen!"

Love,

Sister Hawkins