Such a good week! Just want to give a quick shout out to MUM for the mini Christmas tree, it brings the Christmas spirit to our little Jakarta apartment :). From a pretty tough week last week we had some amazing things happen this week and we felt sooo many blessings poured out upon us. Jakarta is different than my first two cities, the people are busy, not as friendly, and not as open. The same things I did in my other cities aren't as effective here and we have had to find innovative ways to get to the people here. EVERYONE thinks we are Johova's Witness here and it's sooo frustrating. If they give us the chance to tell them we aren't they usually are WAY more open. So this week with our proselyting time we tried just talking about Christmas and asking if we could share a Christmas message. Then we would share "The Living Christ" with them and we saw way more success!
The sad thing about Christmas here is that Christ..THE REASON for Christmas is completely taken out of it. Because it is a Muslim country, they still love the Christmas tree's in the malls, Santa and buying gifts, but you will never see anything about the real reason for Christmas...Our Savior Jesus Christ.
I am glad we get to share about HIM, the reason. I love my Savior and feel the enabling power of His atonement in my life everyday.
I want to tell you a little bit about Patrick. He is an African working here and we have been teaching him and his girlfriend with our WML in the English ward who speaks French. His ex-wife was Mormon and there was always missionaries at his house before, but he never wanted any part in it. He recognized us on the street and invited us to meet with him my first week here. Yesterday he was supposed to come to church but didn't show up and we had a feeling we should just go over to their place. He told us he was out partying all night and woke up at 12 and he that he wanted to change his life. He told us his life story and about how he has always had money to do whatever he wants, but he is not HAPPY. He has A LOT of changes to make and it will be hard, we told him that, but we know with the Saviors help he can.
I still cannot describe seeing the change take place in people we teach. There is nothing that compares to seeing someone change there life through the gospel of Jesus Christ. We had some really awesome investigators attend church this week and we are planning to have a few baptisms on the 21st...no better Christmas present than that!
Please pray for:
Laura and her kids, Desti, and Patrik this week!
I love my Savior. He is the greatest gift the world has and will ever received. He is the LIGHT.
With Love,
Sister Reilly
one more funny experience from this week..we have now joined an old mens tennis group every Saturday at 6am. haha. They love us and this week I was playing with my usual 70 year old doubles partner and we had an awesome comeback and won 6 games to 5...anyways, during this game just about everyone outside of their apartment started gathering around to watch the game and the old guys kept saying..Sister Reilly, stop looking so serious...smile! it was so funny and Sister Akaiti was just cracking up the whole time hearing what people were saying. good times. there is actually a ton of potential with a lot of them and they are always asking us tons of questions about our beliefs and what we do.
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