Welcome to Temple Square!
We did the math... if you see how many people came here last year for the lights and divide it by the number of days that the lights are on we get about 30,000 people each night to see the lights. This explains why we are all so tired at the end of the night... (which are even more tired because we stay out one hour later almost every day... much to the chagrin of returned missionaries from other places, "sisters isn't it time for you to go home now?") It's good to be able to talk to more people though... There are so many from places all over the world, not just Utah. If you think about all these people who are here, every one of them have problems and stories and a life behind their frozen exteriors.
I've met some amazing people, some of who should not be alive. I met an old friend the other night and he was telling me a bunch of his old mission stories about being hit by vehicles and attacked by muggers and the like... it was fun. I'm glad that my stories are not dangerous, merely interesting people and funny awkwardness and being guided by the spirit. Knowing that God can and will talk to you is a great blessing. It's not just about getting a yes or no answer to a question that you have carefully formulated in your mind... it's also about knowing things about the people you meet without asking, or ask but they are incapable to telling you, or being able to turn to a scripture that helps them with a problem that you didn't realize that they have. Then there's recognizing the potential of people that in no way look prepared to hear about God, much less Jesus Christ or the restoration of his gospel. And the most miraculous one is that people understand my French and feel the spirit when I talk to them over the phone or on Temple Square. That definitely makes me interested to see how much God really wants His children to hear his gospel... One man I talked to, I am certain that he wasn't able to understand much of what I was saying but he wanted to get in contact with the missionaries to understand what he was feeling. I've come to recognize many different ways to receive answers to my prayers.
Just this week I was teaching an investigator in Africa (not in French) and we were talking about the nature of God... when my Bible opened to a scripture about Baptism (Romans 6:4)... one that I rarely, if ever, use. And one that was not even marked in the scriptures that I was using... the wording was weird so I didn't want to share it, but he apparently brings his Bible with him everywhere so he opened it up and read the scripture. It wasn't the King James Version that I was using, but when he read the verse I understood why God had brought it into my mind, because the wording in his version was exactly what he needed to hear and resolved his concern with what we were teaching about the purpose of Jesus Christ in God's plan. It was amazing. God is so aware of each and every one of us, no matter whom we are or where we live.
Life is traveling on wings of lightening... but I thought that I would add the link to the neat Bible Videos that were shown at the Christmas devotional because I love the depiction of the angels in them... a new and different version that seems more real than other depictions that I've seen before... I've been thinking a lot about angels recently, just how amazing it is to have the scriptures declared to you by a heavenly being from God. Angels are so different in different denominations of Christianity, some believe that they are an entity entirely different than humans, some that they are glorified humans, some depict them with wings, others with halos, some with merely white garb, others with colorful. I'm just fascinated by them.
Have a wonderful day!
Sister Pielstick
Link address: http://lds.org/bible-videos?lang=eng
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