"I Don't Think it's Just a Coincidence."

11-17-14

We were out tracting one afternoon because everything fell through and it was SOOOOOO cold. Like, we wanted to cry a little. We were knocking doors and no one was answering.  At the end of the hour we were walking back to our car, and we see this weird looking dude standing on a street corner with his hood up and honestly, he looked a little creepy to me. He seemed to be around his late 20's  and didn't seem to be paying attention to much of anything.

We decided to talk to him anyway, so we say hello and start walking over to him. He starts to say, “What are you pretty ladies doing out in the cold?" in a really low, kind of slow voice. In my head I'm like, "Oh great. This is going to be interesting." And then before we can start talking to him, a dude in a car pulls up and calls out to him and asks him if he knows where a certain street is, so we awkwardly wait while that conversation happens. Finally he turns

back to us. We're able to introduce ourselves and start to tell him what we're doing, but THEN a bus pulls up and a little girl jumps off and runs over to the guy we're talking to. She hugs him and he hugs her back and introduces her as his daughter. The little girl didn't let go, and kept holding on to her dad and looking up at us with big brown eyes. All of a sudden my heart softened and I began to see this man a little differently.

We started up a conversation with him and we get talking a little bit about the Book of Mormon. Sister Maddox had one in her hand and his eyes get a little glimmer in them as he looks at it and he asks, "Are you passing these out?" Big smiles come across all our faces as we give him the Book of Mormon. He proceeds to tell us how he's been recently trying to turn his life around and how he's back in school and working for a cement place and he now has custody of his little girl. He began to tell us more of his story and the way he was raised.  As he started talking, he covered his little girl's ears as he told us how his father was abusive and a drug addict and how he didn't want his daughter to grow up in a home like that. He uncovered her ears and hugged her a little closer.

Long story short, he wanted what we have, and he realized that. This next week we'll go back and teach him. It was a good lesson to me on not making judgments on first impressions. It was also just such a beautiful conversation. The spirit was there and you could feel it. He even said at the end, "I don't think it's just a coincidence that we met today." No C------, it wasn't. Because you and I are exactly where we need to be.

(Oh!!! Also, our atheist D------- has now not only decided that he's going to act as if God is real, but he finally understands that he really just needs to find out if the Book of Mormon is true and that will answer all the crazy little questions he always asks! He progresses really slowly, but it's so fun to watch!)