I Deserve M&Ms :)

Why do I deserve M&Ms? Well, I had a Missionary Moment today! And it was awesome!

As way of background, I'm the only LDS person in my particular office, but the firm I work for is owned by guy who's LDS; we'll call him BossMan.

So we recently hired a new receptionist who is cute, nice, and a quick learner (yay!) and I've had a lot of time to talk to her while I've been training her.

She recently discovered that I'm LDS. So she's been asking me casual questions occasionally.

This morning BossMan gave our new receptionist a project to work on. Copying a bunch of family history information.

Working on this little project brought up several questions. Including this one, "Why do Mormon's name their kids Bible names?"

Um. I laughed when she asked me. It was cute. I told her that I figured it was probably because the scriptures are important to us and parents want their kids to be like their name-sakes. She followed up by asking me if we were supposed to. I told her no. We can name our kids anything we want (and some certainly take advantage of that!).

We talked a little about family history work and how to do it. Later she came across a 12 generation chart and asked me about how it works. I briefly explained it to her. One of my other co-workers came into the copy room and then asked me why Mormons were so big into genealogy.

For a split second I almost panicked. Sometimes I don't know how to explain things simply (have you noticed??) and so I wanted to keep the conversation casual and simple. Then suddenly I started talking before I had even thought about what to say. I explained that we believe that everyone should and does have the opportunity to learn about the Gospel and that the people that have died before us are learning about it in heaven. I emphasised that everyone has a choice whether or not they accept it, here or later. I then explained that because bodies are necessary to become members, we do work in proxy for the people that have died, and that is what we do in Temples. I again said that just because the work is done for them doesn't mean that they are required to accept the Gospel.

Both girls listened and thought that it made sense. I explained that I personally love family history for that reason and that I love learning about my family and where I came from. It was a fun conversation and I was surprised that the part about the temple went over so well. As I was talking about it I felt the Spirit prompting me and I got goosebumps. I hope they felt the same way--whether they recognized it or not.

Later, my new co-worker expressed sincere interested in learning more about her family. I told her that I could get some info about a local family history library so she could talk to someone who could help her with it. She was really excited about it.

The only bummer was that when I tried to get the info from LDS.org, I couldn't get the address to come up. :( But I'm going to find it some other way. :)

I've loved sharing the gospel with my fun new co-worker. It makes me so happy!