THERE ARE ANGELS AMONG US

Saturday June  22, 2013. We participated in a "Lost Sheep"activity. The Oakland 9th Ward uses this time for members to go out two or three at a time with several names from the ward list to look for members who we do not see at church and who, are basically "lost" until we find where they're at.
We were with with Sister Dali Latimer, a ward missionary. 

An interesting thing about downtown Oakland is that most of the city has apartment complexes surrounded by tall metal fences and locked gates. Even some homes are fenced and gated. To get in you have to ring a bell or call on the phone where we have a phone number. If no one answers you are out of luck. That day we discovered some people had moved and others we still did not know where they were.

At one point we were on a street in one such neighborhood and a young woman came up to us and said, "I feel like I need to warn you, my friend was just mugged at gunpoint 20 minutes ago on the corner by four guys with guns in a car. You should probably not be here." We were the only ones she talked to on the street (we were the only ones dressed in Sunday best, however, probably looking like quite the "target" for muggers) and then she left. Needless to say we left as well. Welcome to Oakland!

A few weeks later we were out with a set of young missionaries at an appointment that we had received as a  "referral". We were again in one of Oakland's more unsafe neighborhoods. The woman did not want us to teach her on her property and asked that we share our message with her on the sidewalk. So we did! At the corner there was a loud motorcycle cruising back and forth. Some gang members a couple doors down were hanging out acting "cool". We taught her about the Restoration, Sister Felt told her the Joseph Smith Story and bore her testimony that it was true. Then we prayed on the sidewalk in the middle of this neighborhood. Our first inclination, among all of the distracting noises both around and approaching us, was to open our eyes to see what was going on. Elder Felt said he struggled with that inclination (due to his law enforcement background); however, we both knew we were missionaries on the Lord's errand and that we had to have the faith that He would protect us - so we disregarded our own discomfort - and He did!