Week #40 - 10/19/2015

The Spirit is Awesome!

So this week has been a super cool week. We were just walking down the street (as always) and ran into this around 60 year old guy walking down his driveway. We were about to talk to him, but he flagged us down first, and just asked "I see you guys all the time, why do you walk so much?". We then just led into who we are and our church, and talked about the book or Mormon. He is one of the most genuine men I have met, and asked us if we could come over and teach him. We had to hand him over to the English Elders, which is still kinda annoying, but they taught him and he came to church Sunday, and stayed for a Baptism after! The man went to 4 hours of church and just loved it! We were sitting next to him for priesthood in the 3rd hour, and he told us that he had gotten home and was going to just go inside, but the he saw us down the street and that a good feeling told him to just wait to talk to us. That made our day.

It really goes to show how important it is to always be an example, and to remember that we are servants of Christ. It gets hard to feel like a pure, representative some times when you have been walking for 6 hours, your most recent blister has popped, and you are almost hungry enough to eat your tie, and honestly, sometimes bitterly expecting the next door to slam in your face with a curseword like the last 5. I almost thought the guy was flagging us down to try to bash with us. But it is always nice to get that reminder that people can recognize it if they are humble enough, and the Lord knows were are trying and still lets us be his servants, as imperfect and impatient as we so often are. 

I continue to learn so much about the need to listen to the spirit. I have had to real myself back lately. It is a cycle every missionary goes through. In the beginning you know nothing and have to rely on the spirit so desperately, but then, over time, start to think you know enough and find yourself getting a bit arrogant, then the Lord has to show you just how little you know again. My companion and I were teaching an inactive member. She had invited us back after giving her a blessing last week, but started off the lesson by saying that she was happy with her new church and didn't want to change. We started talking about her conversion story to the Gospel 20 years ago, and she almost couldn't tell the story of her baptism without tears filling her eyes, yet she still through out a list of concerns and reasons she had fallen away. I quickly whipped out scripture and started teaching what I "knew" would answer her concerns perfectly, while my companion stayed silent. I started addressing all of her concerns with scripture and other things that directly spoke of and answered them, but the spirit kept nudging me away. I wouldn't listen at first, because on the surface, it all seemed like perfect answers, but looking at her, you could tell it wasn't going anywhere. Finally I shut up for a moment, and after a short pause, my companion (who just hit 4 weeks in the field) started to talk. He just bore a simple testimony about the importance of prayer and not giving up on what you know to be true. 

We then asked here to pray as a closing prayer, and after she did, she raised her head back up and was crying. She said she knew it was true, she felt it, but that she didn't know how to tell her family and get their support when they were so against it. We were then able to have a short, but awesome lesson to help her, and the spirit was present and strong as we followed it. She called us later that night and told us she would be at church, and had set up a ride with her visiting teacher. All her other reasons before had just been excuses to try and ignore her testimony so that she wouldn't have to face the backlash of her family for going to a different church, and If I had just listened to the spirit, I would have learned sooner. I am learning more and more why the Lord sends us in twos. So if one is being too stubborn to listen, the other can smack him upside the head. Love you guys, I know this church is true. 

Week #39 - 10/12/2015

Sacred Shoes and Winter Blues

So a cool thing happened this week. We went to the always classy Good Will, and there were only 2 pairs of dress shoes in the store, they were only $4, and they fit me and my comp perfectly. The 9 1/2s were super good quality, but not as much of a miracle as finding a size 14 for my companion. It is little things like that that are always so cool. I know it might sound stupid, but I really think that those were there just for us, and it is a cool thing to see how the Lord loves us and just does things as simple as letting us have some sweet shoes. 

Winter is coming soon, and we are getting prepared. It has been super nice this week, but is is supposed to go from 70 to 50 on Friday, and it is all downhill from there. I wouldn't mind it, but we really rely on the ability to teach women on their porch when their isn't a man in the house, and I don't think they would be to happy when it's that cold. But I'm not worried, I know it will be alright. The work has been going really well, if pretty challenging. We found about 6 people by knocking doors. All seemed more solid than most, and we set return appointments, only to come back to an empty house. But hey, welcome to missionary work. We are making some great progress with some investigators, though. It can be pretty awkward, though, when people try to ask advice about marital problems and other crazy family ordeals. Being the 18 and 19 year old kids that we are, we don't have the greatest advice, but it is always nice to know we just have to point to the Lord, and his words will help them and heal them far more than man ever could. 

Don't have much time, but I'll leave a quote I love.

"That's the way it is when Jesus Christ becomes a reality in your life. It isn't that he somehow makes you do things that you wouldn't want to do otherwise. Rather, you find yourself wanting to do what he would do and respond as he would respond in an effort to bring your life in harmony with His." - Our search for happiness.

I know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ really is the only way to true, lasting, and eternal happiness in this world, not just for the broken and downtrodden, but for every living soul. If you don;t believe me, just try it. 

Week #38 - 10/05/2015

Conference and Church Tour 

So let me just say, general conference was amazing.  I can not believe I wasted 18 years of my life hardly paying attention. I took notes like a madman and basically just ended up copying half the talks, so I got some summarizing to do. I loved President Thomas s. Monson's Sunday morning talk. His testimony is so powerful, he could barley breath or stand, but he was going with the full power of God and the Holy Ghost. I am really worried we are going to lose him soon, I still miss Scott, Perry, and Packard. 

(For those of you who are non members, General Conference happens every 6 months and is when our Prophet, 12 apostles, and other church leaders get up and give us guidance and word of God. It is pretty sweet, you should check it out. This year we had 3 of the 12 apostles die, but 3 more were called this conference.) 

The conference seems like a lot of words and people testifying, But that is one thing I never thought I could get to, the point where I hung on every word. It is the coolest thing ever, I learn so much. And some talks speak to me more than others, but I found that if we pray beforehand, and try to prepare ourselves and invite the spirit, conference, just like the scriptures, opens up. What they talk about directly applies to what we need to hear, to learn, and to apply. The Spirit is so necessary to learning anything spiritual. It says it best in Corinthians chapter 2:

  9 But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

 10 But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
11 For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
15 But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.
16 For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

God gives understanding through the Spirit, and we need the Spirit to understand the Lord's things, spiritual things. 

And I had a cool experience this week. We had a church tour on saturday with Valerie, which basically just means we show an investigator around the church and then teach them a lesson in the chapel where the spirit is super strong. And the spirit was insanely strong. Valerie has been reading in the book of Mormon, but still felt she hadn't received her answer yet, but she felt something special there. We taught her in the chapel, and then gave her a blessing of comfort for some of her trials, and she was almost crying. We asked if she had received an answer, and she said yes, but that she had no idea how she was going to get her family to go along with it. It was a great experience, and just shows more that the Spirit is needed in all we do, and we can't know truth without it.