What an amazing week this has been. My companion and I have had a wonderful week together and we were SUPER busy! A busy missionary is a happy missionary!
We had several meetings this week and will have even more to come! But, I love the meetings we have because they keep us uplifted and excited for missionary work. Tuesday we had a meeting for the committees we've been assigned to. I met with my committee and was assigned to be the official recorder of the meeting (I guess they liked my handwriting....thank you Disney World!!). Our goal as the #1,001 committee is to inspire missionaries spiritually and help them achieve the goal of 1 baptism/companionship/transfer personally. So, in basic terms, we're gunna be the pep rally committee!! In a very spiritual way of course. :) I'm excited because the mission has struggled with missionaries having a hard time and not being super obedient so our plan is to center everything around Jesus Christ and possibly do something like a 12 month walk with Christ for the year 2015. So we'll focus on one attribute of Christ a month. I know that these committee's are inspired and I'm very excited to really hit the ground running in 2015!
Something else that I'm excited for is our first Zone Conference next week! I've put together a small group of elders and sisters that will be singing at the Conference and it's going to be awesome! In preparation for that, our meetings this week have been focused on the question of "Which way am I facing?" For me it kinda follows the quote, "Where you gaze, your heart will follow." So, I've been focusing a lot on how I can become more like Christ and think of Him everyday as we're out doing missionary work.
This week we taught our investigator Megan again and it went fairly well! She read the assigned chapter from the BOM we left with her last time and an additional one! She is progressing slowly, but she is progressing! We had a member with us who's friends with her, and we talked with her about doing an F.H.E. on family history work with her and her husband. She said she'd talk to him this week about it so cross your fingers we can get him on board!
A miracle this week, is there is a family that was taught previously that asked the missionaries to stop coming by. The father is LDS but less active and the wife is Catholic. We stopped by several weeks ago and the wife let us in! She told us she'd love to have us over and to contact her husband. Well we called and stopped by but he didn't answer and wasn't there. Well, he called us this morning and wants us to come by and wants to talk with us about a lot of things!!!! We're so excited because we fasted and prayed yesterday for this family and felt that we should really focus on them. Then, this morning, the Lord answered our prayers! Such miracles!
We've also been teaching a few less active and part member families. There's been small miracles with those! One of the part member families, her husband came to the primary program and the trunk-or-treat! We were so excited.
Satan has worked really hard this week to stop us from visiting a member who has a smoking problem. Every time we scheduled to meet with her something came up and she had to cancel! We visited her briefly at work yesterday and she told us she would do everything she could to meet with us this week and that she's already been smoking less and that the cravings are going away!!! I love the Lord. Everyday He works small miracles and Satan's power is lessened and lessened.
Before I close I wanted to mention a couple in the ward that we ate dinner with. They're names are Nyle and Martha Brady. They're in their mid 90's and are still doing missionary work! Nyle Brady is the founder of the International Rice Research Institute and basically changed the world by figuring out how to grow and harvest rice in such a way that most of the rice crop is fully grown and harvested, whereas before, when they grew rice, more than half of it never fully grew or could be harvested. I know I'm not saying all of that correctly, but this man and his wife have done incredible things!! They're in a life care center now, but they're both sharp as ever and he bears his testimony every fast Sunday. They fed us dinner the other night and talked to us about possibly teaching some of their grandkids who have left the church. I was so inspired and in awe of this amazing couple!
Well, sorry this e-mail is so long but there's so much I have to say! Missionary work is amazing and I've never felt such joy! The members here are getting better at missionary work and I'm very excited for the cottage meetings we're planning with the members. These stake lessons we've been teaching are truly inspired! I've also learned these few months out here that missionary work is so much more than baptism. Baptism is very important, don't get me wrong, but as Elder Holland said, "It's about love, not statistics." I didn't think I could have so much love for so many people, but I can. We all can! Pray for charity for EVERYONE! Especially for the people who are hard and I promise you will be filled. Serve them and that love will come!
I love you all and thank you for your continued support and prayers! God bless you!"
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