Dear Family,
I love this gospel! Haha. This past week has been awesome. I want to share with you guys my letter I sent to president because it was a really cool experience, but I dont want to right it again. Haha!
Dear President,
This past week has been amazing. I have felt and seen God help us in so many ways to help this work carry onward, as well as helping me progress. Monday and tuesday were ok. I had fallen into a state of hopeless I would say. It just didnt seem like anyone would talk to us or want to learn more. Wednesday was the worst day of all. It just wasn't productive it felt like. That night we had two families in our area that we were going to visit. The first family was amazing. We had a great lesson and we challenged them to move forward with us with their less active children. They were excited as well as us. The next family though only gave us a half an hour and they just moved into their ward. They dont really trust us yet and so when we came in talking about missionary work and referrals the whole family, especially the parents, just seemed to shut down, be cynical, and stop paying attention. We left that evening feeling very dejected. And I felt pretty alone. It seemed like the stress was finally getting to me. I'm training, Im opening up a relatively knew area while training, its a small town with smaller towns around it, I've never worked in an area like this before and don't really know how to. Everything just seemed to come to a head. I was talking to Elder Mortensen about all of this. Talking about how I felt "where is God?!" "Isn't this his work." I was quite overwhelmed and feeling utterly alone and inadequate. At the peak of these feelings and with my emotions struggling to break free... I received a call from you. Telling me, that you wanted to give me the good news about my father before I went to bed. 37 Lymphnodes removed... and not a single cancer cell. You could have waiting until the next day to call me. But God saw that I needed that. That news, and the experience DID make my emotions flow over. I felt so much love and peace come from my Heavenly Father. He knew I needed that news. Almost as if to tell me. "What are you talking about?" " Of course I'm still here." "Dont you remember?" Never have I felt so much gratitude to my Heavenly Father. That has been the most concrete witness to me that he is there. That he does love me. That this is his work. And that he will never leave me alone. We got 14 other lessons this week. We reaches the goal. According to the statistics you gave us in Zone Conference. If we are able to keep this up, we will get a baptism per month. I felt God continually in the few days [since]. We had 2 hours on Sunday to get 3 other lessons. Thats a pretty bold goal. But, with faith, God was able to help us. We got those 3 other lessons. Resulting in the total 14 teaches and a new investigator. I have never felt so good. This work is amazing. This gospel is amazing. I absolutely LOVE it. And I aboslutly love Him.
Elder Hale
This is only one experience that I had the past couple of days. But it was the Catalyst experience. It was what gave me the Faith to continue on and to see the work progress in the area. The best part is, just like Dad said in his letter, sometimes you dont make much progress. But you move a little, day by day. We didnt baptize anyone this week. We didnt meet a golden investigator, although we did get a pretty cool one. But the thing that changes was me. Having the Faith to find and the faith to go out. It changed every single day. I was happy and excited to go out. On Sunday, when we needed to get the 3 other lessons in 2 hours. We got two of them. But it was time to get going home because of accounting, and that meant contacting on the way home. Which I'm totally ok with.... but it was pouring with torrential rain. :) People dont usually like stopping in weather like that. Haha! For about 1 second I felt "Well, you tried. But your not going to meet anyone tonight, and if you do, they probably wont stop and have a small lesson with you"..... But then, I kind of punched Satan in the face, and just said "What, you talking about? This is God who is helping us! He can do anything. If I have the Faith that he will help, listen so carefully to the spirit, and then act on those promptings it will happen." We could have taken the short way home, but I felt impressed to go the long way.... and we found betty. We stopped her, covered her in our little canopy of our umbrellas and had a great lesson with her. The spirit told me to talk about direction in your life, and how our relationship with heavenly father could get us that. It was so amazing to see this puzzled expression grow across her face and see her eyes just kind of clock what we were saying. "I could really use some direction right now in my life" She said. WOW! Ok. We gave her our card and hopefully she will be calling us back. This is a tiny miracle. Just 1 lesson. But, it means the world to a missionary. It showed to me how God can do anything if we have faith, listen, and act. Acting is one of the hardest parts. Which was another principle I was blessed to learn this week.
Another cool experience that I had this week was right after Wednesday. We had just gotten done with contacting and had come home from lunch. But it was talking way longer for the dish to cook then we thought and it was either, eat or catch the bus that we needed to get. We prayed about it, got done, looked up and just took off. Haha! We grabbed our stuff, turned off the over, leaving the dish in, and ran to the bus stop. We were planning on going to see a LA, but she is in the middle of nowhere. We went to see her, and she wasn't it. The bus only comes around every hour. So we went to knock a small neighbor hood of about 4 houses. The 3rd door we knocked, we were welcomed by a very, VERY, strict atheist. He basically told us that we were waisting our time. That religion is a hoax, and we were better off to stop what we were doing. When we dug a little bit deeper, and said, that there was no evidence for anything. NO evidence for God. He said to give us one concrete physical peace of evidence. We started talking about the bible and he shredded that. We left feeling pretty dejected. We knocked the rest of the houses and by the time that we were done, we had 20 min til the bus came. So we went on a little cool nature walk. We had walked for 5 min and the whole time I was rolling over in my mind what we could have done differently with this man "mike". I started talking about it with my companion and I started "soap boxing" ,as an elder calls it, about how their is evidence. THE BOOK OF MORMON!!!!! It provides an actual experiment about how we can find out if God is there, if he loves us, if he has a plan for us. A little bit more ranty then that, but you get the picture. ;) I was walking for 20 ft before I realized my companion had stopped walking. I looked back and he looked and me and just said "why dont you go tell him this?" Answer: Because he is a mean atheist man, who we will be disturbing for the second time, and didnt want us to disturb him the first time! Haha! But we went went back. We said that if was out in his yard, we will take it as a sign and talk with him. Well he wasn't. But the spirit prompted us, and we felt like there was something we still needed to do. So we prayed. And sure enough, the answer came to go Knock on his door again. Oh man. Scary. So, we went back and we knocked. And when that man came back out. I held out a copy of the Book of Mormon and testified that this was the evidence he was looking for and of its truthfulness... We placed a copy of the Book of Mormon. Haha! He might never be taught. But, it was cool. Acting can sometimes be very scary. It can be very scary sometimes. But there is a principle that I know have a very firm testimony on. And that is the Fear of God VS the Fear of Men.
Are we so afraid of men that we are actually afraid to act in the Name of God? Are we afraid of what man is going to say so we let a moment to help push this work forward, pass by? How do we react to situations where is Mans disapproval, or Gods? I dont know if I have already told you guys this, but I asked one of my old companions once, whats wrong with being a molly Mormon? Whats wrong with that? He couldn't answer. Gods standards, and Gods expectations should be our standards and our expectations. The reason why most people aren't molly Mormons is because they don't want people seeing them living their religion. Or people making fun of them. So what if they do? Do you fear men? Or God? You are living a standard that has been decreed from the very creator of the universe. By living his principles you obtain for your self blessing that have been predicated in the very heavens about us. And what are these people, pointing from that great and spacious building getting? A need to buy some new furniture. They receive nothing. We receive Eternal life. And the praise and gratitude of our father who is in heaven. Desperately wanting us to come back to him. I have often feared the scorn of men. And have to often, not feared enough, the disappointment and consequences of God. But, hopefully this experience, and this lesson, and this mission will change me enough to become 100% fearful of God and not of Man. Like Poochenello let us let the dots and marks of the world TRY to mar us. But in the end. Let the maker of our souls, and carver of our bodies, tell us what we ARE. What we can BE. And let those Eternal truths stick and transform us.
Wow, I need to stop. Haha That is a long letter. I love you guys. Sorry if thats a little bit ranty. I once heard from a missionary, that letters home often become your second journal. I will try to do better in the future. ;) I love you guys so much. Dad, Im so grateful that you are doing well. Thank you family for being supportive and loving. I often pray for you guys. I love you very much. Stephanie, I hope you will get back to the work you love as soon as possible. By the time you get this, I know a week has past and your proably fine now. But your work is always a marvelous example to me and I thank you. Maren. The same goes for you as well. I always feel more inspired from reading your letters. :)
YA!! Send some pictures. I want to see Giant Caleb and sampson simeon. :)
Elder Hale
No comments:
Post a Comment