One of the greatest blessing we have enjoyed on this mission is hearing of the countless miracles that happen so often as part of this wonderful work. Some of the experiences have to do with the missionary work itself and others are in the growth of our incredible missionaries. I thought I would share a few that we put into our monthly newsletter appropriately called the "Miracle Monitor." These are little snippets of letters to the president that he receives each Monday from our missionaries. Enjoy:
-The whole time I was in that lesson praying for inspiration to know how to help this child of God. I know that our Father in Heaven is the one that is really going to help this man. As I prayed to know I was prompted by the spirit to say things that I could not have known. We committed him to come to church. We told him that he would find peace there. He told us "if I'm not there, I'm dead!' Sunday came around, we went to church and found him sitting there!
-I asked our investigator if she had ever felt the spirit, and she said that at our church was the first time in a long time. We had the most spiritual first lesson of my entire mission with her. We asked inspired question and listened and paused a lot especially through the Restoration. After my companion told her the story of the First Vision we paused and asked how she felt. She couldn't speak because she had tears rolling down her face. A couple of minutes later she said, "I wish I had had this in my life a lot sooner." She is definitely one of the greatest miracles I've seen in my life.
-We were really short on our weekly goals. So we decided we would skip lunch after church and work as hard as we could to teach as many lessons as possible. We prayed and told the Lord we were determined to do this and He helped us teach four lessons and get a new set! Two of the lessons became two new investigators too, which was amazing because we had not found any new investigators yet for the week!
-We have really been trying and praying to find the elect. That has been something that has been in my prayers and in my thoughts for a while now. We were planning on going to someone’s house on the way home that is closer to where we live and all of a sudden I realized that I had directed my companion the wrong way and we were on a street that we had been on only once before and remembered a woman we met there... So since we were there anyways we decided to see if she was home. Turned out she was outside! We started talking to her and she said "I've been waiting for you girls to come back!" oops... Thank goodness for the guidance of the spirit!!! Then we asked her if she had a few minutes and we briefly taught her the 1st lesson. She then went on to say that she has been looking for something more in her life and that at her age it has brought her to a lot of thought and pondering on the subject of life and why we're here and where we're going. YES SHE USED THOSE WORDS!! I thought that people only said that in church movies!!
-I am very grateful for the training that we had on committing people to live the commandments. The day after that training we had planned to teach our investigator about the gospel of Jesus Christ, but because we were prepared the spirit was able to guide us and let us know that we needed to talk about tithing. We discussed it with her and helped her gain a greater understanding of it. Our team up bore powerful testimony of it and she was excited about it. We then told her that one of the questions when she is interviewed for baptism is will you live the law of tithing so we committed her and she said yes. Well yesterday on Sunday she came to church and filled out the tithing slip and paid her tithing. We were so surprised. She still has more than a month till baptism but she is so excited to start living the gospel. I know that because we practiced giving commitments that we were able to teach by the spirit and I know that she could feel that too.
-We had a really neat lesson with our investigator last night. Last time we were there we gave her little 8 year old his own copy of the Book of Mormon. We stopped by last night when she was putting the boys to bed and she motioned us over to peer inside her 8 year olds’ room. He had his Book of Mormon open to the testimonies of the 3 and 8 witnesses and was reading in bed. He looked over at us and smiled. Our investigator whispered, "He's reading his "special book."" That's what he calls it. This little 8 year old has seen more heartache and violence/abuse than anyone at that age should have to endure. To see him with a Book of Mormon reading in bed before going to sleep was about the greatest thing I've seen my whole mission.
-My companion and I have been reading the introduction of the Book of Mormon to people we meet. We then invite them to pray to find out whether those couple paragraphs and our message is truly from God. The neatest experience in doing this was this past week. While we were on our way to teach a recent convert, a young man stopped us and asked us our purpose and what exactly we do. By the end of our 45 minute teaching of the Savior, Book of Mormon, prayer, and the Holy Spirit, there were 4 more individuals standing around us listening and asking questions. We gave each family a Book of Mormon and invited them to read the introduction and pray to learn its truthfulness.
-The other day around 8 at night, my companion and I were having a hard time finding someone to see and we were about to give up and go home when we came across a lady, she’s from Guadalajara and we started a conversation with her, she told us that her mother was a member of our church and that she was just thinking the other day that she feels like she should join a church and that she would love to have us over to teach her more of the scriptures. So we learned that when we press hard and go forward in faith, God puts people in our path, this experience just makes me want to work harder.
-I had a neat experience earlier this week that has taught me a lot about being in harmony with the Spirit. In my father's blessing before I came out he counseled me to express my desires- to be guided by the Spirit etc.- in prayer in the morning and then to report back at night. That is something I've desired to do but haven't been as diligent in remembering. Friday morning I determined to follow his council and so I prayed for my sincere desires for the day and wrote them down in my journal. That day I did my best to be in tune with and follow the Spirit. That night when I went to report and I opened my journal to the things I had written down I was blown away. The Lord had answered my prayers exponentially. I felt truly blessed and knew I had been guided by the Spirit in my prayers that morning and throughout the day to accomplish them.
