Monday, November 28, 2011

Obedience, Diligence, and Baptisms (in order of importance)

Hola Familia,

This week went by so fast and so much happened!  My companion and I saw miracles that I will never forget for the rest of my life.  President has been teaching that as missionaries we give three fruits to the Lord: obedience, diligence, and baptisms (in order of importance).  I have been meditating on this all week long and even had the chance to apply this doctrine creating the opportunity to have a huge miracle!!!!

So, Friday Elder Madrid and I had 12 people that were all going to come with us to church.  We were doing everything we could to keep them excited to come to church by passing by everyday that we could and teaching them as powerfully as we could.  However, Saturday night at about 7pm we were looking at 1 person that was actually going to be able to come with us.   I was stressed and sad at first but the words of President about the importance of obedience and diligence came to my mind and I realized that I still had 2 hours to find and invite people to come to church.  We then started stopping by references that we had been given and no one was home.  I was starting to lose hope when a thought very clearly came to mind to look at a list of former investigators that I made last week.  As I scanned the list a certain family stuck out to me.  We quickly arrived at the door of the family and the mother answered.  She didn't look too  happy to see us.  However, we presented ourselves and then asked her if she had a moment.  She then whipped out the pretexts that we always hear like "I'm busy" or "my kids will make too much noise."  We were determined to enter this house and so we started promising her blessings and that we would only share something small and quick.

She then said "ok, but something quick."  Relieved and excited for the opportunity we walked in and started getting to know the family.  The mother is 27 and has 6 kids!!  She and her husband have been living together without marriage for 13 years and they had practically nothing in the house.  We sang the song, "Families can be together forever" and started talking about the Gospel of Christ.  30 minutes later they all wanted to be baptized like Jesus Christ.  We then invited them to come to church and the mom responded "yeah, we'll go" and then she turned to her children and asked them to which they responded enthusiastically "YES!"  We then, super happy, ended the lesson with a prayer and the mother asked why we had to go so soon and that she had many, many questions for us.  We explained to her that the next morning we would pass by and then throughout the coming week we would pass by to answer all her questions.

The next morning we stopped by and the mother and 5 of her kids we all ready to go to church!!!  To top it off, they loved the church so much and the mother even signed up to give us lunch this coming Saturday!  What a blessing it was in this moment to decide to be diligent and fight even though it would have been so easy to give up and be ok with the one person that wanted to come.  We would never have had the opportunity to see this miracle and even less the opportunity to help this amazing family.

Even greater and better was when we went to church.  We arrived and a member came up to us with her boyfriend that had been to church a couple of times and wanted to hear the lessons.  The sister missionaries taught lesson 1 and then found out that he lives in our area and so we taught baptism and put him on date and he accepted!!  We now have this wonderful family and someone else that just fell from heaven!  The Lord is blessing us tons and tons and I know that it was for that decision we made the other day to be diligent when it would have been tons easier to be lazy and sad.  What a great lesson learned and definitely something that will I apply the rest of my life!!

I hope that you all have a great week and I love you all lots!!!

Love,
Elder Janis