This has been a pretty good week. The work here is quite a bit harder than the work in other areas I have served. We have been talking to literally everyone because we have been on bikes for the past couple of days. Elder Collier and I are working the hardest we have worked but we haven't seen any numerical success yet. All the lessons we taught were to members, most of which were active. Despite the numbers, we still feel like successful missionaries because we are recognizing promptings and we are obeying them. If anything, this last week has shown the Lord that we are here to work no matter what he asks us to do. It is extremely rewarding to see how God has guided us to be at the right place at the right time or to say the right thing.
I think its really funny how well we teach together. During roll plays we cant seem to figure out how to teach in unison. We each stop awkwardly and say things that don't transition well. However, during a lesson the Spirit begins to teach and Elder Collier and I masterfully teach together as if we had refined our lessons through a lot of time and experience. It's neat to watch the way we teach change to fit every person's needs. I know that the Lord is in this work.
We had the opportunity of planning Zone Meeting this week. MLC (Mission Leadership Councel) is on Wednesday and Zone Meeting is on that Friday, which does not give us a lot of time to plan. We were able to quickly and prayerfully put everything together. One of the training's we were asked to give was about meals with members. Boy were we struggling to come up with a way to present everything. Finally we came to the conclusion that we should ask God for some direction. The moment we finished our prayer we remembered the story of Amulek feeding Alma and from that we built a simple lesson structure. The training went perfectly.
Last night we biked to one of our investigators house. She had not been returning our calls or texts so we needed to stop by to see if she was still interested. It has been several weeks since the last time we saw her. When we got to her house, neither of us were sure if it was the right thing to do. It was dark, Sunday night, and we did not want to infringe on her personal time. The last thing we wanted to be was obnoxious. As we began to bike away we decided to pray and ask God if he needed us to knock on the door, or if he needed us to knock another time so we wouldn't offend her. Soon after the prayer, our concerns were still there but our fears were not. We decided to knock at the late hour. She was surprised to see us, but was excited to set up a return appointment for later in the week.
Another time this week, we were walking to as less actives house when Elder Collier felt like we needed to knock a street. Amazingly almost every single door we knocked on opened and we had the opportunity to talk to almost everyone on that street. No one was interested, but the Lord gave us plenty of opportunities to share the gospel. Usually only 30% of the doors actually open.
Promptings usually come an inconvenient times. On Saturday we were racing home because we had a member coming to pick us up for dinner. As we were biking a man walking his dog happened to be in our path. We decided to talk to him. We learned that he was technically Methodist but he really had more agnostic views. He posed this question to explain his concern: "If an alien (because they would have no bias) came to earth and was given an encyclopedia of World Religions which one would he say is the correct religion? All of them have an important person, a sacred text, and a geographical region." This is probably one of my favorite questions! From his initial question we established the base that a God who governed the universe and created all things, in short a God of order, would have one church and one religion and he would want people to know what it was. We also agreed that He would want the whole world to be apart of His religion. From there, we explained that the difference between our church and all the other churches is we believe in The Book of Mormon, which is another testament of Jesus Christ. Without this additional witness, Christianity blends into the other religions. With this witness an alien would see two nations on opposite sides of the world testifying of the reality of Jesus Christ. Both of which claiming to have seen and talked with Him. The records of these completely isolated nations seamlessly weave together as if they had been corresponding with each other.
I know that The Book of Mormon is the word of God. It is an undeniable witness that Jesus is the Christ and this is his church. I know that the Lord answers sincere prayers.
I love ya'll,
-Elder Shill
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