One More Week!
Hello, family! Happy to hear about your weeks! Incredible that Charlie already is going on a mission... You guys all will be shipping off younger now. We`re receiving some stud 18-year-old missionaries here. (Including one from Canada, which is fun.)
I`m not sure what happened - I must have had a Harry Potter confundus curse put on me, because for the last few weeks I`ve been happily telling people that I have 17 months in the mission. Then, this week, I got to thinking about it and realized I had made a mistake. I have20 months! Wow. Suddenly I`m the oldest one in my district... and maybe even my zone! Time does fly on wings of lightning.
We had another really good week this week! No migraines, and lots of miracles. We`re working really hard and finding some great people.
This week I learned to better recognize and follow the promptings of the Spirit while contacting. We had numerous experiences where we felt a prompting to knock a door, went to do it, and found a person who was ready to receive us. I`ll tell about the first.
We were knocking doors earlier in the week - we hadn`t found anyone new to teach yet, and our investigator pool was pretty low. We had been knocking doors for about an hour and had gotten some harsh rejections, and I guess our spirits might have been a little down - but not to the point of discouragement. As we walked to see if a backup plan was home, we passed an open door - I looked inside and made eye contact with someone inside, and I had an impression to stop and knock the door. But here`s the thing I`m learning: Spiritual impressions are very easy to ignore. Usually the Spirit doesn`t shout at us, and if we choose to ignore it, we can. I did, in this case - I thought `Well, I don`t think that was probably an impression... and if it was, we already passed the house... we`ll just keep walking.` And then I thought about how we had asked that morning for God to lead us to the elect who needed the message. And I thought about how I had felt an impression to knock. And I thought about how, if God had indeed guided us there to meet that person, then to keep walking didn`t even make sense - where would we be walking to? By the time I thought those things, we had already walked 3 blocks... but I decided we would go back and knock the house. Good thing we did.
We knocked the house, and a nice lady came out and smiled warmly at us - a far different reception from what we had gotten so far that morning! We talked to her, and found out that the missionaries had met her a year ago and made an appointment to go back and visit her, but that she wasn`t there for the appointment and they never had come back. But she seemed very open and invited us to come back and teach her.
From that experience, I learned a few things:
1) It always pays to follow the promptings of the Spirit - God knows better than us how to find success.
2) Spiritual impressions come when we ask for them.
3) It`s better to be alert and prepared to act on the impressions right when they come... and not have to walk 3 blocks back.
And, really quick, the other news:
Elder Moterroso and I each bought a pound of ice cream!
Love you all so, so much. Have a good week!
Elder Stockton
August 19, 2013
Wow...
This was most probably the fastest week of my mission. Days passed in the blink of an eye. Which I guess is because we were busy! We had a very good week this week, even better than last week! Some investigators progressed, others fell off the map, and we found some new ones.
We had some experiences with faith this week. During our district meeting on Tuesday, we discussed some missionary success stories that President had shared with us. I noticed a common theme in all of these stories: In each one, the missionaries refused to give up and accept failure when things didn`t go the way they wanted. They kept working until they weren`t allowed to work any more - and there, during that `extra mile` they found success - after demonstrating their faith by continuing to work hard to reach their goals, even after it seemed impossible.
Well, this week we put high goals for ourselves, and worked hard, hard hard all week to try to achieve them. We saw many miracles during the week and made a lot of progress.
On Sunday, we needed 4 more lessons to meet our goal. We had one lesson after church, but then... nothing! From 3:00 in the afternoon to 6:30 in the afternoon, we walked from plan to backup plan, knocking houses and looking for people to teach. After a few hours, we were tempted to let our faith wane and decide not to worry about the goal - next week. But, we didn`t. We knew we had been working very hard all week to meet our goals, and we trusted that God would help us complete our goals.
Well, then we had 2 more lessons - we knocked a door and found a new investigator teach (great lesson), and then taught a pre-set lesson with our investigators who had come to church that day.
We needed one more lesson to meet our goal, and we only had about 20 minutes left before time to head back to the apartment. We had no idea who else we could visit, but we prayed that we would find someone to teach. I pulled out the phone and started scrolling through names, and I found J and A, who we hadn`t been able to see during the week. I called them, and they said we could come by. We ended up teaching a great lesson with them as well, and met with our goal, feeling grateful and happy.
Maybe it could seem like we were more worried about numbers than about teaching people, but it`s not so. At first I felt a little like that too, but then I realized that the numbers are there to give us a goal of what to aim for. They aren`t the end in and of themselves, but they help us exert greater efforts to be more effective in the work. Anyway, it was a good experience for us that strengthened our faith.
The members are so good here. Well, really, all the Argentine people. They always give us food. Sometimes we have more food than we can even eat, because in about half the houses we go by they give us food to either eat there or take home. Good people.
We had interviews with President Carter on Tuesday. It was an excellent interview, as always. He told me that he wants me to see these last 4 months as the best time of my mission. And, really, these last 3 weeks have been. We`ve been working really hard and seeing lots of results, and it`s satisfying.
Maybe it could seem like we were more worried about numbers than about teaching people, but it`s not so. At first I felt a little like that too, but then I realized that the numbers are there to give us a goal of what to aim for. They aren`t the end in and of themselves, but they help us exert greater efforts to be more effective in the work. Anyway, it was a good experience for us that strengthened our faith.
The members are so good here. Well, really, all the Argentine people. They always give us food. Sometimes we have more food than we can even eat, because in about half the houses we go by they give us food to either eat there or take home. Good people.
We had interviews with President Carter on Tuesday. It was an excellent interview, as always. He told me that he wants me to see these last 4 months as the best time of my mission. And, really, these last 3 weeks have been. We`ve been working really hard and seeing lots of results, and it`s satisfying.
This week we found an investigator named M. We were walking down the street during the early evening, and I wasn`t thinking about contacting people at the moment - my mind was concentrated on something else - but I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye, and looked over to see a cute young pup jump up and put his paws on a fence, looking at us. As I looked over, I looked past the dog and saw a man building a chair in the yard. As we walked, the words, `Talk to that man` came to my mind, and almost felt a mental push to go do it. We immediately turned back and talked to the man, and after talking to him for a minute he let us in to teach him. He`s a great guy, who years ago felt he was let down by the churches he had attended and reverted to worshiping God in his own house. As we got to know him more, we found out that his greatest desire is to live in a place like Zion, where the people care about each other and watch out for each other and work together for the good of everyone. We told him about the church, and he became eager to investigate and find out for himself whether it is like that.
He`s a good guy. I believe that God used Sancho (the dog) to get my attention so that we could contact M.
It`s an exciting and tense time in the mission - the new missionaries are finally arriving. We have more missionaries than ever before, and the younger missionaries are being called upon to prepare themselves faster and better than ever before so that they can lead the areas as the more experienced missionaries are going home. My companion`s going to be one of those who receives extra responsibilities, I know. He`s a stud!
We made barbecue wings today... and now we`re going to go play soccer with some kids in the ward. I`ll probably watch. But who knows, I may play a little. I like basketball better. A good P-day.
It`s been a good week. And of course, it`s fantastic to read your letters and know how you all are doing... I`m happy for you! Hope it`s a great week this week.
Thanks for your prayers and your love. We have the best family in the world.
Elder Stockton
No comments:
Post a Comment