January 20, 2014
Area: Broadway 2 East
Companion: Galvez
It sounds like you all had a pretty good week :) I had a decent week, it would have been better if people didn't cancel appointments with us... We had 21 set lessons to teach and only about 6-8 worked out...the rest cancelled or the people weren't home.. We tried so many different people without success. We had a fine day on Monday, and a great day Tuesday, but Wednesday and Thursday were horrible, we didn't teach at all... As a mission we are currently reading in Acts and just today I read the chapter where Paul and Barabas were serving a mission together and in one of the cities, most of the people rejected them and they were sent away, but instead of being sad or mad, they "shook the dust off their feet" at the city and walked away. As they walked away, they were filled with the spirit and happiness. I don't care how much people reject me, I know that what we teach is true and it is their choice to accept it or not. I never really feel sad that we are rejected, I only feel sad that the people aren't willing to change for the better.
In answer to your question about my health: I have been keeping my body strong and well, I
have even noticed myself getting stronger. While biking I really only
use 2 gears, occasionally 3, 3 of the highest gears! I have been eating
pretty well too, but not quite as many vegetables as I should be (I know my nieces are putting me to shame by eating their vegetables), but I will always eat a salad when members offer it with dinner. I have been
eating bananas and apples though.
We
have actually seen some progress with some of our investigators, even
though we didn't teach many lessons. With one of them we have the plan
to invite him to be baptized this week. And actually last week we did a
lot of service for their family. Their family is a part-member family
and Oscar, the husband, works a ton, so we helped him start putting
together a treadmill and exercise bike that he bought. We started doing
that 2 weeks ago, and since then he didn't have time to do anything on
them, so last week (with his family's permission) we spent some time to put them together and get
everything set up so he could use them. He didn't know anything about
this until Saturday-- when we surprised him with them. He is one of our
best investigators, and we have been helping him strengthen the testimony
that he does have and to help him be willing to take that step and get baptized
soon.
This week's Hour of Power had another little miracle too. We went
knocking on doors, on a street after saying our prayer with a member. We were
knocking every door with little success. We talked to a few people, but
they didn't seem too interested, but the second to last door that we
knocked was a really good contact. She is a really Catholic lady and she
hasn't ever wanted to talk with missionaries before, but while we were
talking I felt inspired to ask how her faith in Jesus Christ has helped
her in her life. She opened up and told us about how she had lost her
father recently, and how her faith has helped her feel a little more at
peace with that. We talked to her a little about the Plan of Salvation
and that she can see her father again, and she got more interested. We
asked if she would be willing to listen to a brief presentation we have
about that message, so she invited us to come by another day when she could have more time. What
made this an even better experience is when we knocked the next
door, we found a member! We completely forgot that the member lives on
that street, and it is actually better that we did forget because we probably
wouldn't have knocked it if we did remember. We talked to her about this
neighbor, and it turns out that she knows the neighbor really well and
goes over there quite often. (yay) We asked her if she could talk to that
friend a little bit more about the Plan of Salvation. This member has been wanting to invite that friend to listen
to us for a long time now, and now she gets the chance to-- because of our
miracle during Hour of Power! Proverbs 3:5-6 " Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding;
6
In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths." Through faith and trust in the Lord and His work, which we are doing, He do direct our (my) path--miracles do occur!
We also have an investigator that has been taught for 10
years and has only one problem for baptism...smoking. We have been
working with him still and we met with him on Sunday with our new Ward
Mission Leader (his good friend/our neighbor), and this member was super
good in that lesson. We didn't even have to tell him that we want to be
blunt with this investigator-- he went in there with us and a great lesson was taught. Visits with members along are always much more effective. I know that this man has a testimony, and I am so glad he has been reading scriptures. Now
he just needs to tell us that he is ready to start the addiction-recovery program we have
from the church to kill his smoking addiction.
I love you guys and I love this work. I feel like
Paul the apostle, I feel happy and full of the spirit even though I am
getting rejected multiple times a day. Haha, I don't even care that I'm
rejected, I just care for the people and hope they eventually realize
that they need the message and accept it. Some are opening up their doors...here's to a good next week :)
Love you all,
Elder Stanley Scott Dye
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