May 7, 2012

A huge Blue Heron outside our window during study time. 

Well, this week has been interesting. We have been busting our butts trying to find people to teach and haven't been met with actual results. We have tried about all the part-member families, former investigators, tracting and everything else we could think of and have just felt our wheels spinning. 

Zone Conference rolled around this week and the topic of our discussion was finding yet again. Basically the message delivered over an 8 hour period was, be obedient, have faith and work hard and you will find. That depressed me because we had been incorporating all of those elements into our efforts and that promise had yet to be fulfilled. So I went home in a terrible mood. I took some time to think about what I needed to do and decided that at this point it was up to the Lord to bless us with people to teach because we had done all that was in our power. So I called on the Lord to increase my faith in his promises and felt reassured that we would find. 

I had prayed before this several times to know if He would help us find and He had promised me a few weeks ago that we would be successful.  So we went out and biked to dinner. After dinner we had planned to tract because there was nothing left to do, when I felt a strong impression to go to a part-member family's house in the area. They were not usually home, but I trusted that that was what He wanted us to do and we went with it. We not only found them at home, but they welcomed us in! We talked for a bit and finally she said that she was interested in learning more and wanted us to come back for dinner! We set it up for a few days later and had a great experience. It was a bit interesting as far as teaching was concerned based on some off topic questions and our teaching was a bit rusty, but the Spirit was there and I felt the assurance that the Spalding family is one of the reasons I am here. They are a young couple with a 2 1/2 yr old boy. He was raised LDS and she was brought up Baptist. They aren't married, but we can fix that and it is very clear to me that they are on Heavenly Father's short order list.

But it gets better...

So the night we set things up with the Spaldings, we got a call from another set of missionaries. They said that a family that is super ready was moving into our ward the next day and that the family needed help moving. We go the info and were ready to help the next morning. The member that was working with them from the other ward filled us in on the details. He said that he has been working to help them come to the gospel for a long time now, but that things had gotten interesting in the past few weeks. She was diagnosed with cancer 3 weeks ago and got an infection from a dog bite too boot. So the friend offered to give her a blessing and she accepted. So after the blessing was administered, she went into surgery. Not only was the infection gone but also the cancer and the symptoms Silica's disease. A miracle. Needless to say they are interested in knowing more. Oh, and the move went well.