Hi Mom!
After this week I think I can safely say Elder Shaw and I are out of the funk we were in at the beginning of this transfer. So lets see if I can focus long enough to write this post.
To start, we had in-person Zone Conference earlier this week. We focused a lot on finding people to teach. Which was great and very insightful and reminds me that I need to plan a District Council. Anyway, Elder Shaw and I learned a lot and got a ton of take aways. What it boiled down to was a need for a recommitment. With that said, oh boy did we recommit and put forth the right effort! It started with the small things like waking up at 6:30. Then it started happening. We began to feel the spirit guide us.
😇FIRST SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE😇
After Zone Conference we were given challenges. This time we took them seriously. We were asked to read through our less actives list and spiritually identify families to visit. Now we have like 100 pages with like 20 names on each. We started with a prayer. Then had to pick a page. We took a second and just blurted out a number. It was the same number. A Coincidence? Possibly Spiritual experience? Most definately. By now we knew we were on the right track. We pick our names and go to call them and then… NONE of them picked up 🤦♂️. However, feeling prompted. We just decide to call a person from our area book. He picks up! And it turns out he had been waiting for us to call him for a while now! So we set up a return appointment and are absolutely stoked!
But that’s not the end of the story. All of this was on a Thursday. As a missionary, Thursdays are weekly planning days. Two hours of realizing you have no progressing people and the ones who are progressing have already been taught the same thing 3 times. Still recovering from the spiritual high we just had I felt inspired to go on a bike ride and talk about our goals instead. We are riding a pretty busy trail around a park near our apartment when someone stops us and we start talking to him about what we believe. He was interested and we got his phone number! Then we part ways and are immediately stopped by lady who asks if we were Jehovah’s, haha, we stop and proceed to tell her about what we believe. It turned out that she actually knows a member from our ward! So a lot of potential there.🤞 Anyways, this experience just showed us that when we are committed to the work the way God needs us to be, he will send us those he has prepared.
Plus as we were riding back to our apartment Elder Shaw went to slap me in the butt (not a smart thing to do on bikes) and we totally wipeout 🤣. We are alright. Only acquired a few bumps and bruises. After the crash I just sat there and laughed. It was at that moment, sitting in the orange dirt of Statesville North Carolina, that I realized God blessed us today. He really truly blessed our efforts that day. We went to him in prayer fully expecting a miracle from those that we called. We could have stopped and decided to push through two hours of planning. But we didn’t. We listened to the spirit and kept going. It lead to 3 new contacts. Contacts that we are fully aware came from God. Anyway, we got back to the apartment andimmediately went to our knees to thank him. The spirit was so strong that day. But that’s not the only experience…
😇THE SECOND SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE😇
The next day was Friday. We did service on this day and I will get to that later. We will skip to Saturday. On Saturday we felt that we needed to recommit ourselves to finding. By now our best efforts were calling formers and service posts on Facebook. We needed to change things up. One of the things we focused a lot on at Zone conference was talking with less active and part-member families. So, with that in mind we felt like we needed to use the awesome power of our outstanding Ward Mission Leader Brother Lewis. We made a list (he made a list) and we went out and ministered to handful of people. Said a few prayers and brightened up some peoples day. But what made Saturday so special was Brother Lewis felt like we needed to visit some people the missionaries used to visit. We go over to their house amd they are home! We sit down and get to know them and then Brother Lewis goes into missionary mode and before we know it Elder Shaw and I are leading a lesson on faith in Jesus Christ and Brother Lewis shares a powerful testimony. Guys, the spirit is powerful. He was present, he testified of the truth, he was the reason we were at these people’s home. Anyway, the spiritual experiences aren’t over.
Later that night Elder Shaw and I went alone to a friend who has been meeting with missionaries for 6 years. We have taught him several times and really wanted to challenge him today. We had another great lesson about faith and tied that to President Nelson’s talk in this last general conference. Then I bore my testimony but it wasn’t me, I said what ever came to my mind and it nearly brought me to tears. But then, of course, the spirit was laid on double when Elder Shaw bore his. At this point we are are all speechless. We knew the spirit was there so we pointed it out. And let our friend know what the holy ghost really feels like. Then proceeded to challenge him to search for that feeling again as he prays. The spirit has already been so strong the last few days there is no way we could be blessed more right? WRONG! This Sunday was fast Sunday!
😇THIRD SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE😇
Bear with me on this post 😂! This one undeniably has changed the way I view everything that has to do with missionary work. I started my fast at 6:30 in the morning mostly focusing on having the spirit to be with us and for the knowledge to best help out people. We go to church and are uplifted by several powerful testimonies. Our amazingly powerful Ward Mission Leader got up and bore his testimony about missionary work. We then got back from church at 1pm. Elder Shaw was feeling cranky so he broke his fast and had lunch. I decided to read the New Testament outside. We called a bunch of people in our area book to see if any would like to meet with us. And we actually got a couple! By now it is 3pm and we decide to go meet a family who had just moved into the ward like two days before. Had a great visit and talked about faith and shared 1 Nephi 13:37 and asked “How have you found peace in being a member of the Church”. They came up with some really spirit filled answers. We said goodbye and got back to our apartments at 5pm. By now I could very easily had ended my fast and ate dinner with Elder Shaw but I felt that I needed to fast a bit longer. So at 6:30pm we left to teach a lesson to a recent convert and gave her the sacrament. She talks a lot and I began to feel a bit hungry. We left at around 7:50pm. We are almost to our apartment and Elder Shaw says we need to visit a part member family right now. Already feeling humbled by the spirit of my fast I obliged and flipped a U-Turn. We show up to this family’s house at around 8pm. I’ts getting dark. With no plan in mind we knock on the door. They open it and the wife looks at us and nearly cries. She invites us in. Now this family has been doing work on their house for a while now. We actually had to stop teaching them because they were so busy and couldn’t find time for us. But today was different. We could feel it. As it turns out for the past few weeks they had experienced quite a few tough and humbling things. And just a few days prior were talking about how the missionaries hadn’t been around in a while. We knew why we needed to be there. So we leaned back on one of our challenges from Zone Conference and that was to teach Faith in Christ. We get talking and I feel inspired to ask how their faith has blessed their lives. They thought about it and I could feel the spirit working on them. They opened up so much so we proceeded with the lesson still relying HEAVILY on the spirit. Everyone was so engaged. It was an hour and a half of just pure spirit. We watched the first vision video and they basically committed themselves to go to church. By now it was 9:00, feeling so glad and grateful but also tired and hungry. I hit my knees and offered a heartfelt prayer of gratitude to my heavenly father. It was at this moment my patriarchal blessing came to mind. It says that on my mission I will learn the importance of prayer AND fasting. By now I’m balling, tears and snot running down my face. The only words I could get out were THANK YOU.
The last few days have been the most spiritual and uplifting I have ever had. It has been glorious! 😁
Anyway, I said I’d talk about a service project we had this friday. We went over to a farm and cut up a bunch of wood and cleaned up a burn pile for like 5 hours and then we got to eat dinner with the beautiful family who hosted us. It felt pretty good living up to my name 🤣. But also in the process of cleaning up wood saturday morning a branch slapped me in the face. Had to take a two minute break to clean up the blood.😂 Well that’s been my week. If you have read this far it probably means you love me. So thank you.
Till next time,
Elder Service
P.S. sorry for my lack of photos this week. I was too busy listening to the spirit to remember to take pictures. So please enjoy this picture I found on facebook of Jesus Christ Juking out Satan.
