This week has been really good. I can’t really say that there was a big moment this week that really stuck out to me. But there were several times throughout this last week when I could feel Heavenly Father was teaching me something.
Earlier this week we were pretty far out in our area in a neighborhood that we know fairly well. We had stopped by a few people and no one was home, we were about to walk back to our car when a woman yelled out to us asking us if we were "Mormons". We walked over and talked to her and found out her name, she told us that she has known the missionaries for a long time and she met with them when she lived in New York and when she lived in Philadelphia. We set up a time that we could come by later that week. When we went back, we taught her and her 8 year old niece the Restoration. She committed to be baptized. They were both taking notes and we learned a lot about her and some of her past trials she has gone through. She has really been prepared for the gospel throughout her life, and because of the good experiences she has had with missionaries and members of the church, she has gained a great respect for the church and feels that if she is going to go to church, it will be ours. We have plans to meet with her again this week.
I feel that at that time I finally realized that sometimes I will just be planting seeds. It’s hard to see the bigger picture or the effects of what I am doing, even the little things. But in that moment, I came to a better understanding of how people can be prepared for the gospel.
Just last night I had another great teaching moment from Heavenly Father. We didn't really have any appointments for Sunday, we planned to do some stop-bys of some less actives and a few former investigators and we wanted to do things that would help us meet our goals or get closer to them. While we were out though, we had very little success. No one was home and we felt the entire time that something was just off. I feel like we definitely got down on ourselves for not being able to find anyone. We did talk to a mother and her son from the Caribbean who gave us their number, so we had some success. But overall the night felt slow. Something wasn't right. We stopped by one last person, who didn't answer and as we walked away from the door, it clicked that we hadn't learned what we were supposed to that night. We were being taught humility. I realized that we needed to ask Heavenly Father what he wanted us to do more often. It took me several hours to learn it, and I still have a long way to go, but I know now that Heavenly Father puts me in situations to help others, and myself. I hope that I will be able to internalize this principle as I get a new companion this week.
I look forward to the teaching moments I will have this week, and hope that I will be able to find them more quickly and apply them to my service.
Love, Elder Parker
No comments:
Post a Comment