Busy Week

The work is going well. We are in n out with investigators, progressing to not progressing. We aren't teaching like crazy, but we are planting seeds everywhere we go. We have the Spirit with us.

You know, the success in a mission can be measured a lot of ways, one of those being teaching and baptizing. I haven't had a lot of that. But people have their agency and decide, I do my part when I invite and try my best to teach people about the joy this truth we share offers (Elder Vogt taught me that one). I am successful, I just don't think I realize it. First, I've changed a lot, I am not who I was. I have a broader understanding, more love for people and for what I believe. I have a stronger testimony. That in itself is success to me, my development. I'm the most important convert on my mission. 

The second thing is the fact that I don't realize how much good I actually do. And I don't mean that pridefully, but a lot of times we just don't realize the good we do. I read a talk by Gordon B. Hinckley that talked about that. That's totally me. I don't see the fruits of my labors too often, and that is really hard for me. But that doesn't mean I'm not doing good. You know, days out here can get tedious and sometimes I feel like I'm just doing things and they aren't going anywhere. But I know I'm making a difference somehow. In the way I teach people, in the way I talk to them at the doorstep while tracting, in the way I treat them at dinner or in lessons, in the way I joke and am myself, even in the way I smile and speak may help someone. I just don't know.

This was made apparent to me in sacrament meeting yesterday. A couple of days before, we had visited a Less Active/Recent Convert. Nothing exciting, talked about some stuff in the Book of Mormon and talked about Christ. I thought nothing of it, if anything, I felt like it was just blahh. But in sacrament meeting I got a tap on the shoulder from an older lady behind me. She passed me a note and it said something like this

"Dear Elders,

I visited (Less Active/ Recent Convert) this week. She said how much she enjoyed your visit and could feel your love. She felt edified by the Spirit and was grateful for the stop by. You truly are making a difference."

The Lord magnified us even when I didn't think anything of it. We were instruments to the Lord in touching her life. I know the Lord IS doing something, even when I don't recognize it. We do not work alone out here.

Elder Wold