Week 66: A God Of Miracles

I know I say this all the time but I have really seen God using me as an instrument in His hands this past week. My testimony has been tested and tried but also strengthened and secured. 

Also I basically use these emails as my journal so welcome to my novel. 

Here are some of the miracles I saw this week:

☆ We found 10 new people to teach this week and 6 of our friends came to church!

☆ We gave our zone conference training and didn't die! Apparently the other missionaries enjoyed it as well. I have to keep telling myself that they're being genuine and not just saying that to be nice lol. 

☆ We met with Michael and his daughter Mikayla (who is almost 11 years old) two times this week and Mikayla said she wants to be baptized!! Now they just need to come to church.

☆ We stopped by Virgie on our way back down to Del Rio from zone conference and she said in a couple weeks she's going to start coming back to church and meeting with us!!

☆ We met a man named Mark who already knows Joseph Smith is a prophet and that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. Mind blown! Sad thing is that we haven't been able to get in contact with him since that first encounter because the number and address he gave us are kinda wonky. We're going to keep searching for him though.

☆ We met with a member family and found out that their youngest son isn't baptized and he wants to be! They prefer Spanish though so we passed them off to the spanish elders. 

☆ We had a lesson with a lady named Denise who used to meet with the missionaries awhile ago and then we helped her with yardwork on Friday AND THEN she came to church yesterday!! We didn't know she was going to be able to make it and then she just showed up! 

☆ We had another lesson with Daniel and he read the chapter we assigned twice and understood it really well! We taught him the plan of salvation and he also understood that super well. We love him. 

☆ Back when I first became companions with Elder Anderson we had an amazing lesson with a guy named Frank but haven't been able to meet for over 3 months. Well, we were finally able to break that streak last Thursday and had a great lesson with him! There were many times I wanted to stop trying with him but I felt the impression that I needed to be more patience and keep giving him a chance. Hopefully we will keep meeting consistently.

☆ One hot afternoon Elder Christensen and I were walking around after a few lessons fell through and we were about to turn back to go to our car but decided to walk one street further and then we met Angelica! When we said hello she motioned for us to come closer and immediately told us that she knows God sent us there to talk with her. She said that she used to meet with missionaries and that she's been going through a really hard time with her family recently. She took our visit as a sign of God's love and said she knew she couldn't turn us away. The crazy thing is that we wouldn't have met her if her son in law hadn't just pulled up to her house and been talking with her outside because we only saw him when walking down the perpendicular street. God works in mysterious ways and I'm so glad we walked just a little further so we could help Angelica feel God's love for her. 

☆ This isn't really a miracle but the spanish elders passed off a guy to us named Pasquel and he is so sweet. He had a stroke recently so he can't walk or talk very well but he loves what we've taught him and said that he felt so loved by the people in our branch. He also wants to be baptized but wants to wait until he's able to walk and talk better... which makes sense. 

☆ Thursday night we were driving through a neighborhood and I saw a huge spider walking across the road so we pulled over to go look at it and then this family came over to look at it as well. We started talking with them and the dad invited us to come over to their porch and gave us some drinks. We talked with him about the Book of Mormon and set up a time to meet today!

☆ Friday night we got a text from a random number saying that they had an amazing family for us to teach. We called the number and found out that he lives in San Antonio but is friends with a couple down here who are really interested in learning more about the church and have been reading the Book of Mormon! Their names are Ryan and Savannah and they have a 3 year old girl. We met with them last night and they are amazing!! Ryan already knows the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith is a prophet but Savannah hasn't gotten into it as much. After the lesson Savannah was really excited to start reading though and meeting people in our congregation. I'm almost 100% positive they will get baptized. 

☆ We had 3 lessons set up for Saturday night and all of them fell through... which made us kinda sad but we decided to use that extra time to stop by Regal's house for the 3rd time that week and we finally caught him there! He told us that he was actually going to head out but he heard God tell him that he needed to stay home. He listened and then moments later we showed up. We taught him about temples and he absolutely LOVED it. He told us that he was visiting some of his relative's graves recently and heard God tell him that he has been chosen to help them. He didn't know what that meant at the time but when we told him that he can be baptized in behalf of his relatives that have passed away in the temple he understood what God was telling him. This man is so receptive to the spirit. It's insane. Then the next morning we had a member bring him to church and he LOVED it (oh and he told us that he was ready last Sunday but that he never saw or heard anyone come to the door. Maybe our member knocked on the wrong house?? Oopsie). Regal said that he wants to come to church next week and then set a date to be baptized!!

☆ Remember Yolanda?? She came to church!! She hasn't been to church in a pretty long time. We sent a pretty low key invite to church on Friday and then she miraculously showed up. She told us that she had made a promise to God that she would come and she followed through!

If I'm being honest this week was also full of many disappointments and trying times for me (including lots of crying) but now looking back I can see that God's hand was in everything we did because we were willing to follow the spirit's direction and keep pushing forward even when we didn't have the motivation. Being on a mission has been really hard for me but those trying times have molded me into better person and solidified my faith Jesus Christ.

I was reading in Mormon 9 this week  and these verses really stuck out to me: "19 And if there were miracles wrought then, why has God ceased to be a God of miracles and yet be an unchangeable Being? And behold, I say unto you he changeth not; if so he would cease to be God; and he ceaseth not to be God, and is a God of miracles.

20 And the reason why he ceaseth to do miracles among the children of men is because that they dwindle in unbelief, and depart from the right way, and know not the God in whom they should trust."

Earlier in the chapter Moroni (Mormon's son who is speaking in this chapter) teaches that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever which means that miracles and revelations did not stop after Christ's earthly ministry. In these verses above he teaches us that if God was fluid and inconsistent then He would cease to be God, therefore if He was a God of miracles in the past then He is still a God of miracles today. He also explains that miracles are dependent on our faith, so the reason we may not be seeing miracles is because of our own disbelief. I can testify to you that God IS a God of miracles because I have seen it in my own life and in His plan for us. I know that revelation did not stop after Jesus Christ ascended into heaven and that He still speaks to us today through living prophets and to us individually through the Holy Ghost. 

- Elder Christensen

Pictures

☆ The nasty spider to pulled over to go look at. This was it's defense mechanism

☆ Service for Denise