Faith

Dear Everybody,

     I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas. Christmas for me was spent mostly eating delicious food. We continued to do our missionary work though because there is really no time for a break. We can not afford it. We must be finding, teaching, and baptizing. Sometimes we get discourages though when things do not go perfectly or when it seems that there is nothing we can do. Here is a story about that. 

    We had been tracting for two and a half hours. Normally we do not do doors or going tracting because it is horribly ineffective. Referrals are amazing. Help the missionaries in your area out so that they do not have to do this. Anyways, we had found no one. I had started to lose hope. Then I remembered that we had been discussing how faith is how miracles are brought to pass. Faith is how we have success. The Lord can not help us if we do not have faith in Him. I checked myself and thought we had planned to find three new people, one every hour. We had not found anyone so far. That meant there were three people we just had not found yet. We went into an apartment building. We knocked on two doors. The first person said no. Sad to say, but I was discouraged. Elder Davis is the perfect example of faith though. He went to that last door. He said we would knock on it if I wanted to. I did not want to, but we did it anyway. We met a student who was interested in our message and set up a return appointment. That met there were two people left to find. As we went out onto the street, I knew we would find someone. Which is very contradictory because no one is on the streets this week because of the holidays. But we met a woman, had a good conversation, and gave her a Book of Mormon. Then we had to go to district meeting. We found two out of the three we had planned. Where was the third person? I have to wonder. 

     Referring to this emphasis on convert baptisms, our prophet-leader asked for some introspection. He stated that convert baptisms are not the responsibility of the Missionary Department of the Church, but are the responsibility of the ecclesiastical line officers and members. Thoughtfully President Kimball suggested:

“When we try to find causes for our lack of greater progress in missionary work, I suggest that we ponder what happened at the Last Supper when the Savior indicated that one present would betray Him. The disciples did not look or point at each other, but all responded with a very quick question, ‘Lord, is it I?’ (Matt. 26:22.)

Let us all assume that we might be part of the reason that the work does not go on as well as we think it should.” (Mission Presidents’ Seminar, June 1979.)  

     Maybe that was it. Maybe it was just not part of the Lord's plan for that day. I did learn something after all from not having success. The Lord has a plan to teach us how to do His work when we do all that we can. Then we wait for Him to perform the miracle that we need to fill in the gap.

     I did promise a Christmas story. I wrote in down in my planner so that I will not forget. 

Hope that everyone is doing well.

sincerely,

Elder Perez

Our home ward sent letters to the missionaries.  This one got sent to Evan. :)