Aug 20, 2012

OK so this week was tough but good. Our area is struggling with a small teaching pool so we have been out talking to everybody, knocking doors and working with ward councils (7 to be exact) to find people to teach. We have received several good leads but we are taking the approach of having the ward councils do all the inviting. The ward councils have received assignments on who they are to invite (people they know well) to be taught by us. This approach is more effective than us just knocking their door. They then report back to the ward council on how that went and then the Ward Mission Leader reports to us in our weekly correlation meeting. The process is slower but yields more results. We are in the waiting for the reporting stage so in the mean time we are doing our own finding work. We actually had an amazing experience finding the other day. So we were working in our spanish area and it was 8:36. All day we had been out working our tails off and nothing had happened. We got back into the car and I suggested to Elder Murillo that we say a prayer. We prayed and then sat for a minute thinking. Elder Murillo suggested that we go try and check up on a referral that we have received. We had checked that referral not 2 hours earlier but nobody was home. We decided to trust that it was a prompting. We drove to the referral and nobody was there. Elder Murillo then told me "We are here in this are for a reason, we need to find someone who lives around here". The time was 8:44. I looked and him and said "well we have 16 minutes, we will find someone, teach him and invite him to be baptized with a date before this day is over". Rules are that we finish working at 9pm unless we are in a lesson so we had 16 minutes to get into a lesson. We went and knocked a near by door, the lady was a member and told us her neighbor spoke spanish so we knocked that door, and nobody was home. We heard some music down the street. It was hispanic music coming from a party at a house about 3 blocks away. We started to walk towards the party and then stopped, wondering if it was a good idea. We decided to keep going towards the music. We got to where the party was and Elder Murillo noticed a house that was 2 houses from the party that he thought was hispanic so we decided to knock it. As we approached the door I noticed a truck in the driveway with a campaign election sticker and I told Elder Murillo "This house is definatley not hispanic, what hispanic has campaign election stickers on their cars. Lol right then I saw a hispanic guy get up to answer the door and whispered an apology to Elder Murillo. We did our door approach and the man let us in. It was 8:58! We taught the man a short version of the Restoration. The Spirit was strong. We invited him to be baptized Sept 20th and he agreed. As we left we were shocked how the Lord answered our prayer in the last 2 minutes of the day. The whole day seemed like it had been a waste but the Lord made all that work count for something, and blessed us in the last 2 minutes. It is when we give that last bit of effort that the Lord manifests His power.

Last night we had another tender moment. We had been working in this one neighborhood for about an hour and it was now 9pm when we got in the car to go home. As we started to drive away I noticed a house where I had seen an African lady sitting outside of when we arrived in the neighboorhood. As I drove past I looked in the window and saw the cupboards open and it seemed as if they were mostly empty of any food. I don't know what it was that made me turn around but I can testify that it was the Spirit. I turned around and parked the car. and told Elder Murillo that I felt as if we needed to knock that door. We walked up to the door and noticed that the lady (about 30yrs old) was laying on a mattress outside with her young baby. We asked her if she was alright and she said no. We began to talk to her and she told us of how on sat her family had called from Sudan Africa and informed her that her mother had died. She had taken it really hard. We testified to her of the power of the Atonement and of eternal famlies and that she would see her mother again. We then laid our hands upon her head and gave her a preisthood blessing. She began to cry and thanked us over and over again. Afterward we got in contact with the english missionaries who are going over tonight to meet her and help her. As we drove home the car was quiet after what had just happened and I found myself pondering on what had just happened. It was just this feeling that I had felt that I needed to knock that door and by following it, it helped a women feel peace with the passing of her mother. The church is true, and everything it teaches is true, it is all true and no inteligent person can deny that. If you sit down and really study it out in your mind and in your heart you will know that this is the Lord's church.

Love,

Elder Jolly