"Commitment is doing the thing you said you would do, long after the mood you said it in has left you." George R. Zalucki
From Elder Jenkins:
we expect miracles.
after all we are the miracle mission. we baptized 1203 people this
year, a 32%increase from last year. it's great. our
mission is very unified and we share our miracles because there are
hundreds of them every day.
so back to our miracle.
we had been praying to find someone who was prepared to receive this
gospel. we were in much need, considering we were left with 5
investigators when we got here. we are up to more now, but we still
needed the lord's help. we asked a member if they knew of anyone we
could go visit two weeks ago, and he told us a name. we went and
visited them with him and only the guy, kyle, was there.
kyle's wife is a member but less active. we sat down like every
other lesson, and as usual we got to know him and things. then we
asked him what he expected to get out of our visits with him, (one
of the skills learned in ZC) much to our surprise, he literally said,
"i would like to be baptized the middle of next month, then
eventually be sealed in the temple to my sweet wife."
if we had not asked him we would have never known.
i am thankful for inspired leaders and the lord preparing people for
us.
he tells us
"and i will go before your face..." he did. and he prepared kyle to
hear this gospel. not only that, he already knew he needed to quit
smoking, and he was already planning on it. GOLDEN!
we set a date for his baptism feb 13th. he already had a book of
mormon, and he reads it regularly.
i dare you to tell me miracles don't exist, because your wrong if
you think they don't.
love forever
elder jenkins
When I was 14 or 15, I had a teacher that prided himself on being a thinker. We had some enlightening discussions in his classroom. He helped me ask some great questions that led to tremendous answers that still guide me today. We agreed on many things, but were at odds on a few. One of them was religion. I had a lot of respect for this man, but it amazed me that someone who claimed to be open minded was blind to just how closed minded he was when it came to God. He was always challenging my faith. He considered my beliefs to be a sign of my weakness. His claim was that unless it could be acknowledged by the 5 senses, there was no proof that God existed. I struggled as a young person to help him understand that he was limiting his understanding to what he had personally experienced, cutting himself off from other possibilities. The best that I could do was to try and help him understand how I knew; that things of the spirit could only be understood and perceived by the spirit. Years later, I still don't have a better answer to this one fundamental question, but I face the same dilemma. This blog is dedicated to preserving stories and experiences of missionaries in the Arizona Mesa Mission both during and after their formal missions. Some stories are fun and light hearted, but others are of a spiritual nature. The blog forum is so convenient, yet the format is limiting. There is more to these words than letters on a page. To truly understand the messages requires not only an open mind, but a soft heart.
After all, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, else what's a Heaven for?- Robert Browning"
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