Hey everyone!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! You'll be happy to know that I ate like 4 Thanksgiving dinners and came home a couple pounds fatter. In preparation for a Thanksgiving mission devotional, my mission president reached out to me and asked me to pre-record a special musical number. I threw together an arrangement of "Because I Have Been Given Much" and "For the Beauty of the Earth", and sent it in after the first take. It turned out super well, and President Spencer hyped me up afterwards and told me he's gonna listen to it on loop. Patriarchal blessing prophecies were fulfilled. 🙏
Elder Barnes and I have been continuing to pop off by finding a bunch of really really cool people lately. First, we found the Pino family! We knocked on the door of what we thought was going to be this nice old lady that we talked to a couple of weeks back. But when we knocked, we met the Pino family, who had just moved from Venezuela 3 days prior! They let us in, we shared the message of the Restoration while sitting in a circle on their furniture-less floor. They loved it! Their 8-year-old daughter was smiling wide and hardly even blinked.
We also found the Velazquez-Ramos family. We knock and they warmly welcome us in. The father tells us that he had also recently moved from Venezuela with his daughter while his wife had been living here alone for the past year. Nothing gets a missionary going more than when someone says they have been looking for a church to attend. We told them about our weekly service, and when the mother realized that it would conflict with her work schedule. instead of giving excuses, she faithfully stated, "Imma talk with my boss and take the day off. If the Lord wants me to go to church, Imma go to church." 😎
Going into these last couple of weeks of my mission, I've been reflecting a bunch about what I've accomplished. For the first 3/4ths of my mission, I really wasn't seeing too much success in terms of baptisms and all that. I've always worked hard and I would find some pretty cool people, and after I left an area, the missionaries that came in would baptize the people I taught. I honestly had accepted that I was just a seed-planter, and I was okay with other missionaries reaping the fruit. 🍎🍓🍌🍐
It wasn't until these last couple of transfers that I realized that I could be more than just a seed-planter - I could plant the seeds, water them, till the ground, support the base, and watch them grow and grow until fruits started to grow, and be the one to reap the fruits all within just a couple of months! I know that God can perform miracles, and I knew he could use me as an instrument in His hands as long as I was sharpened and polished through the development of Christlike attributes and teaching skills. One of my biggest regrets in the mission is not having studied Preach My Gospel as thoroughly as I have these past couple of months, because I've seen miracles and promised blessings on the daily. I know this is the Lord's work, and He loves to show me that every single day that I decided to follow His will rather than my own.
Miracle:
So we send a list around the ward for members to sign-up to join us in our lessons. The list also got passed to the youth, and one of our amigos, Jose, signed up to join us in a lesson on Friday at 6pm. Now, at first we asked ourselves if it would be a good idea for a nonmember to join us in a lesson with another nonmember... but then we decided to full-send it. The Wednesday before, we had plans to teach the Restoration to Jose again so that he could be prepared for the lesson, but he ended up having a couple of questions and we ended up teaching him the Plan of Salvation because he needed it more. We were now just praying that we could set up a lesson on Friday at 6pm to teach the Plan of Salvation.
Lucky enough we did! And when we knocked on the door........ they didn't answer 😔 However, we knew we couldn't give up cause Jose was counting us and we were counting on him. We decided to visit the Tineo-Paz family, a family that we had found a couple of weeks back and hadn't answered for a while. We knocked on their door, and they (finally) answered!!! We got in, taught the Plan of Salvation, and at the end we talked about the importance of going to church. We then looked over to Jose, and he continued to bear one of the sweetest, most genuine testimonies. He related something along the lines of:
"Now, I have never been a fan of religion ever since I was a kid. I have gone to other churches, and it just wasn't for me. But when I go to the Church of Jesus Christ, it just feels different. When the missionaries come to my house and help me learn, it just feels different. So even though I'm not a member of the church, I invite all of you to come to church this Sunday, because you will feel different as well."
I had one of the biggest grins on my face the whole time. He was following the Spirit even though he didn't even know it. Sadly, the Tineo-Paz family didn't come to church that Sunday. But I don't think that lesson was for the Tineo-Paz family. It was for Jose. He talked to us after church and relayed how sad he was that they didn't show up. We helped him to recognize that that feeling of sadness was Godly sorrow, and that we are more than accustomed to that feeling whenever people decide not to change or keep their commitments. I can't help but see Jose as a future missionary. 🙌
I love being a missionary.
Elder Terry
Fotos:
1) Post-baptism photo with Axel and Alicia Morales
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