August 25, 2014

Elder Low's report:

This week I read quite a bit in Moroni. I was especially intrigued with chapter 7, when Moroni records a discourse on faith:

36 Or have angels ceased to appear unto the children of men? Or has he withheld the power of the Holy Ghost from them? Or will he, so long as time shall last, or the earth shall stand, or there shall be one man upon the face thereof to be saved?

37 Behold I say unto you, Nay; for it is by faith that miracles are wrought; and it is by faith that angels appear and minister unto men; wherefore, if these things have ceased wo be unto the children of men, for it is because of unbelief, and all is vain.

I’m sure you get this scripture quoted to you in emails a lot. In fact if I’m not mistaken... I think I quoted this in one my previous emails not long ago. Nevertheless I’m sharing it, or resharing it, because truly the application of this principle is an essential key in missionary work, that quite recently has helped me incredibly. As we have faith all the blessings that are obtained through our obedience are made available.

This week we had a lot of success in helping our investigators achieve a vision of baptism. Many who had not ever previously accepted solid dates now have accepted them, and those who demonstrated that truly they were not interested in taking that step we were able to drop. This really benefited our work. Unfortunately in the mean time we were having a lot of trouble with finding new investigators through knocking doors. Through some introspection during the week, I realized that it was due to our lack of faith. We were constantly striving to be obedient, and we were choosing to knock doors in areas where we felt we were truly sent, but when push came to shove it appeared to me that we did not have faith that the Lord would provide people to teach. To cure this we began going out with visions of who we wanted to find, we decided to act on impressions especially when they involved contacting people on the street. On one such occasion we began to walk to the area we had previously agreed upon, when I saw a lady standing outside her door. I asked Elder Bacon if he had knocked that door in previous exchanges. He said he had. We continued to walk but I felt I really needed to talk to that lady. Unfortunately I ignored the impression. An hour later as we were walking down that street, I looked at the place where the woman had been. She was gone, but I still felt the impression to knock the door. We heeded the prompting even though we had knocked the door before and did so again. We were hurried in and sat down by an older lady. When we offered to say a prayed she demanded it. It was not the lady we had seen before, but upon my asking if there was anyone else in the home who'd like to share the prayer she insisted there was only her husband who was very much not a believer in this sort of thing. We knelt and I offered the prayer. Halfway through we hear the door open and someone walks in and sits down. It was unnerving, but I kept praying. Finally I finished, and we looked over. It was the woman we had seen. Beaming she said, "whoa that's amazing." followed quickly by, "your Mormon missionaries aren't you? I remember a couple of you guys from a long time ago."

I know as we exercise faith the Lord is able to bless us far more abundantly. He wants us to believe. He waits for us to act on that belief, that he may vindicate our leap of faith and light the way before us.

Elder Low.