I Will Find You

So imagine for a moment what it was like living in the pre-mortal world.  We know we had a Mother and Father in Heaven. We know that we were learning and training there.  We know that the plan was presented to come to earth and get a body and to live by faith.  We know that anyone born  on the earth accepted God's plan for us.  We know we actually shouted for joy when the earth was ready for us.  And we know that everyone already has a spiritual knowledge and testimony that God is our Heavenly Father and this church is the true church. Every important truth that comes to our heart or mind is a reawakening of what we knew there.

But imagine what it was like when it was your turn to step through the veil and your spirit entered your baby body. We know you were an adult spirit because you deliberately made the choice to come to earth.  Imagine all the friends and family you had there telling you good-bye.    What would have been the last words your best friend would have said to you? 

What would have been the last words you would have said to them as you went to be born into an LDS family or to a life where you would become a member of Christ's church?

Your friend may now speak a different language than you.  He may dress differently, believe differently, have a different color of skin or nationality. It doesn't matter.  He is your friend from Heaven and he is counting on you.

Members of this church do not have to convince people of the truth we have.  These people's spirits already know.  The memory may be covered by circumstances, ignorance or sin, etc.. What wise members need to do is invite, invite, invite.  They need to open their mouths and invite everyone to hear the message of the restored gospel.

Because you definitely promised that you would. 

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Francis prayed to find a church to be baptized into. The next week the Elders knocked on her door. Today Elder Pack baptized her. She was prepared to recognize the Lord's church. She's great!

Hastening The Work

As Relief Society President I am responsible for teaching the class now and then.  And I can pick anything that I think the sisters need most to talk about.
So this week I had the lesson all planned.  But while studying about it I felt the Lord wanted me to talk about something else, Missionary Work.  So I found great stories and articles and put the lesson together yesterday, Saturday.
Then this morning I was praying and had a flash of inspiration from the Lord.  He didn't want MY lesson.  He had another lesson in mind.  So I went with it.
I told the sisters that for every 1000 doors that the missionaries knock on, one person is baptized.  That is more or less depending on what part of the world you live in but it is the average. 1 baptism per 1000.
Then I told them that if a member invites their friends or relatives to the member's home, with the missionaries present to give a spiritual thought or lesson, it results in 2 baptisms per 3 people.
1 per 1000 OR
2 per 3
Then I had the three newest members of our Branch stand and tell how they were introduced into the church.
Two had friends introduce them to the missionaries and have the lessons in the member's home.  The third one had a friend who was a missionary teach her.  We counted her 1/2.
The sisters cried as they bore testimonies of the truthfulness of this fact and I also had the member missionaries themselves tell how they did it.
I told them it was easy once you know how.
Our sisters are responsible for feeding our missionaries every night.  They take turns.  I explained that now all they need to do is invite a friend or relative also and the missionaries can take it from there.
Or I pointed out that one of the sisters in the class had a family night where she invited her niece's family and also a friend of her daughter's.  She had the missionaries actually do the family night.  Now both her niece and her daughter's friend are taking missionary lessons!
In our Heavenly Father's plan the members are now to be the finders of prepared people ready to receive the gospel and the missionaries are the teachers of the gospel.
This is the Lord's work. He has a plan to hasten it. We simply need to do it.

You've got to love that missionary work!

A few months ago we realized we needed to concentrate on the member/leadership part of our calling which is important but not where our hearts lie.  So we served where needed.  But for the last two weeks we have had time to do proselyting which is very exciting to us!

Looking for someone else's address we found three great groups, two Spanish speaking families that invited us back, and a young man named Zach.  Zach is a college student who is here on his own. All alone. He was very worried when we met him.  His room-mates had all left when school got out and left him with the utility bills, cleaning etc.  He had to move from one side of town to the other and had no idea how he was going to do that. Even though it was 9:00 pm, Elder Pack assured him we would help him move the next morning.  Sure enough, by 8:00 am he had three trucks and six big strong Elder missionaries at Zach"s apartment.  The young man was amazed. And grateful.  Of course we invited him to a baptism being held in the Young Single Adult branch the next day-and he came!  So then we invited him to church Sunday-and he came!
We are feeding him and the missionaries assigned to his Branch on Wednesday along with giving him the first discussion! And now Zach has a support group and friends.

Elder Pack loves finding investigators.  This week he met a man in Costco that said he would like to come to our church!  He lives in Mariposa and so we passed the referral on. That always feels like giving the other missionaries a gift.

Today, as soon as we got home from church, our zone leaders called and asked if they could meet at our home with a girl they had just met walking in our apartment complex while they were driving by. Stacia said she needed to keep walking and so they drove along slowly talking to her! She said she had company in her home and that is when they called us. And the lesson went really, really well.  It's a joy to watch really devoted, prepared missionaries in action.  They carry the Spirit with them wherever they go.

We also did Branch work.  We took another new member couple to the temple for the first time and did baptisms for the man's mother and father!  It was wonderful. We have great promises if we get new members involved in doing baptisms for their own deceased relatives.  Also that week we took some members of the Branch to the temple for a regular endowment session.

We are still busy.  And we are still loving it.

Throw a Family Home Evening

Glen and I offered to do a Family Night for a family in the ward and they could invite some non-member extended family members and a non-member friend. It takes planning and co-ordination with the other missionaries and I always wonder why we volunteer to do these things and then they turn out so great that we volunteer again!

This time a niece (sort of, Spanish style) came with her two children and also the friend of the member's daughter came. The teen-age friend has had one lesson with the sister missionaries already but is real new to all of the gospel concepts.  She is so excited because she "is learning in order" about God (her quote). It is always such a delight and so satisfying to offer answers to every question.  She said she was confused about how you get faith in something and then she went to our Young Women's class that day and the lesson was on how you get faith in something!  She says she knows that wasn't a coincidence!

The other lady, the niece, was really quiet. For a Catholic to hear that God is our literal Father in Heaven AND that he has a body of flesh and bones is down right shocking. But her two children just soaked it in. We sang I Am A Child of God.  We put a string on their fingers to help them remember things like what they had for breakfast that day.  And we told them that they don't remember when they were born but their mother did.  Then we said we were going to tell them things about BEFORE they were born and the hints Heavenly Father gives us and the string on their finger would help them remember.  Then one missionary read and showed the first two pages of the Children's Old Testament book about our pre-earth life in heaven. Then Glen showed the YouTube video I Am A Child of God. And the other missionary bore testimony about this principle so that the Holy Ghost could witness that what we had said was true.
After, we asked each child who they were and they answered right off that they were a child of God.

Of course we played the candy bar/pencil game after while one missionary sat by the children's mom and explained about the church and the Book of Mormon and gave her one. It was an absolutely wonderful experience.

And then we all had cake because it was one of the missionary's birthdays.

pictures to remember

Here are pictures of our Mother's Day Dinner/dance in our Spanish Branch 5/14

It's only fair that the male members of the Branch serve for the Mother's day dinner.

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Glen Renee Pack

15 mins · 

At our Mother's Day dinner we had Branch members go around with their Spanish guitar singing at the different tables.

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These missionaries are really cooking now!

One of the ways to show love to the other missionaries or to the members of the Branch is to feed them. They need it and they love it.

Monday was a zone activity for about 30 of our missionaries. The Monday before was a regular Pday with basketball at the church and Glen picked up some Costco pizzas for them.  But this Pday was more elaborate with fun activities planned so we volunteered to do a Bar-B-Q for them after at the pavilion behind the church house.  We had hamburgers and hot dogs and beans and potato salad and chips and watermelon and cookies etc. We have another Senior Missionary couple, the Malhums, serving in our zone and they helped us so we had a lot of fun ourselves.

Then on Wednesday we fixed our regular weekly dinner for the missionaries.  They go to a member's home for dinner each day and leave a prayer and scripture with the family. They talk with them about the family mission plan and hopefully get a referral of a friend or family member prepared to hear the missionary lessons. Since I am the Relief Society Pres. it is my job to fill their dinner calendar and my privelege to invite them to my home when an appointment falls through. Our four Branch missionaries have a dinner invitation every single night with the members.

On Friday night our Branch had a Mother's Day dinner/dance  for 80 people. That meant taking around invitations,  planning for the meal, buying the food and decorations, decorating the hall, cooking and serving the meal, arranging the entertainment  and of course clean up. However, this time we had help because we had an Activities Chairman! For the first time ever in this Branch. And she did a great job!  She assigned people to cook things, shopped and decorated with me, had a man read a mother's day poem and two men went around with a guitar and sang Spanish songs at the tables.  And then we had a dance with a regular MC! That still left me with the kitchen clean up because everyone else had brought investigators or less active family members with them for the young missionaries to visit with.  But that's a great trade off!  And Glen spent hours on soaking and cleaning the tablecloths. He really does so much for so many. The activity was a HUGE success.

Now Sunday is Mother's Day and the young missionaries get to Skype their mothers!  Of course none of them have computers or smart phones to do that.  So Glen has rounded up six laptops and they are coming over here for dinner and to call their mothers.  Some will eat while others talk and then trade.

Right now I'm thinking that maybe we should take a while off from cooking next week.  But Pres. Eyring says when you are exhausted you push through it and the Lord will help you.  And He always has.

Why I Believe

Last night we went to a fireside called “Why I Believe”.  It was really great.  One recent convert from each ward in our stake told how and why they joined the church.  Of course our little 50 year old Spanish sister had to have her testimony translated but everyone understood the Spirit she felt.  Language doesn’t matter for that.

But the best part of the evening came when someone called my name after and I turned to see Cindy smiling at me.  Cindy was baptized about 30 years ago and after two years she moved and fell away from the church. On one of the first Sundays that Glen and I were on the mission we went to her ward. It was 30 minutes away but we were the only missionaries in town at that time so we covered that ward too.  Her married son had recently found the church in northern California and told her to just go back to church and look for the missionaries and they would help her. She and her husband came to church to “look for the missionaries”,  except she was expecting young missionaries and didn’t see any so they left.  But Glen chased them out to their car and set up an appointment to go by their home.

Now her current husband is quite rough around the edges.  He doesn’t want to hear lessons so we visited and just became friends.  We would visit him on our “P” day when Glen could wear his Levis and cowboy hat.  They have a mini ranch with geese, dogs, ponies, emus etc.  Cindy on the other hand wanted to come to back church.  She was also rough around the edges.  Her language was hard for us to listen to.  She would pray with us and then cross herself after.  But we often visited, ate with them, and took them to church.  Her husband was diagnosed with cancer and we suffered through the treatments with him.

But new missionaries were assigned to the ward and we would text Cindy and stop by occasionally.  So it had been probably six months since we had actually seen Cindy.  And she looked so different!  We didn’t know if it was her hair or tan or what.  Just very different and we didn’t know why until we talked to her.

She had been going to church faithfully.  She had been praying and reading her scriptures daily.  She had a calling in the ward and she was going to Temple Preparation class to get ready to go to the Temple with her son’s family. Her appearance was different because she was different.  She was relaxed and at peace and had the joy of the gospel with her.  And THAT is why we are on a mission