Racing against time.

For some reason I am late writing this month.  I have taken on a couple of extra projects that require a lot of time; studying Spanish more and something that I can tell more about next month.

But our Missionary work is still going strong. We were able to go through the Temple with the sister we found over a year ago in Chowchilla.  She went for her own endowments and she was so receptive and loved every single thing there. It was a real joy to see everything again from a new patron's eyes. Then we turned around and took her again a couple of days later so she could understand it all better.  We took her when we took the Relief Society sisters in our Branch, which we do monthly. This week we will be going to the Temple with our Missionary Zone which is always great.  And best of all- the Lord showed us who can take the sisters in the Branch to their monthly temple visit after we are gone! The Lord has a perfect plan for everything!

The fact that we have less than two months left is affecting our work a lot.  We are racing to get many more things done or started before we go. We are trying real hard to have no regrets of what we missed when we return home. And we are trying to line up the members and teach them to do what we have been doing for them.

Elder Pack has been working very hard to get all the members called to callings in the Branch. And he is succeeding! Everyone is being called to a calling that fits their needs and abilities. Some members are so proud to be a greeter, to pass out the Spanish hymn books, or make up the programs etc.We now have more teachers called for the Gospel Principles and Doctrine classes. And more sisters have been called to help in the Relief Society. When you realize that only two or three members had callings before, then this is a big step for this Branch. We know from the Prophet that everyone needs a calling!

Elder Pack is also working very hard to get the Branch membership list cleaned up.  We have known for a year that many people have moved away or even died but the Church requires an intense follow-up before you can take them off the list-or they just send them back to you.  So we have been working very hard to assure everyone is accounted for so they don't fall through the cracks and someone, somewhere, can find and fellowship them.

It was a huge relief when our past mission president, Pres. Gelwix, told the missionaries and us that God doesn't want you to worry about your mission when you go home.  If you have done all you can to serve them then leave it to Him.  He knows them and how to take care of them. It is His mission, His area, and His people.

Missionary Work

As a reminder to ourselves of how we passed the time on our mission, I am including this month's  Stake report we send in each month.

This past month we focused a lot on individuals in the Branch.  We helped one sister that was being displaced from her home qualify for a different apartment and helped her find furniture from other kind members of the church. We then helped her move into her new home.  She was so happy to have a really good place to call her own.

Edgar Lopez, baptized last December, was moving home to Tijuana and so we helped him get his fork-lift training and certificate before he left so he can get a better job there.  We also lined up and helped him receive his patriarchal blessing before he left and took him to do baptisms for the dead with his wife for his deceased parents. 

We were able to get the information needed and ordered the Missionary Plaque for Susanna Montoya, our first missionary from this Branch in years.  It is displayed now in the church building and sets an example for the youth in our Branch.

In his calling as Executive Sec. Elder Pack has started the paperwork going for the advancement in the Priesthood of two of the men in our Branch.  They will soon become Elders in the Priesthood.  One brother, Pastor Infante,is almost 80 and Julian Mariscal is about 70 and one of our strongest Branch missionaries.

Julian recently had emergency surgery.  He only has one kidney and that is from a transplant.  He was told that he wouldn't survive a surgery but his gall bladder had to come out.  Elder Pack and the missionaries gave him a blessing in the hospital and the surgery went very well.  He is recovered and back at his missionary work.  His non-member daughters were very impressed with the blessing and have been attending church with him now.

We have had one baptism this month.  Francis Enriquez prayed to Heavenly Father to find a church to be baptized into.  A week later the Elders went by and started teaching her.  At missionary transfers sister missionaries continued teaching her and Elder Pack baptized her two weeks ago.  We have started meeting with her and her five children for Family Home Evenings and it is going very well.

The missionaries in our Branch did a missionary activity that was very successful.  We showed short videos at various areas in the church house and talked a little about each station.  For instance, at the baptismal font we showed the video of Jesus being baptized.  We ended up in the chapel for the video "Because of Him" and then had a couple of people bear their testimonies.  W asked one investigator how he felt after and he said he felt good and happy.  We pointed out that was the spirit. Besides members we had about nine investigators there. And then we served ice cream after so everyone had time to visit and fellowship.

We worked hard on supporting the Primary Temple Activity in Fresno and had members and one investigating family and one family who is just starting to come back to church activity show up.

The missionaries taught the fifth Sunday combined meeting last week on Patriarchal Blessings.  We are hoping to have several of the members of the ward receive their blessings in Spanish in the coming month.

Our Missionary Committee Meetings are going very well each week.  Elder Kulbeth, our Branch mission leader, is using role playing each week to teach our new Branch missionaries how to teach the lessons.  We also have the Branch missionaries go out and teach the New Member lessons and visit investigators and less active members.

Of course we can't forget the other missionaries that are serving here with us.  At last month's zone activity we served them up a potato bar with all the fixings, which they loved because it was food.  And this week we gave them rides to the zone activity in Yosemite Park, where we enjoyed watching them use up so much energy.

We love the work here and the people we work with.

Overwhelmed With Opportunities

The question was asked," What would you do if someone gave you $86,400 each day.  However, you must spend it all in one day because at the end of the day your bank account would be wiped clean and it would go back to zero.  And then the next day would repeat with $86,400.

It is interesting to see how much stuff you could buy in one day, for yourselves or others. Would you finally learn how to use it wisely? Would you learn to share?  Would you look for people who could use your help?

Well, every day we are given 86,400 seconds of time. That is more valuable than cash.  What do we do with this time?  Do we use it wisely? Do we share our time with others? Do we look for people who could use our help?

  We all get the same amount of time in our daily account but everyone chooses to use their wealth of time differently. Some people are hard workers and some people are hardly working. It is interesting to watch two fishermen go fishing.  One meanders around and while he fishes all day, his line is only really in the water two hours.  But the other fisherman knows ahead of time where the fish are biting and what kind of bait they are biting on.  He actually has his line in the water for ten hours a day.

If you are asked to raise your hand high above your head, it is amazing when asked to raise it just a little bit higher to find that you can.

Planning is important. We need to be "administering sound" to be "spiritually in tune". It becomes not "time management" but "priority management". As a missionary our responsibility is to work smart and with the spirit so we can get done exactly what the Lord wants and needs us to do. You will feel overwhelmed when you see the opportunities the Lord will give you.  But that is exactly where you want to be.

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. 

________________________________________________

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.