So in our continual quest to help others recieve the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ this week we made a goal to have at least one lesson a day. If that was with members, a less active, recent convert, or a new investigator we wanted the chance to teach every day. And we want to meet with every family in our ward in order to truly get to know all of them better and be able to establish more trust with them.
So to start with, we made a list of all the inactives in our ward and sadly enough, for Germany that is a ton of people. About 3 notebook pages of people, and that's is just the women in the ward. We found a few that we want to start working with and in particular families.
The Elders in our ward have been working with the M family recently and have been helping them come to Church and whatnot. Yesterday for lunch we had an appointment with a ward family (the F's) and afterwards the Elders had to leave pretty quickly. The M family lives near the F's but the Elders had to run off quickly to catch the train, so we went by on the M's instead. They're a less active/part member family. The mother is from Germany, and her husband is from somewhere in South America. The husband speaks a little bit of German, a litle bit of English, and Spanish. They have two adorable little daughters, that also speak those languages. Good thing the wife knows German, English, and Spanish (and turkish and arabic, but those weren't applicable here) so translating was very much needed. So I got to brush up on some of my spanish last night! He found the mormon message we wanted to share with them in spanish on youtube and we ended up having a great lesson with them. The M's came to church last week but didn't come yesterday. But while we were there, they commited to coming this upcoming week and everyweek! We talked about having the courage to read our scriptures, say our prayers, coming to church, and sharing the Gospel. They invited us to come back next Sunday and when we were leaving, the father was teaching his daughter how to pray. Talk about adorable!! It was quite the success. I am so grateful for this work. I know it helps families come closer to God, and closer to each other. And once gain, the Lord works in mysterious ways. Little did I know, my two years of Jr. High Spanish would come in handy.
This week I have learned the importance of keeping a positive attitude and trying new things. Working with members so much has paid off so much this week! Not in the sense that they have given us new investigators, but because we have been following what the Lord prompted us to do, we have been able to make a bunch of appointments, and find potentials even when weren't "finding." We also had great appointments with our neubekehrt (recent convert) and less actives. When I kept a positive attitude about the work, our investigators, and our efforts, the Lord blessed me so much and it was much easier to be a better, more dedicated missionary. There is a great quote from Elder Val R. Christensen from the October 1998 General Conference. He says, "If we place a little more patience in the process and a greater amount of faith inthe Lord, our challenges will find their way toward successful conclusions."
I know this is true. Continue in the faith. LOVE YOU ALL!