After Our Faith Is Tried Come The Miracles

Hi Everyone!

This week was pretty busy, I was only here in Rifle with Elder Castaneda for two days out of the week, we did exchanges all across the zone and helped out a lot of the missionaries. We logged a total of 729 miles for the week in our car, over 100 miles per day! It's been tiring for me and I'm glad today's P-day and I can take a break from it!

Our new Ward Mission Leader has been working really hard and it's already making a difference, we got members to our lessons 4 times this week and we had a lady come to church because of it! It's a lady named Charlotte, a sweet older lady who'd asked for her name to be removed from the church records years ago when she re-married, but now she's divorced from the man and has an open mind towards the church.

We found her tracting and asked her if we could "practice" our lessons on her so we could improve our teaching, so we set up an appointment and brought one of the ward missionaries with us! The lesson went great and she responded well to the questions and commitments, and told us she'd come to church on Sunday!

When we got there we didn't see her, so we were sitting in the back waiting for an investigator or less-active to walk in, but our ward mission leader came over and asked us if Charlotte had come yet. We said we hadn't seen her, and he looked around and pointed out an older lady sitting by herself and asked if it were her, and I recognized her so we went over and sat by her and had a really good sacrament meeting!

It's been really fun to be able to work in an English ward, I've had some thoughts about it recently that I'd like to share. In a recent leadership training meeting, our mission president told us that the new ward mission process with 5 names of less-active families coming from each auxiliary is what the Lord wants us to do and what the brethren are instructing us to do. He also commented that in the Spanish wards and branches here in the mission the units aren't strong enough or developed enough to really do this process right, and so those missionaries have a different assignment.

With our change in ward mission leaders, I've been starting to see the beauty of the ward mission process and I'm quickly finding out that in big English wards the only way to do missionary work is to have it be a member-led program. We're starting to see a huge increase in our success as the ward really steps up to help us, and thinking about it I believe it's true that the Spanish wards aren't quite ready for this yet. I'm understanding more that the job of our Spanish elders is still to go out and knock doors and find those people to teach that are ready, and work with the friends of the members, recent converts and less actives to find success. For me it's a little bit of a revelation, because I realize now some of the frustration I had working in Spanish was just because I didn't understand our purpose as clearly, and why here in English the same techniques don't work as in Spanish. It's really quite different, but I'm so grateful that this ward is really stepping up because it shows me how it's supposed to be done!

A lesson I'm learning recently is that when we try our best to do God's will there's always opposition, and there's always blessings as well. These last few weeks have been really trying physically and mentally with all the trainings, travel and exchanges, but at the same time I've been so blessed spiritually and feel very close to the Lord. I see His hand in my life all the time, and many small coincidences on a daily basis help me to know that He's there and is watching out for me. It's always worth it to push through and get the blessings, God makes sure to push us and stretch us when we do His will but after our faith and our patience is tried we get the miracles. I love my mission, and I love serving the Lord and his children! There's no greater work, and no greater happiness than when those you serve and love progress in the Gospel!

I hope everything is going well for you all, have a great week!

Love,
Elder Damon Janis