Hastening the Work: When All Else Fails, Just Love!

This week was my companion's birthday. We went over to a member family's home in our area. They are deaf so they taught us the "Happy Birthday" song in sign language than we sang to her in America Sign Language (ASL).  It was really fun!  Later, we enjoyed a nice cake.

Our English ward is the official deaf ward in the area, so during church, there is an ASL translator.  It's super fun to watch during meetings.

I gave a talk on Hastening the Work in the English Ward.  It was short and sweet, and went really well.  I shared Alma 13:24 and talked about how we have seen evidence of God preparing the hearts of his children.  For example, God uses the members to prepare his children - a few weeks ago, we knocked on the door of one house and the people who answered the door were super excited to see us because they had known several members of the church throughout their lives. They immediately let us in, gave us Cheetos, Cheez-Its, fruit snacks, trail mix, and water.  It kept us going for the next week!  We were able to talk to them about the Restoration and they were touched by the message.

Then, I talked about what we needed to do to prepare ourselves to take part in this work.

1) We need to start with ourselves - it's like personal study hour for missionaries

2) We need to help out our families - it's like companionship study for missionaries

3) We need to help out others - it's like when missionaries go out to work each day

Three other missionaries and the Ward Mission Leader also spoke.

A success we had this week:

We stopped by to visit a family, within the first five minutes we were "reprimanded" for asking too many questions.  Things weren't looking so great, but we decided to just listen to them for a while.  The tension eased, then we sang them a song and shared a scripture with them.  We ended with a prayer and told them we loved them. The lady of the house responded that she loved us, too. She also gave us some delicious cookies and little pies to take with us as we walked out the door.  Mission Accomplished.

Moral of the Story: When all else fails, just love.

Hastening the Work!

I am super excited for the push in missionary work!  I am super excited to have so many more ideas in how I can work better with the members in my area and that we have our own set of missionaries in our ward because that means when I get home, it won't be super hard to work with the missionaries!!!! :D 

Stake Conference!

We attended stake conference.  President Maluenda was presiding.  Elder Martino was the general authority and the topic was "Hastening the Work."  It was seriously one of the best church meetings I have ever been to!  They talked directly to both the members and the missionaries and gave us counsel on how we could better work in unity.  What was said there was gold.

President Maluenda left every member the commitment to ask everyone they know if they would be willing to listen to a message about Jesus Christ.  If the answer is no, just keep being their friends.  If the answer is yes, get the missionaries over there! :D  He promised that in the future, we will be very thankful that we had shared the gospel with those around us.

Elder Martino pointed something out very interesting.  He first defined that priesthood keys were the right to receive revelation to direct the church or an organization in the church.  He then said that the mission president has the keys to direct the missionaries and determine who gets baptized.  However, the keys over missionary work belonged not to him, but to the Stake President and the Bishop.  Isn't that interesting?  

He then read Moro. 10:31 and said that it's a commandment to us as members that we extend the boundaries of our stakes. There are three parts to this commandment:

1) Finding those who don't have the gospel

2) Retaining new members - they're babies in the gospel!

3) Reactivation! - these are people who have been baptized, but are not participation in the sacrament which means they're not renewing their baptismal covenants week after week.  Covenants are important because only through them can we participate completely and fully in the Atonement of Jesus Christ

He read Moses 6:31-34, which talks about Enoch being called to preach the gospel.  Enoch was super scared, but the Lord promised him that he would receive the help he needed and he would succeed if he worked, did his part, and opened his mouth.  The same is true with us as missionaries and as members.  We need to work, do our part, and open our mouth and we will have everything we need to participate in the hastening of the work.

The meeting was so awesome!  He shared with us the story of Alma and Amulek and pointed out that Amulek was a less-active member who became reactivated then he helped out the missionaries (Alma) by being a Member Present during the lessons and because of that, he was able to help convert more hearts to the gospel than Alma was able to by himself (Alma 8-12).  It's really good.  I encourage y'all to read those chapters with that in mind.