June 4, 2012

You know you are on the right track when everything that possibly can go wrong goes wrong.......and then your truck decides to “throw up” and die leaving you stranded in the middle of a parking lot at the hottest part of the day. 

Before I start on my weeks adventure I want to share something funny I found out yesterday, I was looking around our apartment and decided to count the number of Book of Mormons we have in the apartment. The final count is 35 Book of Mormons in 4 Languages!! There is a reason why missionary apartments have a great spirit! How can you not with all that goodness in them?! Ha-ha

It has been one crazy week! It has been so bad but it has also been amazing.  I have seen some of the greatest miracles of my mission so far this week!  I will start with where everything went bad….we decided to be good! Everything was so easy when we weren't following the rules perfectly but last week when we decided to change, everything got harder. On Wednesday, Elder Barrot gave his district training on making covenants with the Lord to help with missionary work.  The mission right now not at its potential so President K has been looking for something he can do to turn it around. Elder Barrot gave a great training about how if we covenant with the Lord we could greatly improve our success and we would draw nearer to our Heavenly Father as we do it! It was a good training and he told us how to covenant and all that good stuff and then we split off and did our role plays to practice. President actually came with me and Elder Bradley and the three of us did the practice and spoke for a while which was great! I love my mission President. This whole covenanting thing has the potential to really change the whole mission; my district is the test group to see if it works. We realized that we are the perfect district because we have a Trainer and his greeny, English Elders, Spanish Sisters, and the two of us. We have one of everything there is in the mission and frankly, if I and Elder Bradley can do it with the deaf people…..anyone can do it! So we might be the group to change this if it works!!

We do know that we are on the right track with this covenanting thing because of the opposition we have faced the last week as a district. Three Elders have had their bikes break, one Elder sprained his ankle real bad, one Elder threw out his back by stepping in a hole, the sisters have had a real hard time with everything and have had to ask for blessings multiple times, our district leader was hit by a car, and our truck (Dusty) decided to “throw up” and die on Friday! One of the hoses just broke in half while it was parked so as we tried to start it, all the coolant shot everywhere and the truck instantly overheated, smoked and died! (It has been fixed and we were only hurt emotionally in the process) It has basically been Hell this past week, not to mention the temperature has been 108 degrees! Satan is doing all in his power to stop us from doing this.....because it works!!!

Friday night, Elder Bradley and I decided to give the program a try. We told the Lord what we were willing to do and set up everything. We then broke up everything into both weekly and monthly goals. This week our goal was to get a new investigator and to have one member come out with us. Part of what we are willing to do is we covenanted to go tracting at least one hour every day until we found a new investigator for us or a referral for some other missionaries. Saturday afternoon we decided to start tracting!

In companion study that morning we prayed and found out where to go.  When we got there, we prayed which door to start at! Then we headed for the door and realized that we had been there before about 5 months ago because someone had said they thought there was a deaf person there. Not a good referral.  Elder Bradley and I were joking that because we said we would track till we found someone the Lord was going to test us and make us tract for hours! Ha-ha  When we walked up to the door I was thinking “We have tried this door 3 times and no one ever answers, no one will answer now.”  Oh me of little faith! When we knocked, the door opened and a man signed “what’s up” to us!  We were both so shocked that someone answered, and especially because that person was deaf that neither of us said anything for probably 5 seconds. We just stared at him! Ha-ha Then I finally “came to” and started talking to him. Long story short, he turned out to be a very cool guy who is interested in what we have to say.  He promised to read the Book of Mormon, and agreed to meet with us on Tuesday!! Me and Elder Bradley could only contain our excitement until we walked around the corner after saying goodbye then we both jumped up and down and fist bumped for joy!! Ya we're pretty cool! 

It was one of the coooooolest experiences ever and a straight-up miracle! That is only the tip of the iceberg of the blessings and miracles I've seen since! We are on to something here as most of the district is having similar success! It is times like these when all the crap and all the hard times we go through as missionaries pays off! I love being out here and I am excited for the future as we continue in the process!  I hope we can follow through on our end because the Lord will accomplish His end, of that there is no doubt!  I could use all of your prayers that I will be able to do what I need to do to accomplish my end of the deal!

That is an amazing experience and we have had many more…. from me actually giving a good lesson yesterday in priesthood, and not looking like an idiot (too much) while conducting sacrament meeting, and being directed twenty minutes out of our way and then arriving at a potential investigators house right as they pull in the driveway so we didn't miss them! God is amazing and if what you are doing matches what He wants done, anything can happen! My testimony has grown so much this week that I can't even explain it! Make sure that what you are doing matches what the Lord would have you do and I promise you will find more happiness and joy then you ever knew existed! It is far beyond anything else that brings you happiness!

Until next time,

Elder Banner