Jan 9: Many souls

Sometimes I imagine what another mission would be like where people are scared of religion, avoid personal questions with strangers, or where the work is so slow that it is fine if it takes someone a year to be baptized. It is not the case here in this mission. A year ago they actually raised the baptismal requirements because some many people were joining, but not enough leadership. There are now many inactive members. If we just when house to house teaching and reactivating the less actives, we could exhaust all of our time. Even now with investigators, if we continued returning to every person who was will to let us in a listen, out time would be fully spent. There is so much to do and so much that should be done that it becomes overwhelming sometimes. I am so grateful that we are not alone in this work. The Missionary Work alone is enough to prove that God really is helping His children. Young men sent all around the world with almost no supervision are taking the greatest message to every corner of the earth. Truly, our God uses the small, simple, and even weak things to accomplish His divine work.

I shall speak of two new investigators because I cannot speak of them all. We began talking to an old man who was walking home. My companion pointed at him as we approached from the back and said, “Ikaw, magOYM as kanya” (basically meaning it was mine turn to start the conversation. With people being so trusting and warm here, it was quite ease to follow him home as we talked and he allowed us to teach him. Bro. Flores was a radio announcer for a local radio station that eventually died. His program was about exposing shady transactions or local problems. Evidently, our branch president and councilor also formerly worked at the same station, but had different programs. We re-taught him the first lesson on the first visit (apparently my companion taught him a while ago and then never was able to get back to him) and on the follow-up visit he was excited to explain to us all that he had learned from 3rd Nephi 11. He came to church and was surprised to find that he knew nearly everyone. In our last visit, we taught him about the Word of Wisdom because smoking was an obvious problem. When we first arrived, he again explained his findings from his personal readings about Corihor the anti-Christ. Then when we told him about the Word of Wisdom, he shrunk in his chair and kind of curled up. He wanted us to show him where the Word or Wisdom was in the Book of Mormon, so we deferred to the introduction about the Book of Mormon being proof that Joseph Smith is a prophet.

The Bondal was another great couple we found after being punted and then trackting the nearby area. When we “tao po”ed (like ringing the doorbell) a women ran to the gate an let us in. They had apparently known previous missionaries (like most people) and had a Book of Mormon, but it had been so long they had forgotten. It was a good lesson, but they most got interested when we read them John 10:16. We left the lesson not sure if he was a pastor. In the next couple visits, we found that he is not a pastor, but teaches at a church they started, that she felt something different that first day and thus was immediately interested, and that they had talked about our church and decided that they want to join, but want to make a slow transition our of their church. It is great to see people closer to the spirit and following its promptings, but I fear that the devil may get the best of them if they don’t give everything and join now. We must be willing to give all we have or we are not worry of the Kingdom of God.

I hope to be in my small dilapidated branch for a long time. It is still beautiful, clean, and the members feed us. More than anything, I loves serving where the people are humble and not to busy for God.