Nearly being hit by a drunk driver in the middle of the afternoon, JWs knocking on our door, being asked repeatedly if I support Trump´s politics, Our toilet got fixed in time for the fridge and shower to die, and our land lady decided that we should have our floors re tiled. She might be my new favorite person in Mexico by the way. The strangest thing though was when my companion and I realized that if only six people in the branch don't show up for church on Sunday, we become the presiding priesthood holders.
As for the week, my companion and I have been missionary superstars. Our numbers for the past two weeks have been better than any other companionship in our district, including our district and zone leaders. If we keep up the hard work, we'll have a ton of baptisms in no time. I don´t want this to sound like I´m only worried about the numbers though. We've really just been trying to do what we can for a few investigators, and their families keep showing up to the lessons. I love small Mexican towns.
As for why I've been trying to be like Moroni, I've been focusing on the promise in Ether 12 that says that if we have a weakness, we can seek the help of the Lord, and if we go to him in faith and humility, he will make our weak things strong.
Seeing as how I'm an American missionary with only five months here, I have an imperfect knowledge of the language, and I've inherently disliked talking to people for as long as I can remember, and I'm supposed to teach a new missionary how to do something I'm not fully sure how to do, I've had a lot of weaknesses to come to the Lord for help with. And yet our progress here in Bamoa, and the improvement we've seen since I've gotten hear show that the Lord has been helping me out with this, and has been doing his work through me despite my weaknesses.
As always, the Lord doesn't work in ways that we always expect. For example, with the language, I haven´t miraculously learned how to speak Spanish over night. Rather, I've just had more promptings from the spirit telling me things like I should start to share a certain experience or that I should talk about this point of the lesson to help the someone understand better. As a result, the people have grown to trust us, and feel that we are genuinely there to help them. I might not have a single idea about what happened in a lesson, but the spirit does, and he can serve as an interpreter when I need to understand something.
What I like most about this chapter though, is that afterwords, Moroni talks about all of the things that he remembers about the blessings of the Lord. What I like about this though, is that we can all do that. Almost everyone can remember a miracle that they saw in their lives, or a warm feeling they felt when they prayed with real intent. Everyone that has been baptized has felt the truth of this gospel in their lives. These are the things that we build testimonies on. These are the small simple, sometimes scrutinized pieces of evidence that we all have as evidence of the truth that we have a loving father in heaven. it's the evidence we have that Christ really did die for our sins and lives again. So like Moroni, I invite everyone to remember. Remember the things that you have built your testimony on. Remember that this should be our faith in Christ and the hope that we have through his resurrection. Most of all, remember that it is faith that builds miracles, not miracles that build faith.
That´s all for now
Elder Gooden
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