My computer's broken again eeryone, so just bear with. Once again, it's been a pretty awesome week. One major highlight was I got to go to the mission home for the first time in my whole mission for Mission Leader conference. It felt a lot like being in the Oval Office when i was in there in the meeting - pretty legitimate. We also were privileged to have Elder Craig C. Christiansen of the 70 come and speak to us for a special missionary devotional. I was pretty awesomely inspiring. One of my favorite things he said was, The Restoration of the fullness of the Gospel didn't happen all at once. It was a work in progress, with Joseph receiving revelation day by day as to what the Lord wanted him to do. would it have been nice if he had recieved it all at once (q mark) Yes, but that's not the way revelation works, and that's not the way your missions are going to work. You're going to improve and grow and perfect yourselves one day at a time as you follow the Lord's counsel and revelation to you. (end quote.) That's a paraphrase, but that's pretty much the gist of it. Loved that, because even if we want things to come all at once and we just KNOW everything, that's not how were going to grow the most. this, too - quote, If we knew how much energy prophets (like President Monson) expend to receive revelation, we'd never hesitate to spend a extra time on our knees. (end quote.) I've definitely learned full time the importance of praying fully, really endeavoring to increase my connection with Heavenly Father. That is so very important and crucial in our lives, I don't have any idea how i could possibly be happy without it.
Here's a funny story Elder Christiansen also told. He was a mission president in some south american country for a while, and he told about one town that was 90% mormon out of the like 1500 or something residents that lived there. At first he had two Elders assigned there. there hadn't been baptisms there for over a year. those elders were very discouraged. One day elder christiansen recieved revelation to pull out the elders and put in Sisters instead. Within one transfer, they suddenly had 6, and then 8 baptisms, and continued success in like manner. When Elder Christiansen made a special trip to ask them why they suddenly had so much success, the one sister who was there looked at him, and didn't say anything. He asked her, "no, really, Id like to know so we can try and duplicate this elsewhere. Why did you succeed where the elders didn't. she looked at him, smiled really big and said, "President, who can resist my smile" Apparently the Elders had been walking around with the idea in their hearts that the area was hard and impossible, so the members and others always said, the elders don't want to be here and look sad all the time. The sisters were always smiling and energetic, and that was the difference. Members here in our ward now have commented on how happy and jovial (sometimes) we are even compared to past missionaries, and I think that's a big reason why we're seeing huge changes n the way the members are supporting us and really helping us a lot now. I'm super happy here, probably happier than i have been with our work and success than i have been my whole mission so far.
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