What a week. I am here now working with my companion Irma Perkins. We get along really really well. We are having a good time learning how to be missionaries together. Turns out that training a new missionary is incredible (so far). I can with full confidence say that I have never worked harder in one week of my mission than this past week.
We received a call from our leaders at the beginning of the week with a challenge from our mission president. He prayed and felt that each companionship in our mission could find 29 new investigators. (side note explanation: new investigators are people with whom we have a lesson or at least pray with them and they accept to receive us and make an appointment with us to meet again.) This challenge was big. I don´t need to tell you that NOT every week are we just running into 29 people that become interested enough to become ´´new investigators´´.
So Irma Perkins and I gladly accepted the challenge with the sure knowledge that there were 29 of Heavenly Father´s children that we were meant to find and help introduce to the Gospel.....
We got to work, we stepped out of our apartment complex and the first person we saw we talked to, no waiting around to get the courage up, no sir... 29 people that want to hear the Gospel are waiting, what if we miss them!!??!?! So we talked to everyone, really I would say talked to almost everyone in the street this week. We prayed to know where we should search, we prayed during the day to keep up our energy. We introduced ourselves, we shared he message of the Gospel, we got rejected, we kept going. Then, someone would accept. We would try to help them feel the spirit, and make an appointment to share more. We followed this pattern through out the week. Every moment was filled with a true desire to talk to the people that were ready and waiting.
Irmã Perkins understands Portuguese extremely well. She understands what is going on when we talk to people on the street and almost everything that happens in our lessons. She is positive and easy going. She has a really upbeat way of just being herself. She has only been in the country a week and I was already making her start the street contacts and say the prayers with people during our lessons. She happily and willingly accepts every new challenge. Each day I have been trying to give her more and more responsibility, and she is getting along just fine. Her mere presence has open my vision and helped me see the miracles again. The Lord has blessed me with this chance to serve with her and to have her teach me what it means to be a missionary, and what it means to be Christlike.
Our week was tiring, but ever so sweet. As we reached the final hours of our night yesterday we were closing in on our goal of finding those 29 new investigators that the Lord had prepared. We were still hopeful and worked diligently to find them. We had a terrible lesson with an old investigator, and we had only 20 minutes left to find 8 more investigators ...we didn´t stop. We walked through the park by our house and contacted everyone---- that old man over there, that grumpy looking lady with the dog, and even that group of rambunctious teenagers. Turns out that old man really does believe in God and would love to hear more, and that grumpy lady with the dog wasn´t grumpy at all she was just tired and in need of something more in her life, and that group of teenagers laughed in our faces, all but one of them whose eyes told us that indeed she was searching for the truth. So we found 3 more of God´s children who wanted to hear more.
As we walked up to our doorstep we knew that we had worked hard to find and help God´s children this week, but that if we had done the math right in our heads...we were short a few to reach our goal. As went sat down to plan and add up the weekly goals and numbers, we found that indeed we had come up short by 5. We found 24 new investigators. We felt that little drop of disappointment, but within moments a feeling of comfort. We realized that although we did not reach our goal, we really worked hard and I told Irma Perkins that I had never been so exhausted in my mission. We realized how many people we had met and talked to during the week, how many lessons and prayers we had with people. By the end of the week we had taught 45 lessons....more than any other week in my mission. We had filled every moment with dedicated service to the Lord. It blew my mind.
The thing is, numbers don´t mean much. As my mission president says ´´We are not saviors of numbers, we are saviors of men´´. We are here to do the work of the Lord, which is ´´to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of men´´(Moses 1:39) But as we prayerfully set goals and achieve them, we find greater joy in knowing that we are doing the Lord´s will. Oh how sweet is the peace that comes from doing the will of our Heavenly Father. He knows everything. He understands exactly how things should go.
I love all of you, my friends and my family. I think of you everyday. I pray for you.
Love,
Lizzie
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