So this week of course was another great week. No matter what happens throughout the week it is a great week because I am serving the Lord. Nothing brings greater happiness than helping others come unto Christ. I just love it!
I had quite a few realizations this week. Sometimes when I realize things I feel so dumb, like why didn't I think of that before. Oh well, if we knew everything already there would be no point to life. Well after last weeks emails, I was a bit concerned about Reed and his health situation but I realized that if we don't have trails there is no way that we can demonstrate our faith. Everyone can be faithful if they want to when life is just a walk in the park but it's when we're tried that our true faith and character are shown. If we just spend life all worried about every little thing, we won't learn and we definitely wont grow. The Lord lets us struggle so that we can become something, so that we can become better than we could ever imagine. I'm thankful for trials.
For the past few months, there has been a media campaign going on in our mission. Basically there are tons of commercials on tv about people's lives and they always end with "my name is .... and I'm a Mormon." They're pretty neat and are on mormon.org. So we've been hearing a lot of different things about these commercials and what not. Either people love them or they hate them, but they really have caused quite the stir. Even all of our pass-a-long cards go along with the commercials. They just direct everyone to the website. Well, a few weeks ago (I don't think I've told you all this) we were at the grocery store and I gave a card to our cashier. He looked at it and thanked us and said, "you know, I love those commercials! They tell me that you're normal." I thought that that was great. It's time for us to stand up and be proud of who we are. We're Mormons! There is so much that always goes around about us, but until we stand up for who we are, people will continue to ignorantly make assumptions about us.
As we were out tracting this week these men pulled up and said, "are you Mormons?" I was like "of course! are you?!?" They said no and I was like "well why not?!" They just laughed and said that they were Jehovah's Witnesses and weren't interested in changing. It's just great to be able to boldly tell people who you are and help change their perception on Mormons.
While tracting we met this man named Jay. He knows all about the bible and religion and everything, or so he thinks. He kept trying to convince us that we are blind to the truth and need to change. I think that it's so funny because people always try to out smart us and show us that we are wrong. It would be easy to prove to people like Jay that the church is true through bible bashing but what good would that do? Our most powerful tools are the Book of Mormon and our testimonies because that is was brings the spirit and we all know that the spirit is what teaches and convinces of truth. Not us. If people are open to the truth than they'll hear it and understand it.
So all week we did all that we could to have powerful lessons with our investigators so that they would come to church and progress towards baptism. We created environments that the spirit can be in. To do this we went to members homes and helped investigators clean their own homes. We had members involved. We tried so hard. Unfortunately no one came to church. It's sad because people are missing out on so many blessings. Heavenly Father is just waiting to prove His love and honesty, but if we don't do our part, we can't receive His part of the bargain.
I've been thinking a lot about this this morning. What can we do more? It really just comes down to us all having agency. Unfortunately we don't always pick the right side. In general conference President Packer said, "The Lord is voting for me, and Lucifer is voting against me, but is is my vote that counts." So true! What or who are we going to vote for? In 2nd Nephi 2 it says that we can chose eternal life or captivity and misery. It's pretty obvious what we all would rather, but why do we chose to disobey God? I think that it all comes down to what it says in Matthew 6:24 "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." Who is our master? Is it our video games? sleep? nfl football? etc, etc. I've heard about every excuse for not being able to go to church. My favorite excuse came yesterday. A less-active sister called and us and said, "I can't come to church because I've been sneezing and sometimes when I sneeze I have an accident." I couldn't believe that she was telling me this over the phone and felt like telling her to get a diaper, but I decided that that wasn't very compassionate of me.
If we really understood the first commandment and what Christ said when He said, "If you love me, keep my commandments." All of our choices wouldn't really be all that difficult. We would understand where true happiness comes from and do all that we can to achieve that. Christ needs to be our master. Nothing and No one else can save us. Do we want eternal life or eternal captivity?
So yeah, that is basically what I've been thinking about lately. The Gospel is so true and if we just cling to it and our covenants we'll be safe and happy. It's simple. Satan is the author of complexity.
Anyway, I love you all. I love being a missionary. It's so much fun and so rewarding. Even if nothing goes are way at times we can still be happy because we are confidant that we are following the Lord.
I hope that you all have a great week! The Church is definitely true!
Love, Sister Anderson
(Halloween in San Manuel)
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