Well this week was a pretty dang good one! It truly is amazing
how the Lord is able to bless us in the little efforts we put forth as
missionaries. We had a great Zone Conference last Tuesday and it really applied
to what I have been studying in the Book of Mormon oddly enough. They talked
about our purpose as missionaries and of course the usual lessons on key
indicators from Preach My Gospel, but they also talked a lot about how to move
past when you hit a wall as a missionary and are just tried of doing the same
old routine everyday. Well this obviously really caught my attention because I
feel like I am just wearing thinner and thinner each day, I am always so tired
I want to die, my body always feels in a funk, my patience for tracting in the
sun and getting yelled at are at about 2% and sometimes I feel like the days
will never end. Being a missionary is so hard, I remember going into the MTC
with all the changes that happen, the total consumption of all energy gets
taken from you in the first week and you really have to decide in that moment
if you can handle this type of schedule, and out of body discomfort for the
next couple of years. And that is why I feel as a missionary you hit so many
walls on your mission. The adversary works on you like none other and when you
are going a hundred miles an hour and Satan puts a wall right in front of you
that completely stops you dead in your tracts and you have to figure out how to
get around it, you get tired and you wonder what am I doing here. Sometimes
you become lazy, or careless, and you forget just how important your work is
and why you are here. At this last zone conference I hadn't really
realized that I had hit one of these walls. In Ether 2 the Lord has
prepared a promised land for the Jaredite people, a place where they can live
in peace, and harmony and worship God. A land that is promised to be protected
so long as the people obeyed the word of God and worship Him with everything
that they had. In other words, ultimate real estate from the Lord. The
Jaredites prepared everything that they had to to go to this "promised
land" where they could be free; they traveled far from home through the
wilderness. I imagine that would be very hard to travel through the wilderness
with so many people consisting of fathers mothers and young children, but none
the less, they went forth to receive and inherit this chosen land, once they
made it to the sea they built barges so that they could cross the waters to
make it to the promised land. Once they arrived at the beaches, still not
to their promised destination, I imagine fatigue, hunger and yet relief had
finally crossed them. They made camp on the beaches, ( a nice place, who
wouldn't want to live on a beach?) and settled. And for four years they sat, camped
out on the beach, enjoying the sunshine. They were so tired and so done with
traveling that once they finally made it to a resting spot, they stopped their
journey. They lost sight of the Promised Land and settled for something
less because they did not have the faith nor concern to move on. As a
missionary this tends to happen, you work so hard, and you are so tired, that
in the same moment things seem to coast at a smooth pace you just stop, you
camp on the beach and "chill out" settling for less when the Lord has
better things in store for you. After the four years the Lord in Ether speaks
to the Brother of Jared, and chastened him for not pressing onward to the
Promised Land and receiving the blessing that the Lord had in store for him and
his people. ----Wait, stop, the Lord chastened him because the Lord couldn't
give him and his people wonderful blessing because they didn't obey------- How
dumb would it feel to get in trouble for not getting blessings that will make
you happy and prosperous? After this the Brother of Jared re-committed himself
to the Lord, he went back and gathered up his people and made the preparations
to press forward, and that is exactly what they did. There are many
things that I like about this story, but what I love is that the Lord was still
willing to bless them, as long as they repented and went forth. As a missionary
or not this applies to everyone. The Lord wants to bless us but can't if
we don't obey Him. And if he has to get mad at us it’s because he wants to give
us good things and we are just too stubborn to take them - wow why are we all
sooo stubborn. This week our district had made the goal that we were going to
set a baptismal date for the month of June, well at the beginning of the week
Sister Petersen and I really had no one solid that we could have extended the
date too, but we knew that as we made it a goal and really prayed for the Lord
to put someone in our path that would accept a date, then it would happen. All
week as we would plan in the evenings and during our online proselyting time we
would make lists of former investigators and potential investigators that
missionaries had met with in the past and work them into our schedule as we
would go throughout our day. Well for the first couple of days we weren't seeing
any success, just longs days of contacting and tracting. Wednesday night when
we returned home from our too long of a day we collapsed to the floor in prayer
as we set off to plan for the coming day. Every single day we had been
praying for someone to invite to be baptized and it just hadn't happened yet.
Thursday as we went out we ended up going to contact a man named Rudolf
Douglas, according to our records, missionaries had given him a Book of Mormon
four years ago, but was never able to teach him anything because he worked in
New York and New Jersey and was never home. We decided to go and check it out
and when we got there Rudolf was very friendly, he is from Guyana, and he is
now retired and invited us in to share a message. So we shared the Message of
the Restoration and talked about why there are so many churches now days and
how we can know which one is the true church. The spirit was very strong
in the lesson and everything we shared, Rudolf agreed with and how it made more
sense about the church and Jesus Christ in former times. At the end of
the lesson we invited Rudolf to be baptized in June and he said, " I
accept that challenge! But only if I pray and read the Book of Mormon and know
that it is true." We said " Of course thats what we want you to do!
That is what you must do or you will not know." We also contacted another
potential investigator who met missionaries a while back named Shonese, we were
able to share a quick overview of the Restoration with her and we asked if we
could come back and share it with her family and she said yes! It is amazing
the miracles we have seen as we have made goals and worked toward them.
The Lord truly does bless righteous desires of the heart, as we keep
moving on and don't camp out on the beach, He is able to bless us with what we
need. He is always ready to bless us we just have to allow it. Sister Petersen
and I also got to do service for our neighbor this week, Sister Williams (who
is related to Elder Andersen---cool) we helped her plant flowers in her front
yard. It was nice to do some physical work. It always feels good to work.
I encourage you all to read in the Book of Mormon Ether 2-3 and that's pages
489-494. It is always good to know and to grow in our testimony,
especially when it is better helping us understand our relationship towards
Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father.
Love
you all, Sister Jamison
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