Week Of Ups And Many Downs || Week 21

Bom dia para vocês! I hope you all had a fantastic week and kept all of your new years resolutions thus far! Not gonna lie, this week was insanely hard. Physically, mentally, and spiritually. But we're still here so that's all that matters :)


It's kinda crazy how that works on the mission, and really just in life. One week can be the hands-down absolute best week on the mission, and the next week can arguably be the worst. But hey, complaining never helps, so let's just get into the week. 


SPIRITUAL THOUGHT


We had our zone conference yesterday (where all of the missionaries in the close proximity get together and talk about what we can do to improve) and it was pretty cool. Some missionaries shared a pretty cool spiritual thought that I wanted to share with all of you!


Starts off with the story of a missionary. This missionary is feeling a super strong prompting from God to knock on a very specific door. As a good missionary does, this missionary followed this prompting and knocked on the door. His companion could tell that the house was abandoned and no one was going to answer the door. Feeling the spirit strong, the missionary continued to knock on the door, until finally, no one answered. The missionaries laughed it off and left the house. 


What can we learn from this experience? It seems like the missionary did everything right. He received a spiritual prompting from God and acted. Exactly right. In this same way, God will sometimes give us prompting, some of which will lead to "absolutely nothing". But these promptings are tests of faith. They may seem like nothing, but really they are leading to a greater trust and connection with God. 


God sometimes gives us promptings as acts of faith! He wants to know if we'd be willing to continue to listen to him, even after seeing "no results". If we always listen to these promptings, we will not only see miracles and have spiritual experiences, but we will grow our trust and faith in God!


HIGHLIGHTS


- got sick this week and probably had covid but I'm feeling better now!


- literally had 11 people marked for baptism this week and all of them fell through :( Not gonna lie, I felt a genuine sadness this week. (Even shed a few tears) Different than I've ever felt in my life. I wasn't sad because I wasn't doing enough, or because our numbers didn't look good, but really felt sorrow for the salvation of these people. These people felt the Holy Ghost, denied his promptings, and rejected Christ's church. It absolutely pains me that they had their chance at salvation and they let it slip away. I'm praying that they have another chance to her this message later in their lives.


- one of our friends who was all set for baptism went missing this week. He calls us Saturday night in tears, wanding to end his own life. I was able to listen to the spirit and tell him exactly what he needed to hear in this moment. He seemed all better and we let him go to sleep! The next day he was gone! We spent the afternoon Sunday searching for this man and eventually he returned home Monday afternoon. In these 36 hours, he made many poor decisions and hurt his body so much. But he's back now and we're working on planning out his life!


- Even through all of the trials that we endured this week, I was able to find the Hand of the Lord blessing us. We had a family of three come to church this week and the members absolutely took them in like best friends. It made me so happy! I'm super excited to see this family continue to progress this week!


- You probably won't believe this but had another exchange with Elder Bradford this week! And we started back up right where we left off! I went over to his area, which covers like four cities and is in the middle of nowhere. We said a couple of prayers to start off the day and felt the spirit super strongly! We were ready! After finishing up in one area, in which we made a few contacts, handed out all of our Book of Mormons, and marked three people for baptism, we wasted no time (except the five minute break we took to take some sunset pics) and sprinted across the area, up and down hills, about 2 miles. We get to appointment and this woman is sitting outside her house. The second we pull up (insanely out of breath), Elder Bradford just starts testifying, didn't even give me time to introduce myself. Turns out that this lady had received some crazy revelatory dreams which talk about some very specific things in the future that will happen to her, of which also includes her baptism! (before she ever met the missionaries). In that moment, I felt prompted that I was in that lessons for a reason, and I had to share an experience very close to my heart. I shared the story of my brother and gave it to her straight. "You need to make a decision. You can either listen to the people of the world (her friends who were telling her crazy things about our church) and say goodbye to your family for all eternity, or listen to the spirit and these promptings from God and live with your family forever." It was a pretty powerful and spiritual experience for me. Then after making a few more contacts and ordering a pizza, we returned home to end the day. It was about 9pm. Elder Bradford then felt prompted that our work was not done and there were others that needed to hear our messenge. We then dual-wealded Book of Mormons in each hand and headed for the streets. We then experiences two very individual and very specific spiritual experiences with two different people that night. Things that would have never happened if we didn't act on very specific promptings. Things that would have never happened if we stayed home and ate our pizza that was getting cold. It was a real test of personally faithfulness after relying on each other the whole day and being super in-sync spiritually. Overall, an amazing and much much needed day! The spirit felt tangible this day and we worked our tails off! Praying that we'll be companions one day!


Thank you for all of your emails! I'm sorry that I'm literally terrible at responding, this whole email thing is not my favorite. 


But I love you all and hope that you have the best week ever!! Keep up the great work, keep relying on God, and keep being amazing!


Elder Ware






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