Week 13: Answers to Prayers ~ October 19, 2015

Wow. Sorry I made everyone read my list of complaints last week. How boring that must of been for everyone. Rest assured that these past week has been much better. Well... Not from a missionary work perspective so much as from a personal perspective.

This week we had a mission wide change so that instead of planning lessons for every hour, we now plan for every half an hour. This has been really difficult in our area specifically because it can take us 10 or 15 minutes to walk between appointments, not because they are far apart but because of the hills.  But we had more lessons this week then we've had since I've been here and it was the most my companion has had in here whole mission.  We're not seeing a lot of reward for our efforts yet. We had another week with no investigators at church and none who seem to be progressing.  We have a couple with a baptismal date for this Saturday but they still haven't gotten married and don't have a plan to get married this week so... Probably there will not be a baptism.  But you never know. 

We started teaching 11 new investigators last week and almost every one had a lot of potential! One investigator named Rigoberto was someone we were excited about. In our first lesson he went and got a Book of Mormon that we had given to his step son a few weeks before and said "I haven't been able to read very much, but it's really interesting." And he was in 1 Nefi 10! I couldn't believe it. WE have investigators who take three weeks to read the introduction and he had ready 10 chapters before our first lesson. But then he didn't come to church, we even went to his house so he could come with us but he didn't answer the door. Everyone misses our next appointments, or aren't keeping there commitments. I just want to shake them sometimes. But it's still a big improvement and we're hoping that we're going to see some miracles here in the next few week. 

I've been thinking a lot about a talk by Elder Holland that we heard in the MTC. One of the things he said is that "You are God's investigator. Everything that you want for your investigators He wants for you. If you want them to pray a little more, He wants you to pray a little more, etc." I was thinking about how frustrated I've been that we are offering all these things to our investigators that we know can bless their lives and they won't use them. Then I started thinking about all the things God offered me that I never used.  I started to wonder how many times someone has prayed for comfort or for strength for the marriage or help in their family or something like this and then felt like God didn't give it to them.  And God is in heaven saying "I told you to read your scriptures" "I gave you family home evening" "I asked you to serve others" or things like this. That we are asking for blessing that He has already offered to us, if we would just do the things He has asked us to do.  

Anyway. That's my thought for this week. Also here are some articles I read in the Liahona this week that I thought I would share.

Love you all!

Hermana Schmidt 

https://www.lds.org/liahona/2015/04/it-isnt-a-sin-to-be-weak?cid=HP_TH_3-26-2015_dPTH_fLHNA_xLIDyL2-2_&lang=eng

And another about blessing your children by strengthening your marriage. It's in the September 2015 but I can't find it. Look it up. Read it. Change your life.