Called to Serve: Obedience Brings Miracles

What a week! Sister Black and I just finished the 5th week of the transfer and I can't believe how fast it has gone! We were doing weekly planning last Thursday and I just remember my eyes getting all wide when I realized we were already planning for week six. Ahhh! The time has just gone too fast! I wish I had a pause button or something here so I could have a minute to catch my breath... because the time seems to just be slipping through my fingers.

So this week, my big focus has been on obedience. Since I have been here, I have been doing my best to be an exactly obedient missionary, and for the most part, I thing I'm doing pretty good. It's just some of the little things, like working out every morning, or going to bed on time that I sometimes feel myself slipping up on just a little bit. I remember hearing that if you want to see miracles in the mission, you have to be EXACTLY OBEDIENT, and so I decided I would try.

Of course, I am not perfect and there are TONS of things I could be doing WAY better, but this week I really tried my best to be more obedient and I think it actually helped.

We had zone conference this week,

and to be honest, that gave me more motivation to try even harder, especially after Sister Zapanta's address to us.

Before I go on, I think I just need to take a minute to say how awesome Sister Zapanta is. I honestly don't know how she does it! But she is a POWERFUL woman! As she stood talking to all of us, I think everyone's full attention was on her (I'm not sure... I was too focused to tell) as she gave a powerful talk about how when we choose to come on a mission, we choose to sign ourselves and our agency over to the Lord. So we no longer have the agency to sleep in, watch movies, sit around or do whatever else we might want to. We HAVE to do the will of the Lord.

After that, I felt her overwhelming love for all of us as she said that her and president Zapanta would always be there to help us and I just remember thinking "one day I want to be like Sister Zapanta... She's awesome." Since then, every time I have been feeling lazy,

or had trouble finding energy to do the little things, I have tried to remind myself of what Sister Zapanta said and it seems to have helped.

Since then, we have seen a lot of miracles this week, and I have just been so grateful. We have a lot of investigators and I have really wanted to do my best to help them and this week, I feel like we have. I think out of all our lessons this week, the one that stood out the most was yesterday with one of the families we have been teaching.

Yesterday was fast Sunday... which I always dread because I LOVE FOOD! But when we do our best to really fast instead of just waiting to be able to eat again, we always seem to see miracles in the work, and yesterday I think we did.

So this family has so much potential! They have been coming to church almost every week, reading the Book of Mormon and praying... but they have been struggling to develop a strong testimony and we can't seem to figure out why! I have been praying a lot for them and how we can help them and last night, some of those prayers were answered.

I think part of one of the daughters of this family (Joyce) is that she reads but never actually things about what she is reading, so she doesn't get anything out of it. So we thought that it might be a good idea to have her try the idea that the zone leader's shared at zone conference: write down a question and as she is reading the Book of Mormon, have her look for and write down the answer. The only problem was getting her to ask a question.

I was thinking about how we could do that the whole lesson until at the end, Joyce suddenly asked how the Book of Mormon was supposed to benefit her. Sister Black and I both has a big smile on our face and sister Black shared a powerful testimony about some of the ways the Book of Mormon had helped her. As she was speaking, the spirit was very strong, and one of her personal stories made me think that maybe we should have Joyce try opening the Book of Mormon to a random page and have her read that chapter to find an answer.

So as Sister Black finished her testimony, we had Joyce go get her Book of Mormon and open it. At first, I wondered if that was a good idea... because she might end up with a completely random chapter about war or something, but we just followed the feeling and were surprised when the Book naturally fell open to Alma chapter 42, because the corner of that page had been turned down.

At first I was confused why the corner had been turned down to such a perfect chapter to answer her question, because Joyce had only read to Ether, and had not gotten to Alma yet, when suddenly remembrance flooded my mind.

I remembered the first time we met this family. They were all sad and crying because of the recent and unexpected death of their mother, which was very painful to see. I remember that at that time, Sister Black had felt prompted to share a scripture verse from Alma 41 with them. After sharing the verse, we decided to five them the Book of Mormon. Before handing over the book, I just remember having a very strong prompting to turn down the corner of that page. I figured just so that they could find the verse again, so quietly, I did so before handing over the book.

I had totally forgotten about that experience until yesterday when Joyce opened the Book of Mormon and it opened to exactly that page with the corner turned down. I was so surprised and shocked, but more than anything I felt the spirit overwhelmingly strong that Alma 42 was right. That she needed to read it. I know that if the whole family will read that chapter, they will find the answers to the questions they are looking for.

As I look back through my journal from this week, I see experience after experience like this one and I wish I had time to share them all! One thing is for sure, we definitely saw a lot of miracles this week, it was amazing! It's especially crazy how when you keep a journal, you can really look back and see the Lord's hand guiding you the whole way.

For me, I have never been an avid journal keeper and sometimes, it has actually been really hard for me to keep it updated. But like the parable in Matthew 25 about the "talents", I know that if we don't treasure up our memories by writing them down,