It was a pretty good
week. We found some new investigators and had an awesome leadership meeting
with President Riggs. I told President that the Larson's are my next
door neighbors and showed him the picture you sent from his mission.
He loved that and said they are great people. The best part was when I
found a five dollar bill on the ground! (haha) The weather was nice, so even
though we STILL don't have an air conditioner it wasn't bad. I went on an
exchange with the office elders (they are in my district) and we helped a
senior couple move in. Hard to believe it’s already June. March, April, and May
were definitely the fastest months so far on my mission. It has been
awesome serving with Elder Mathews and Elder Smith.
We taught Canon this
week (the member family's son that I mentioned in another email). We have
had fun trying to think of interesting ways to teach him the lessons. This week
we are going to teach him the plan of salvation by drawing it really big on
their driveway with chalk. It has been good for me to
teach simply. Sometimes we over complicate the gospel when in reality, it
is meant to be understood by children. A lot of our other investigators
have been hard to contact, so we've been doing a lot of finding. We are trying
to do more finding through the members. That has gone pretty well so far and
hopefully we can get some referrals. I have made a bigger effort to get to know
the members and that definitely helps the work.
We work out in the
mornings at an apartment complex across the street from where we live. The
other day when we jogged over there, we found a sign in the window
that said the code for the gym had changed. Somehow we had the code before
and I don't know where we got it. We were really disappointed and weren't sure
what we were going to do to work out in the mornings. We have a few weights
in our basement, but those just wouldn't do. That night we decided we
would still get up at 6 (we don't have to get up until 6:30) and hopefully
someone would be at the gym to let us in. As we were leaving our town
home Elder Mathews found a dollar bill on the sidewalk, so I took that as a
sign. To our dismay, there was nobody there and we had no way to get in. We
started walking back pretty annoyed and disappointed. Then (at 6am on a
Saturday) a member of our ward who lives in the apartments ran out of his
house. We had just introduced ourselves to this member the Sunday before. Turns
out he was helping the young men with a fundraiser that day. We told him that
we use the gym and that the code had been changed. He whipped out his
phone and said they sent him an email with the new code the night before. We
got the code and had a great work out! I tell you this story to show that
miracles do happen! (haha)
I wanted to relate this
story to faith. In the book True to the Faith it says, "Faith is a
principle of action and power." In James 2 we learn that "Faith
without works is dead" and Ether tells us that "if there be no faith
among the children of men God can do no miracle among them." Faith is more
than just believing. True faith leads us to act and that is when miracles
happen. We had faith that somehow we could get into the gym even though we
didn't have the code anymore. We showed our faith by acting and waking up early
just like any other day. When we got there, nobody was there to open the door
for us, but we still got in. We got in in a better way than we had even thought
of. Even when we have faith, God doesn't always answer our prayers. At least
not in the way that we want them answered. I know that as we have faith in
Christ and act upon that faith, God will answer our prayers and guide our
lives. I see that in missionary work all the time. I love this gospel
and I know it is true.
XOXO,
Elder Miles
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