Monday, February 13, 2012

No, No, No...It wasn't Me!........week 81

Dear family,

That is great news. Congratulations Tyler. You are being put to work really early :) I am glad.

Before I talk about all the really good stuff I wanted to tell you this story of a young couple and their baby. We are working with a couple to get them married and baptized this week but it has been rough. We were at their house a few weeks ago talking to the mom and the little one year old girl. The mom had to run to do something in a room in the house so we stayed in the living room directly in front of the little girl. She was sitting there looking at us with her cute little face when all of the sudden she let out a huge fart. We were like, ¨what!?! Are you kidding me?¨ The little girl then stuck her finger out and pointed at me. ¨No no no, that was not me,¨ I told her. She then pointed at my companion. ¨No no no, it wasn´t him either.¨ Then, with a face of shame, she pointed at herself and dropped her head to look at the floor. ¨That´s right little baby. Don´t go blaming the missionaries.¨ It made me laugh a whole lot.

Well we realized something super important but really simple this week. We realized that in order to involve the whole ward in missionary work, we had to involve them in it. And we cannot involve all of the ward in the process of finding, teaching, and baptizing unless we have daily contact with our ward mission leader. We took your example Dad. We knew that we should have done it beforehand but we didn't understand why. But when we did, we started right away. To our convenience he was out of town this week but we started what we were going to ask him to do: coordinate the efforts of the members and the missionaries. With our work in the last few days of the week helped us to achieve more than we had done ever. We felt how powerful are the members of the church. We realized that there really is a disposition to do the work but they need to be notified and reminded. We have many families that were beginning to fall away but as we worked this week, almost all of them began to progress. We are super excited. We realized how important is the Progress Record and our ward mission leader to involve the whole ward in the work of salvation. We did this as well with inactives and it was fruitful. We saw clearly how the people progress when they can hear the testimonies and feel of the love of the members. It was drastic. We have a lot of work to do but this week we are getting ramped up to get all of the members involved in the work.

And something really interested happened this week as well. When we plan well who are the members who come with us these members begin to ask themselves, ¨I knew this person for a long time. Why didn't I share the Gospel?¨ As the members have participated actively in the process of teaching, they begin to invite their non member friends to learn more about the church. And this process is guided by the Spirit within the members, not because the missionaries are trying to suck out all of the references that they have. We saw this with a few families this week. We are going to get everyone involved. We have a few baptisms planned for this month but we are getting ready for a blossoming March.
Family, the kingdom of God is built upon small efforts of ordinary people. As Elder Ballard says, ¨the gospel is simple, no matter hard we try to complicate it.¨ Let us draw deeply from the fountains of happiness which God has given us. May God bless you all. It is my prayer in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Love,
Elder Russell