Wow those tomatoes are doing well . . . Elise, loved your picture too.
Alright,
so the big thing this week is mini-missions. Young men over the age of
16 whom are serving within the OCM boundaries have the opportunity to
spend one week with the missionaries, living and acting as a missionary
would. So right now, I have 3 companions because we were assigned to 2
mini missionaries. Brother Nick Powell, and Brother Austin Sayre.
Brother Sayre has been a member for less than one month! We are able to
get double the work done because since there is a total of 4 of us we
can split as often as possible. Saturday there was a mini-mission
transfer meeting where we were put into our companionship. Honestly, I
wish I had the opportunity to serve a mini-mission, but I kind of feel
like Camp Helaman was the same thing, if not more meaningful to me than a
mini-mission. I often reflect on that life changing week at Camp
Helaman. I hope the Stake does that again.
So here are a few mini-miracles, we were falling
behind this week due to lots of ministrative things at the beginning of
the week. We had the mission leadership council on Monday, p-day on
Tuesday, and zone conference on Wednesday, so in the end there was very
little proselyting time at the beginning of the week. But we had a boss
weekend. The Lord placed people in our path. At one point we were
walking out to our car from our house and there was a lady walking down
the street right in front of our driveway. we stopped and talked to her
and she was willing to meet with us again this week. At another
instance, we were having kind of a rough evening where we were
cussed-out, and rejected by lots of people, seemingly more than normal.
We had a couple people drive by and shout profane things at us too. I
was with Brother Sayre and I did not want him to have a bad experience.
We took a moment at our lowest point to stop at the baseball field and
offer a prayer (not because I love baseball but it was simply a
convenient, private location). Now Danville itself has been tracted out.
We have knocked on just about every door in the town. But . . . As we
were leaving that baseball field Brother Sayre felt like we should knock
on a house we had visited in the past, so we did . . . no answer. Now
promptings from the spirit come in a variety of ways. At first we were
discouraged, but then the hand of the Lord was recognized, because as we
left that porch we spotted a dirt driveway between the house we just
knocked on and a neighboring home. I felt prompted to walk down that
driveway, so we did, only to discover 3 houses that are unnoticeable
from any point on the main road. We contacted everyone there and 2 of
the 3 houses had people who were willing to schedule return appointments
with us.
It is after the trial of our faith, that we receive the witness. . .
We
were biking in the pouring rain. After about an hour of talking to
people no one had opened up and wanted to listen. We decided to bike to
another location about a mile out of town and we stopped at the first
house we saw. The woman who answered was very sympathetic to our cause
because we were soaked, and she told us to come in and dry off. The
husband has a broken leg and seeing it as an opportunity we insisted
that we serve them somehow. They agreed that their yard needs to be
trimmed and so today, after p-day we will be trimming for them. It was
definitely worth the rain, and if not for the rain we may not have been
able to get in contact with them.
The Lord works in mysterious ways. I wish I had an
eye to see all the things he does for us. I know he is there. Often, we
don't realize exactly what he is doing for us until we look back on the
situation and realize he was there. Lots of times when we are in the
trial before the witness things seem hopeless, but there is hope, and if
we exercise the principle of enduring the to the end, then we will
understand at the finish line. God lives and he is in our everyday
lives, whether we recognize it or not, he will never give up on us.
Thanks for the voting info, and your love. I love you too.
Elder Beutler
