Monday, February 8, 2016

Miracles

February 8, 2016

Miracles!

Holy cow this has been a week of miracles! I guess the most obvious
one would be The Broncos pulling out the win against the panthers! No,
We didn't watch the game, but we heard all about it from the
pedestrians on the 82nd street bus stop. What a way for my man Peyton
to go out!

Another awesome miracle happened last Monday night. We're supposed to
proselyte from 6-9 on Mondays and we found ourselves at 8:30 and
absolutely nothing to do. That is by far the hardest time of the day. We
decided to go street contacting by one of our favorite spots near our
apartment. Like I said, it was 8:30, it was dark, we were tired from
pday, and as soon as I put the car in park it started raining a lot
harder. But we got out anyway and found ourselves at a large hotel we
pass all the time. Walking into the hotel was a receptionist that
looked islander. Of course my intelligible first comment was "Hey! Are
you Tongan?"   "Ummm yes."   "Sweet! Can we talk to you for a sec?"
"Sure. Come inside" ha. Not my smoothest. But when we got inside (the
hotel) we started talking to her and learned that she and her husband
were both members but went totally inactive when they moved to this
side of the river. She said she had been praying for help because her life
was really hard, then all of a sudden we showed up. She told us she had
a strong desire to come back to church and got kind of emotional when
we presented her with a Tongan Book of Mormon. Then she printed off
different routs to take to her house depending on the time of day and
the traffic on the road.

The next really cool thing this week happened on Wednesday during
mutual. Brother Tatafu (the previous ward mission leader) pulled my
companion and me into another room and then brought in three
investigators he was working with and told us to teach them. As soon as
that lesson was done, a young man came into the room with one of his
non-member friends and told us to teach him. It's almost unreal how
incredible these members are!

Then on Thursday we had a prompting to go up to North Portland (about
a 25 minute drive). It has been our experience that it's best to
follow promptings so we went up there and the man I was thinking about
wasn't home. So we worked around in the area and a couple hours later
I felt we needed to go back again. So we went back again and this time
the member was home. So we talked to him for a bit about his family
and then almost out of nowhere he started telling us about these
questions he has had for a long time.  But then he was like, "last night
I was praying to God to send me something ...anything to know that
this is his church and that he cares that I'm here. Then just a few
minutes ago when I heard my wife yell and say that the Elders were
here, I felt and knew that this was a message from God. So don't worry
about answering those questions, I will not question God again."

Then the day after, we were in a pretty dang sketchy part of town for
our dinner appointment. It turned out that our dinner forgot about us.
But that's ok because while we were down there we ran into two more
less-active Tongan members who also were not in any records we could
find. So we were able to talk with them and share a quick message.

I don't know if this counts as a miracle, but on fast Sunday there was
no awkward silence during sacrament meeting, In fact, there was a pretty
long line and nobody went over 5 minutes!

This isn't quite a miracle story, but while we were in the sketchy
part of town talking to the less-actives, somebody slashed our rear
tire ha. We were able to drive it to the church, but then it was too
flat and dark and raining so we just fixed it the next morning on
exchanges.

As always, have a great week!

Elder Thomas




Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement…..get up in the
morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted.
Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life
casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.

- Abraham Joshua Heschel


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