The bag is great, the bike is fine. Thanks for worrying!
This week has been incredible and frustrating at the same
time we had so many potentials and people progressing towards baptism and they
were doing amazing things. We have been working with all these people for about
a month. and they were all set on coming to church yesterday! (by the way
church is at 1) and NO ONE came to church out of the 13 people that had
committed, NO ONE came to church. They came to the Chili-cook off that we had on Saturday night but not church for the 3rd week in a row! And I know in
most missions and missionary stories that is standard, but that's not the way
things work out here! Things move fast. And these families are amazing but they
are being put on the back-burner because they aren't willing to act. And its
just like Dad said, learning is NOT A SPECTATOR SPORT!!! We need to act in
order to learn! That's one of the reasons missionaries, bishops, stake
presidents and others with serious time consuming calling seem to make so much
spiritual progress and seem to know so much they are involved in 24/7 action!
And that is what we are trying to teach every day! ACTION and URGENCY, and it's
sad to see how inaction and an un-urgent attitude effect a persons personal
spiritual salvation. We knocked into a family last week, they are members no
one's ever heard of them, He served a mission, they we both sealed in the
temple, but they felt that they should let their children decide if they wanted
to go to church. and their children didn't like it when they were younger, they
would rather sit at home and watch TV. And so the family has not been to church
in 13 YEARS!!! The kids are not baptized and have no desire to be, because they
have never been. In their memory it's, un-important to them because their family
never ACTED like it was. Its an incredibly sad story. And completely connected
to ACTivity in the church.
Other wise it was a great week, I had an incredible interview
with President and an inspiring exchange with Elder Faniaka, I still can't get
over how incredible the conference with Elder Kopishke was and have made some
changes in my teaching and in just the way I look at the mission and life.
This week I have been trying to apply and re-apply every training I have received and most importantly the most recent few, and this week I was disappointed in the numerical results, but feel content in the way the spirit directed us, we realized we were spending too much time on people that weren't making progress, and that we needed to really focus on finding new people that were ready to act! And as we applied the training's with that purpose in mind we saw some incredible miracles in the HARVEST and in follow-up appointments, one being Yanira we applied the training we received from our exchanges with the Zone-leaders and especially the training's received on "teaching while you find and finding while you teach" as we went in to the harvest we decided not to move into the blessing until we really knew what she wanted, we weren't going to take the simple easy answers and we dug a little and at first it was frightening as it almost felt like interrogating her, but I decided to ignore those feelings and apply the inspired training I had been given and we found her deeper desire and were able to give a much more impactfull blessing that brought the spirit very strong. And she accepted baptism as we testified and a return appointment. It was a truly uplifting experience.
And while reading in the Book of Mormon I realized the importance of the scriptures and how powerful they are. The fact that they were passed from person to person to help the next generation and the persecution of many of the prophets went through to preserve them just testifies to their importance and the importance for investigators and members to read and learn from them.
I
want you all to know I love you a ton! And thanks for the birthday wishes!
ELDER PARK
PS I have not recieved the thumbdrive to send pics
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