Week 42: Dude What Happened This Week

This past week was quite flummoxing. A ton happened again. We had one baptism, had another fall the day of, had our recent convert want to take her name off the baptism records, and had her texting sorry for being so brash after only one more visit with her. And also a bit more.

Let's talk about it!

One tough thing this week was that we had three divisions with missionary leaders and I left the area two times, leaving me a little out of it with the people we're teaching.

One of those people I never knew that well was our friend Marcos, who was baptized this Sunday. Last sunday, if you have a good memory, he was taken by another friend of ours to get coffee after the first our of church, and so we had a division with our LZs (who are really good teachers) to help lock him in on the word of wisdom. And, they locked him in: every morning for the next week, my companion called him and they shouted together the number of days since he quit smoking and drinking. "DIA CINCOOOOO!!!" 

And with our recent convert... I was on a division in another area when they had that lesson with her so it's honestly still a mystery how they Spirit testified to her so strongly that she went back on what she had been convinced of about our church.

And most excitingly, I had my first white night, or more fittingly, white morning! Our entire zone baptized all together in one meeting, and six children of God made a covenant with Him. It would have been seven, but one of our friends texted the morning of that she wasn't ready that day. We hope to be able to be able to continue to help her feel prepared even if she wasn't that day.

And most excitingly at this white morning, we sang again! We sang Love One Another in Portuguese, and I sang the harmony part in the duet. It was super fun!!!

Also, during all of this, as a missionary classic, our WhatsApp got blocked three times this week, and to keep it from getting blocked, I've had to be the only one with it on my phone for the past few days!

Favorite hymn -- Sorry, I already used Love One Another as my favorite hymn, and it would be preposterous to reuse one. 

Recently, I've learned pointedly the power of the Holy Spirit in conversion. For basically the whole mission, I've thought that a good missionary is good because he's good, because he knows how to make friends with people then teach the gospel simply and in a way that applies to the people they're teaching. But as of late, I've been working a ton individually and with my companion to do all those things right, and yet we haven't baptized in a long time and we keep having people be unengaged with our message. Why??

Well, in my hunt for perfection in our lessons, I realized I had lost the Spirit. I focused more on what my companion said right or wrong and how long we'd been there than on trying to feel the Spirit in our lessons. 

So, just recently, I've been trying to change that! Is it working? Maybe, we'll find out. 

And one way I realized how necessary this Spirit is? Prophets of the Book of Mormon rely on it! Even King Benjamin, the great orator, started his speech with this promise and invitation of the Spirit:

(Mosiah 2:9)

And the people recognized well this Spirit:

(Mosiah 5:2)

Lately, I've been learning plenty that it really is only by the Holy Ghost that we're able to know the truth of the things of God! If he's not there, we can't learn nothing.

And that's it for this week,

Till next time,

Elder Haroldsen