Sunny Florida

April 1, 2013

Hello Everyone!

It's still sunny in Florida, and the field is white and ready to be harvested! A lot of things have happened this past week, where do I even start?

Early this week, my companion and I were doing the typical morning study and we got a phone call from a man who asked us if we could stop by the hospice. (The hospital where people are sent to die) His mother was just sent there after a fall where she broke her shoulder. She also was fighting cancer in her liver. The doctors told her she had a few days to live, and she wanted a blessing. You could tell that she was experiencing a lot of pain. When we arrived, she lit up. It made our day and confirmed to us why exactly we are here. We are here to see the joy the gospel brings to people and to realize how lucky we are to witness it time and time again.

That same day, we were having our weekly annual Book of Mormon study with investigators, less actives, and missionaries, when half way through the lesson, Elder Jenkins and I stopped the whole discussion and followed the spirit by reading somewhere completely different. It ended up touching one investigator named Gabe, and we talked to him afterwards, and he agreed to be baptized on April 27th! I didn't even get to finish my invitation to him before he cut me off and said yes!! Yes, I will be baptized! It was amazing.

Later that week, we were scheduled to visit a less active member and she didn't answer. We were pretty bummed. We decided to just walk around the neighborhood, and we ran into a couple named John and Andrea. They told us they had just moved here and were looking for a church! So of course, we were meant to meet them that day! We had a wonderful lesson and committed them along with two others in the house to be baptized on the 27th. That makes a total of six baptisms this month! Six is higher than our whole district's goal for the last month. Things were going very well until Sunday came around. We were expecting 9 people to show up, which is a lot for this area, but only one showed. At first it was discouraging, but we know that everything happens for a reason. We also learned that our goals are very high. We can only do so much with these people, and there is a difference between what we want to happen and what the Lord wants.

Just like in Alma 32, faith is like a seed that grows over time. We have a choice to accept it or not. We as missionaries, are only here to plant that seed and watch it grow in people. We are not converting people, the spirit is. Every contact we have counts, and even though they might not get baptized right away, they come one step closer to God.

The church is true, and I continue to grow from all my experiences! Talk to you next week!

With love,
Elder Greenlaw