August 24, 2015

everyone

so this week was interesting. but I’m short on time.

i will make the theme of this letter phillipeans 2:13 "For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure."

so we had a zone conference this week with president, and he showed us that us as a mission have amazing potential, but we are honestly not achieving as much as we could be doing, he gave us some awesome council, but i realized that it doesn’t really do much unless we apply it. so this week we worked on applying the stuff and it worked amazingly well and were able to bless many more people.

for example we received training on how to ask for referrals from everybody. it really wasn’t anything new, though they did clarify some stuff. and we received 20 referrals in this semana, when the average is like 3... in a good week. and that’s just from applying well and working hard in basic stuff, we need to do it, God helps us with that, but even before that, we need to want to do it, God helps us with that.

friday we went on divisions with the other elders in our district. they are great elders, but this transfer they have been discouraged and have hardly been contacting people. so after trying many things to help them, i gave them a very simple assignment, pray in every prayer for the desire to contact. this week was so much different for them, and overnight they completely changed how they were working. why? because of anything i did? no. because of anything they did? no. it was because they wanted to, because of what God did.

so it is with each of us, we all have things that we should do, but we won’t do anything effectively unless we want to, and the desire comes from one source, God. i like to look at it from the scripture stories, we read about amazing missionaries like alma and ammon. but they were not great servants because their dads told them to be, it tells us that they were filled with burning desire to share the gospel, the sinners that they were before would not have wanted that unless they had been filled with the desire by the spirit. i guess the message is that to magnify our callings and responsibilities, we should do the stuff, but first, we should seek the desire that will drive us.

that message was kinda convoluted and I’m not gunna proofread or anything, so I’ll end with something a little less confusing, the investigator of the week.

se llama R. we found her by just talking to her in the street. she is a teacher of kindergarten and a super happy energetic person. she has been listening to us for about a month. we haven’t really been sure how to help her progress, but this week we visited her with a member, and turns out she taught the members kids in school so they already know each other. the sister invited her to come to church this sunday and... she did! (yaaay! party! confetti! but more reverent than that!) our ward is pretty small, but all the people are awesome, like 7 people came up and started getting to know her, sitting with her in the class, and even walking home with her, so we think that she felt pretty comfortable there, and we hope that it will help her to want to receive more of the gospel.

That’s all for now, love you guys, be good

elder gandola