Be like the elephant

This week was super awesome and full of miracles! The week went kind of slow at first but ended up being amazing by Sunday. We had to stay inside on Wednesday because Elder Summers got sick and could barely move out of bed which was unfortunate but it gave me a chance to catch up on some needed sleep and to read some good Ensigns. On Friday we ended up helping with a service project that we thought would only take an hour or so to finish but it ended up taking 6 hours! It was actually pretty fun to help out, especially since we were still in proselyting clothes, and hopefully did a lot of good since the people we were helping were non-members. Hopefully they now know a little better who members of the church really are and maybe someday they will be ready to listen to other missionaries. On Saturday we realized we needed to get our bikes from the home of a member so we started walking expecting it to take about two hours to get there when out of nowhere somebody offered to give us a ride. He was a Muslim man from Egypt who was super friendly, while we rode with him we talked with him about God and religion so when we left we were able to leave a copy of the Book of Mormon with him so hopefully he will read it and want to learn more. I don't think that it was a coincidence that he pulled over, there was probably a prompting of some sort that motivated him to do so.  That afternoon we did a window and had a couple awesome miracles. Our dinner had cancelled on us because they were involved with the roadshow happening in the stake so after the window we were wondering what we were going to do for dinner when a member from the Korean branch saw us and told us to come over to the barbecue that the branch was having at the same park we had just done our window at. It was super good food and as we talked with the Korean elders we were able to get some advice on how to do the Japanese work better which was super helpful. The Lord really does provide for His missionaries when they do what they are supposed to and don't focus on their temporal needs, I guess the scriptures are true, who woulda thought of that;)
Sunday was the most miracle filled day though. At church there were five Japanese girls who are staying with some of the members of our ward who were all interested in church so that made Elder Summers excited to have even more people to teach and then a sort of less-active lady who was sitting behind us asked us if we would be able to teach her 11 year old daughter the lessons so that she can get baptized! All of this happened before sacrament meeting even started! After church we discovered that Greg, one of the less-actives we have been working with a lot, met with our bishop and got his limited use temple recommend so that he can do baptisms and be able to get baptized for his father and grandfather and then during our ward mission correlation meeting we found out that a former member had been at church today and that because of some humbling things that have happened in his life he is going to start coming back to church so there is potential there for us to start re-teaching him. The rest of the day we were able to meet with everybody that we tried to visit and we had a lot of good lessons with our investigators, less-actives, and members. We met with Greg and discussed doing family history work with him so he can do the baptisms for his dad and grandpa and then we talked about how once we do that we can begin preparing him to go through the temple to get endowed. Before we left he prayed and gave thanks for getting a recommend and asked for help to get the Melchizedek priesthood and to be able to make it to the temple and it was the coolest thing ever because that truly is what missionary work is about is getting people to the temple. 

Here is the other cool experience from the window. We talked with an elderly man from India named Sing (which means Lion in India). He was full of good advice about life and we actually took something he said and have been using it as a lesson with members and I'm gonna use it for my advice to y'all as well, we call it "The Parable of the Elephant". He told us that in India there are elephants that walk around and when they go down the streets the wild dogs will bark at them and run around their feet but that the elephants just keep walking and ignore the little dogs because the elephants know that they are bigger and stronger than the dogs. He related that to us because he said we don't need to worry about what the people will say to us when we try to share the gospel with them because we know what we have is good. We have changed it a little bit and use it to say that the dogs can be all sorts of things in life like temptations from Satan and his forces or people around us telling us that what we are doing is wrong but that when we have faith in the Savior and our Heavenly Father we can be like the elephants and know that we are stronger than these "dogs" and that we can walk through the streets of life with our heads held high and ignore their "barking." So as you go through your week look for opportunities to share gospel regardless of what people will tell you and if temptation comes your way stand tall and be like the elephants! I love this area and this gospel, the people here are good and I need to be with them.

Love,

Elder Cheever

 

 This is me and one of my zone leaders, Elder King