The Battle Is Real

We soooo love being missionaries and seeing the changes that the Lord makes in people’s lives through us. We literally watch people change right before our eyes. The work is so fulfilling. Is it hot here? Oh yes. (108 out right now). Is it dusty here? Yes. Is it exhausting work? Yes. Do we miss our grandkids? Yes of course. But the spirit we feel as we bring people to Christ makes up for those things hundreds of times over.

Here are a few experiences and travels we had this week:

- We attended our first Zone Conference in Ukiah where we were taught by our new Mission President and his wife as well as by the young mission leaders. This was a great experience that easily brought back the strong spirit we felt in the MTC.

- There is a huge need in our ward for piano players. No one here plays at all and all hymns are accompanied by a CD player or something similar or are sung with no accompaniment. We both knew how to play a little in our youth and were prompted to put that to use, improve on it, and serve by playing the piano. Hanna found an on-line course that teaches how to play hymns with chords that we are using. We hope to be up to par in a few weeks and then be able to provide that service.

Here is an experience we had as a companionship that is probably fairly typical of most all companionships:

We have been asked by our Mission President and Bishop here specifically to minister to the less active ward members and improve church attendance and bring them closer to Christ. We enthusiastically embarked on that goal full blast (pretty much like we do everything) and visited and invited a ton of people. Very few responded positively. Instead, we heard lots of excuses and complaints and rationalizations. After a couple of weeks of that, and with not much people coming out to church, we engaged in a bunch of prayer and soul searching. Then, while at the temple, we were prompted to instead of focusing on church attendance to focus on preparing for the temple. Either preparing to go there for the first time or go back if they have been through before. Even new converts and youth to go to do baptisms. Using inspiration, we developed a Temple Challenge Lesson along with several others that bring the spirit to the families we are teaching to help them prepare in a baby step manner. The results have been exciting! Nearly everyone we have invited to prepare to go to the temple has committed to do so and been incredibly excited about it. Many said they had been thinking about doing that or feeling they needed to and were appreciative of our invitation. At the end of last week, we had 18 people, all less actives, with dates set to go to the temple. The younger missionaries put folks on date to be baptized. We put folks on date to go to the temple! And, miraculously and without begging or prodding, 14 of these “on date to the temple” people showed up in church Sunday, knowing it is something they need to do to attend the temple.

Our experience is that when success like this happens, the adversary kicks into gear big time. We experienced that this week in many different forms. Here is an entry from Elder Stewart-Longhurst’s journal:

“The adversary is real and the battle between him (bad) and good is real. When we recognize that and do something about it and count it as what it is, we have a powerful experience. He has been working on us and our people a lot this week. He doesn’t at all like that we are here living in his kingdom (and believe me, it IS his kingdom) and getting people closer to Christ and to the temple. He makes it hard for people to progress and keep commitments and he continually places obstacles in our path. During companionship study today, we decided to do more Missionary Portal Training together since it shows us as not being trained yet. It was a series of videos on stress found in the “Adjusting to Mission Life” Section. As we watched it, we both realized that we are both incredibly stressed out. And that lead to a great companionship/marital inventory and talk. We found that, even though we are serving together 24/7 as missionaries, we are weirdly growing apart and it is scary. That we have gotten so caught up in doing the work and doing it right, that we are pointing out areas that need improvement more than we are complimenting each other, which is something we are both good at. We caught it, had a great talk, made some plans and goals, listened and validated each other, then prayed and went back to work. Satan had once again succeeded in getting between us to thwart our work. But we caught it and moved on strongly. Once out in the area, we taught three powerful lessons, challenging awesome but inactive members to go to the temple. In each home, they accepted our challenge. When we came in tonight, we had 18 people on date to go to the temple! TAKE THAT!! And that is quite a miracle for this ward and for what goes on in this town. If I were Satan, I would be upset too and be pulling out all the hoops.”

We are grateful to be able to witness light overtaking dark, especially in the lives of these specific people who we are growing to love so much.

We love serving!