Week 43: On the Prize

Hello, August!

Both of us forgetting to bring an umbrella and getting absolutely drenched while street contacting.

Today officially marks 10 months!!! That is both exciting and completely terrifying. How is it that I’ve been a missionary for so long that I’ve entered the double digits in months? I have no clue what’s going to happen in my brain when I hit a year.

The Real Deal (pronounced “Ray-all Day-all”; merch from Real Salt Lake, Utah’s Major League Soccer franchise, in a Xela shop)

This week has been hard and wonderful. Cesar is doing well, and so are Gloria and Manuel. When we taught the Restoration this week, Manuel was paying such close attention as we were explaining, and it was very tender, because during our chapel tour, he had been busy taking care of their little boy, Angel, so he wasn’t following as well as Gloria had. Going into that lesson, we were concerned that he wasn’t as interested, but he definitely is!

All of these absolute units at our special zone council (which was super fun)!

The real big deal, though, was the mission tour we had with Elder Brian K. Taylor. Let me just say, his wife, Jill, is an absolute unit. So is Elder Taylor, but seriously. Jill was slaying the game.

Elder and Sister Taylor were basically covering the missionary purpose, which is finding, teaching and baptizing. We focused a lot on finding, which was an interesting shift for me. In the TNM, we were sort of finding machines who needed to be reminded about the teaching and baptizing all the time. But as part of the discussion on finding, they talked about the importance of member referrals, and their thoughts and concepts were super refreshing!

Then, Elder and Sister Taylor invited us to contact 50 members for referrals using what they had taught. Which is a lot of people. And I’m not gonna lie, it was really hard. Especially when Hermana González and I didn't come close to reaching the goal. There were a lot of reasons (us having a lot of lessons that day, nurse responsibilities, not getting the member list, sharing a ward with the APs* and them not telling us which members they’d already contacted until super late in the day), but I ended up feeling absolutely defeated. Because we worked our tails off and reached out to around 80 members, and only 25 of them responded. There are those days when you thrust your sickle in and do everything you possibly can, and it feels like your effort was wasted.

But when I look back on this week, there were literally so many miracles. Setting people on date for baptism, the people we found and talked to, the members who actually answered us and were so grateful to have us talking to them, and the referrals they gave. This week was full of Heavenly Father’s blessings. And they weren’t one specific number of members answering our calls and texts. Because they didn’t have to be.

Doctrine and Covenants 8 says:

8 Therefore, doubt not, for it is the gift of God; and you shall hold it in your hands, and do marvelous works; and no power shall be able to take it away out of your hands, for it is the work of God.

I am still remarkably bad at goal-setting. But I’ve learned a lot about it on the mission. And they have a lot more to do with us working toward who we want to become than the number in question. Because becoming perfected isn’t a quantifiable thing. And if we want to become like Christ, we need to make sure there’s room for Him in His work. Elder and Sister Taylor weren’t asking us to set a goal to talk to 50 members because passing that marker would magically make us worthy of entering the Celestial Kingdom. It was about raising our vision to the possibilities. Things will go imperfectly. They always will. But, if you’re looking for it, you’ll always find Him helping you out, somewhere along the way. Even if it isn’t where you expected.

— Keeping my eyes open,

 Hermana Newton

* assistants to the [mission] president