Missionary Quotes

This area became the “refiners fire” of my mission. I learned two important things: 1- we as missionaries determine how the area goes, if we talk bad about an area, it will be passed on as bad. If we talk good about it, it will be passed on in a good way. 2- If we think that we can do it, we can. These are sometimes obvious lessons but they became especially real to me as I experienced them. As we began to raise the level as to how the work was done in this area, I found myself constantly light and happy. We continued to be obedient, have positive attitudes, and work as hard as we could. This soon became my favorite, busiest, and most successful area. I am so thankful for the influence of the Spirit telling me to be positive and give it my best.

Ever since our new sister missionary stood up and introduced herself I couldn’t stop staring at her. I knew I knew her somehow. She told her story, and I started putting things together. When I was a greenie we taught her! Our transfer goal was to have her get baptized but she moved to a different area. We were really sad when she moved. Now she’s on a mission! I couldn’t believe it! That just goes to show that we can never know how far our influence will go and it’s impossible to measure success. The Lord has a plan for all of his children.

Planning! Wow, what a difference. For all of our jondo (proselyting) times scheduled, next to it we put a goal, and did our best to reach that goal in that allotted time. It all added up and before we knew it we were writing down 140+ on our contact column! The first time that’s happened on my mission, and it feels great. It’s like President Monson says in Preach My Gospel, “When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates.” Through measuring our stats at smaller increments, breaking them down, we’ve seen performance improvement! Therefore, our success rate should accelerate! What a concept!

I had a wonderful experience this week. At the end of one our lessons our investigator prayed for the first time and it was so wonderful to be there. I could feel the Spirit and I could feel God’s love for her so strongly. I knew Heavenly Father was happy and pleased. Here was His daughter praying to Him – communicating with him for the first time. I know He heard her prayer as simple as it was. Why wouldn’t a loving Heavenly Father listen with rapture to His daughter’s prayer? And then, why wouldn’t He answer one of his children’s prayers? Of course He will! It was wonderful to feel His love for her in that moment.

The work here is really picking up. I love this area! The ward is so good to us and to our investigators. The Lord is opening doors for us to do this work here. I love this work so much!