No I am just kidding. I would never write an email that lame. There are actually plenty of good stories from this week if you all want to hear. Whadda ya say?
So I was feeling extra spiritual this week and I was really looking for the hand of God in my life. One thing I have recently been coming to realize is that my prayers, for quite some time, had been lacking. I had the sad logic in my head, and I am embarrassed to admit it, that God already knows everything. So he knows everything I can say thanks for and everything I want Him to help me with. So I would still say my "gracias por eso" and "bendiceme con eso", but it was very short and very...more or less, as the Spaniard puts it.
Well, I woke up last week. I finally came to. I began to realize that I had stopped noticing the hand of God in my missionary work and if you aren’t with God, or you aren’t giving Him the credit as a missionary, the work becomes very dull and even more difficult. I encourage everyone who doesn’t feel as close to God as they would like, and so that means everyone I am assuming, to pray out loud. I have taken to praying out loud at any opportunity I can. If my companion goes to the bathroom for 3 minutes, I begin talking out loud to Him. It has been helping me A TON! For a while I forgot that He is my best friend. I promise you that if you pray, as the scriptures say "with real intent", you feel the love of God pouring down on your shoulders. For me, I am ADD, so that means praying out loud to make sure I am paying real attention and am sincere. For you it may just mean a stronger effort. But say your prayers! Talk to Him as if He were right in front of you, as if He were your best friend and you were talking to Him about anything. Jesus Christ wasn’t kidding when he exhorted us to pray. Nor were any of the prophets. "But ask with faith, doubting nothing."(James 1:6) I felt peace from heaven this week. I testify that God is always listening. I testify that the pride cycle is deadly. When we forget to pray to God with real intent, He will humble us. If we ignore Him, we will get lost and feel alone. Pray!! It works. I teach it to people every day. It is so sad that this primary answer still has me on my heels sometimes.
So in my spiritual high, I have been feeling a lot more guided. This story is weird to me, but I will share it anyway. We were walking the other morning and all of our appointments fell through in no time flat. We were headed for a house that we had knocked that had said we could come back "cualquier otro momento" "any other time"...whatever. Side note, I have taken to telling the people, "Everybody tells us to come back any other time. Do you actually want us to come to back? Will you let us come in for a few minutes to share a message when we come back?" ... it isn’t yielding results because everybody still says "Sí, cualquier otro momento." UGH! Anyway, so we are heading for a house that had said we could come back. We pass an intersection and I look over to the right on the intersecting street and hundreds of yards away I see a lady walking with a baby. I immediately felt impressed to go talk to her. I told myself "no way, it is way out of the way." and we continued walking in our direction. I felt it again. To my mind came the story of young Bishop Thomas S. Monson and a story about him learning to follow the spirit better. He had made a promise NEVER to ignore a spiritual prompting. Recognizing that the Spirit was talking to me I said "Elder, lets go talk to that lady I saw back there." His response was "what lady?" We went back to the intersection and she still was walking. So we begin moseying along, pretending like we actually had intended to be on that street, and after a long walk, she was WAY far away, we approached her and said good morning, told her who we were, had some casual morning "nice day for July" talk, etc... She was SUPER nice...and she said she wasn’t interested.
I was SO frustrated in that moment. I said to myself "I know the spirit told me to talk to you. There is no way you are rejecting us!" But she did. And now we were on a completely different street way far from where we wanted to be. We just kind of stood there puzzled. I think my companion had expected that to work out better too. Wanting to feel like I was in control, I said without thinking "Let’s knock this house right here while we are here." So we knocked the house that we happened to be right in front of. We actually clapped our hands from her gate, that is how you knock here. So she opens her window in her door and begins to give us the same old "oh, it is all the same God. You boys are doing a good thing. I already know all about it..." but while she was talking my mind was drawn to Preach My Gospel. I had just recently read about saying quick, powerful truths to catch attention and invite the spirit. I would typically have just said "we want to share a message about Jesus Christ, or the family, or etc..." But this time I said very boldly, "So you know that we believe that right now, this very moment, there is a prophet of God on the Earth who receives revelation and guides us as did the original apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ?" It was a good sentence, if I do say so myself. To make a long story short, she was stunned. She stopped her little routine "get lost" and asked rather inquisitively "excuse me? What did you say you believe?" Moving towards her window, not wanting to talk from 10 feet away I said "let me show you." To make a long story short we taught her the first lesson and she was AMAZED to find that we had the same Bible. She was intrigued from the get go. It was a message she had never heard, although she had been telling us off "oh it is all the same God. I already know what you believe..." Preach My Gospel works. That whole getting to the point strategy works. I am gonna do that a lot more often. We have an invite to go back and she is super nice and maybe she will go somewhere if Satan doesn’t place more complacent "oh it is all good" feelings into her heart.
The miracle is that we never would have knocked just that house and we weren’t planning on knocking that street we were on any time soon. It is kind of an ugly street and we have a lot more streets that are still higher priority knocks even now.
Anyway, that is one story, but I think stories tend to be on the boring side when you are a missionary. It was really dragged out. I used to be a creative writer, but when you are writing a true story and you want to fit in a bunch of boring details it makes for a long drawn out story.
I have been thinking a lot about Grace this week. We are SO often criticized for not putting enough emphasis on grace. As Mormons, we are accused of trying to "work our way into heaven". The truth of the matter is that it "is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do." (2 Nephi 25:23) We were sharing the Plan of Salvation with someone and they told us we didn’t talk enough about grace. I found myself asking, "what greater grace can there be?" The message of the Restoration enhances our understanding of grace to ASTRONOMICAL levels!! What greater exhibition of grace could there be than that of a Father who offers to his completely unworthy children the oppurtunity to progress and become like Him? The issue is that progression requires action. Our opportunity to "act" is an act of grace from God. He is offering us the opportunity to find ourselves on a much higher plane and is willing to take us there after our best effort, even when we don’t necessarily deserve it. Anyone that says Mormons don’t understand grace are uninformed of the Mormon Doctrine.
So I have a billion things I could say, but this email is getting pretty long. I hope that everyone is doing just peachy! I am happy. I am trying to work hard. I will write more stories and insights from the mind of Andy Shepherd next week. Until then, be good! Love you all!
Andy
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