The Best Two Years: Tracting and Trade-Offs

To everyone back in the States who celebrates the holiday, I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! It's been a little weird thinking that back in America, it's starting to snow, while here in Australia it's "high-30's to low-40's". And not the high 30's we're used to.

This week, we didn't have too many appointments, so we've been doing a lot of tracting to find new people to teach. Close to 85% of the time, it's a real quick rejection or closing of the door, but the times when you can just have a simple conversation with people makes it all worth it. You aren't gonna be able to teach everybody you meet, but just being able to let people know that Mormon's are real people, giving them a good first touch with the Gospel, or leaving them with a picture of Christ feels very productive.

Because Elder Lamipeti is District Leader, we have a trade-off with all the Elders in the District. This week, I went to Greenwich to serve with Elder Arima and then came back to Harbord and served with Elder Galarion.

Trade-offs are always cool because you serve with a different missionary for the day and you get to learn from the things they do. It's a good reminder of the things you should and shouldn't be doing as a missionary, and also gives you ideas of what you want to take back to your own area.

The trade-off with Elder Galarion was really cool, because we're both very fresh missionaries. We actually got here a day apart, so we'll finish the same time. We had a few appointments scheduled for that day, but planned to do some tracting before them around the area. We weren't having much success, so we stopped and tried to decide where we could go next. Elder Galarion does a lot more finding on trains or buses, so he asked where the nearest bus stop was. We got back on the main road and sat down at the nearest stop, but there weren't too many people there at the time. I was kinda disappointed because that morning just felt so unproductive, so I said a quick prayer asking to have someone come down and sit next to us that we could talk to. Sure enough, a couple minutes later, a man sat down and greeted us. We eventually taught him parts of the Plan of Salvation and the Restoration.

This experience really helped to strengthen my testimony of prayer. Now, we won't always receive answers to our prayers this quickly. Sometimes, we need to wait weeks or maybe even months to receive an answer. I truly know that the Lord does answer every single one of our prayers. The problem is sometimes we don't recognize it, or other times, we don't like the answer He gives us. But I do know, that if we are studying the scriptures, keeping His commandments, and doing the things we need to do, we will be able to receive the answer that we are seeking.

Love you heaps!

Elder Muh

Ponderize

- I realized that last week might have been a little confusing. I was thinking about Alma 26:12 when I gave an explanation for Alma 29:9, so here's the updated analysis: We are instruments, called to do the Lord's work. When we see success, we must glory in God, not ourselves, for it is He that brought us that success in the first place.

- Alma 34:32

"For behold, this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors."

- We must do all that we can in this life to prepare for the day that we stand before God. We know the things we need to do, but sometimes, we need a little reminder. If we keep on the straight and narrow, always "laboring" to prepare for that day, we will be ready to stand before Him.