The Missionary's Delight

So, seeing lots of baptisms is definitely a missionary's delight, but seeing the church chock full of great people on Sunday is also just awesome! This week, we started working with a TON of less active people! We started hunting people down through member referrals and our member records. We found some SUPER cool people. People who used to be fantastic members but that for one reason or another slowly stopped coming to church and doing all those things that make such a difference in life. We can't blame them. The road we walk is difficult, but we all have to remember the remarkable blessings that await us along the road, but especially at the end of the journey. 

We got to church on Sunday after having little success in searching out our investigators to bring them to church with us. We walked in to find SO MANY PEOPLE AT CHURCH. The building was SUPER packed! It was so cool! Cooler still because some of these people I got to help get there. Everyone was super excited with it all, and we took advantage of the situation to mark several days to go visiting people with members. We also marked family home evenings, so we should have about three family home evenings this week! Too cool! Bishop was super excited about it all, as well as the new Ward Mission Leader that they called today. Lots of members want to help us out, so we'll going to get them going bringing friends to church and sharing the gospel with them! We want to help the ward build up and know that we can! It's so cool to see the progress that has been going on here. I truly love being a missionary and being able to directly help these people with their lives. Sometimes it feels like we don't make that much of a difference, but none of our efforts is ever in vain. We can make a difference! It has to start with ourselves and then work out to others. We must change ourselves and then work to change others. We start with one or two people and are gradually given chances to work with more and more people and expand our abilities as we work with more and more people and as our influence spreads to them all. God gives us chances to learn and grow! This is a large part of our purpose here on Earth. We were sent from the presence of God to get a physical body and then pass through difficulties so that we could become more like our Heavenly Father. We're meant to progress and develop ourselves! It's super cool to think about.

I know that Christ lives! He loves us and cares about us. He wants to help us! He wants to comfort us. We just have to let Him into our lives, doing what He asks us! Having faith in Him and showing that faith through our actions, including fixing the things that we do wrong through repentence. We have to be baptized and receive that Gift of the Holy Ghost to be clean and pure, to have a new life in Christ and to be able to start it all over again, to get a clean slate! We then need to stay strong and work hard to always be worthy of God's blessings so that we can one day return to His presence and live with Him forever in happiness and peace together with our families! I love this Gospel, Christ's true Gospel! I hope that everyone can apply these things into their lives and feel the beautiful music of the Gospel every single day!

Elder Ashford