Faith, the Final Frontier

Things are going well here in Almaden. This is the Land of the Beautiful people. It’s a good place though. Very wealthy but missionary work is still happening. I am loving my assistantship call and I am excited to teach and train more and more. It’s a different breed of missionary work here. It’s much less blunt contacting and more and more following the Spirit. It’s been a really good area so far. We have two baptismal dates and we are excited to get more. 

 Spiritual: Following the spirit is a tricky thing to do. Often times when you are following the spirit you don’t always know that when you are in action that the course that you are taking is the perfect course for you to take. For example, here in Almaden we get a lot of leaves falling down. This past Tuesday we saw that we did not have set plans. Just a lot of drop by visits. We decided to go and rake some leaves for service. This idea was definitely prompted by the Holy Ghost because the idea came out of nowhere and it immediately prompted us to action. We grabbed some rakes and went on our way. We just drove and occasionally yelled out turns. When we came to a house with a lot of leaves, we would stop and do a mad raking expedition. It was really fun. When we were doing that we really didn’t see any fruits of our efforts. So, how did we know that what we were doing was right and in harmony with what the lord wanted us to do? The only person we were able to talk to was a lady that came out of her house and told us not to worry about the lawn. She had gardeners who would come by and do it. It was a little disheartening. So why did we keep on doing it and how did we know that raking leaves was something the Lord wanted us to do? The real honest answer was that we didn’t know for sure but we had faith and believed that we were doing what the Lord wanted us to do. We were doing good and it felt right so we went forward even when we didn’t see any immediate fruit or results. We need to remember this principal. When we do good and we don’t think of ourselves then we can press forward with faith believing that the Lord wants us to do good and be good. Part of having faith is not knowing for sure that what you are doing is perfect, but knowing that it is good and that it is in harmony with all the principals that you have been taught. This applies to service, to blessings, to teaching the gospel and to any facet of life you can think of. The principal of believing based on correct principals is a hard skill to master but it results in miracles and greater spiritual power. Fortunately for us we did get the chance to see the fruits of our labors. It was amazing. We went to visit a less active member and his house happened to be one of the houses that we raked the leaves for! It was so cool! He was really flattered that some unknown entity loved him enough to rake leaves. He was very touched. We never told him it was us but it had definitely softened his heart. It was a special gift from God to let us know that we were doing His work.

Funny: 

Where I am at: I love this ward and I love the work. Things are going well. We are excited for Thanksgiving. I am happy healthy and well. Love you all!

Elder Black