Second week out in the field, and
I've come to a realization of just how challenging it is here to find people to
teach, because first it's Russia and mostly the law really makes it difficult.
Many of the missionaries have lost hope in finding people to teach. My trainers
haven't had much success at all throughtout their missions on finding, but I
wasn't going to fail the people of Russia that are waiting for us to bring them
back home that easily so I really pushed my trainers that we were going to try
extra hard to be obedient and talk to everyone we can and be intune to the
spirit so the that we can have some success. I promised them that if we tried
our hardest we would see miracles take place. Well they got excited and we gave
an extra push to try to talk to everyone we could find and hopefully have a
normal conversation that could lead to us explaing how we are volunteers for
our church and try to gain curiosity in them to want to have a lesson to learn
more in the church building. Well this is a very difficult task, and to our
suprise absolutely nothing happened, we couldn't get a single conversation far
enough to get anywhere, any contacts or anything. That sunday after church we
were studying while one of my trainers was doing some things for our branch since
he was the branch secretary. I was just reflecting on the week and was getting so discouraged
on how we tried so hard and put all our hope that we could at least get a
conversation towards the gospel and how my whole mission could be like
this.
All of a sudden a 30ish year old man
knocked on the door. I just assumed it was just some member froma different
brach but my trainors waived to me that they had no idea who he was. I jumped
out of my chair to greet him and he insisted he sit down and for us to teach him
about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. We were't about to tell him no, so we sat
the man down and taught him the restoration. Apparently many years ago a missionary
handed him a BOM but he wasn't interested in God are religion at the time so he
just put it somewhere in his house, but now he is ready to learn about God and
he realized he had a BOM so he thought he'dstart there and find a church. We
were all completely shocked the whole time! We couldn't believe this was
happening. He agreed to come to church on Sunday. Whether anything happens or
not, that beside the point. I learned many lessons this past week about
patience, hope,faith, dilligence, and many other things. God has prepared
people who are ready for His word and blessings everywhere, some places are
harder to find than others, but they are out there. It is all in the Lord's
time and hands, not ours. He expects us to try our hardest and to always have
faith and hope no matter how many times we get discouraged or turned down,
because He needs to see that even through the bad or good, we have faith and
hope in Him and his work. And then He will trust us with his beloved children
who are needing to hear of His gospel and love for them. I know that God won't
just put everyone on our church doorstep on a silver platter, but that he won't
ever abandon us, that is work is real and the fields are ready to harvest even
if we are blind and can't find them on our own, but with our most dilligent
effort ,faith, and his help He will lead us to them.
Another amazing moment this week. We
had a lesson in a inactive member's small apartment, the size of a tiny bedroom
where a single mother and daughter live, with everything they owned.They are
truly amazing people and I love them dearly. It was our last lesson of the
night and it has been snowing all week, so the daughter insited that we had
snowball fight outside like always. So we had an awesome snowball fight and
right across the street a bunch of boys started lighting a ton of fireworks
while we were having a snowbal fight, it was just one of those awesome picture
perfect mission moments I will always remember.
I love you all, and my little timer
on the bottomof my screen is about to come to an end.
Искренне ваш, ст. ВанБускирк
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