Sisters Kwak and Mansfield: Week 12 in Field!

Sometimes as a missionary, it's easy to fall into a pattern of things. By that I mean getting through day to day, doing what we always do without much thought of why. Or, if I were to really ask myself that...the easy answer would be, "because I am a missionary." But why am I really out here?

An experience I had this week is the real answer to this question.

On Tuesday after District Meeting, my companion and I were making calls, trying to set up some appointments for the week. It seemed pretty fruitless. However, as we started to teach English Class that evening, several people started to call us! They were either referred to us by a member, or found our number elsewhere, but they all wanted to learn about the gospel.

Feeling happy about the calls that we received that day, my companion and I sat down at our desks that night, getting ready to plan our next day.

Right before we started, we had a few minutes to spare, so we decided to Tim Tam Slam to celebrate a good day.

My companion was about to put another Tim Tam in her mouth, when the phone rang. Sister Blaylock's first reaction was to demand, "Who is trying to interrupt my slamming?!"

But, being the good missionary that she is, proceeded to pick up the phone.

The call was from an unknown number. Although the digits seemed familiar, we had called so many people that day that we weren't sure who it was.

As my companion talked with the person, it quickly became evident that he was calling because his friend was one of the members in our ward and he wanted to learn more.

I thought he was one of the people that had called us earlier that day...
But, when we checked the time stamp, it didn't line up.

So, I checked the numbers in my planner to see that he was one of the numbers that we had called before English Class...and it wasn't just any number.

This number was from a long list of about 200 numbers of potential investigators that Elders from over a year ago left.

A few weeks ago, when all of our plans fell through, we had called many people from this list.

I would ask Sister Blaylock to pick a number between 1 and 100. Then, I would count to that number on the list, and call the person.

If they were not interested, we crossed them off.

This particular person I had called, and he didn't pick up the first time.

And after being frustrated with calling people to no avail, to add some fun, I asked Elder Wager instead to pick a number.

He picked the number 13 because it was his lucky number.

And what do you know? It lands on this person.

At first, I didn't want to call him because we had already tried...

But, due to Elder Wager's urging, we called him again. And this time, he picked up!

He said he was away, but told us to call him back in a couple of weeks.

We did, and he didn't pick up. We called again on Tuesday, and he didn't pick up again.

But, he called us that night because he was referred to us by a friend.

The amount of effort and the number of people that has been involved in teaching this one man the gospel is amazing!

The missionaries who initially contacted him had to have made that list...and a couple years later, we had to pick that list up and call him several times...and a member of our ward had to befriend him over the years and invite him to learn with the missionaries.

D&C 18:10 states: Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God

This week has reminded me of the importance of just one soul in the sight of God. The amount of effort that He put into guiding this one lost soul to His church shows how much He loves each of us, individually.

We truly are all sons and daughters of a loving Father in Heaven. He will place people in our path over and over again to help us along the way.

This is the real reason I am out here. I am here to be an instrument in the Lord's hands, to help even just one soul come unto Him.

I need to remember that the people I come in contact with are all children of God.

As such, I need to love them and teach because they are a precious family member who deserves salvation, not because it's my duty as a missionary to teach.

It was actually cold this week!! Actually... It was regular summer weather back home...

But because we are so used to the humidity here..the slight drop in temperature and no humidity left us shivering!

In reality...it was probably about 25degrees! But, we pulled out our sweaters and bundled up!