Gratitude 12.15.20114

Whelp this week was a week of miracles, literally. Beginning with Monday we had an alright focus group of people that we were teaching, and by Friday each one of them told us that they didn't want us to come by anymore, that they just wanted to be friends (like one of those bad high school break ups) or that they were just sick of listening to us. 

As I pondered the state of our sector I said to myself If you want different results, you have to do something different that was Friday night when it seemed as though everything was going wrong. But I decided to do something different. I committed in that moment that each and every prayer that I offered would only include the things that I was grateful for. In other words I would not ask for an increase in blessings until my heart was full of gratitude at the blessings that I had. And I testify that since that moment until today the Lord has not ceased nor even paused in blessing us. I cant tell all of the blessings for lack of space and time but here comes a few of the many.

1. Ignacio is the son of two recent converts, he has never read the book of Mormon or come to church, this week (Saturday and Sunday) he did both, and more than that is he committed to a baptismal date for the first Saturday in January.

2. We received a reference of a family of 5 that we will be contacting on Tuesday and the members tell us that the family wants to join the church and get baptized. (Sunday at church) 

3. We found and taught a family that has been meeting with the missionaries for about 10 years, we committed them to church (Saturday night) and they came, then on Sunday they committed to baptism on the 10 of January. 

4. We are teaching an evantist (the religion that Emma white founded that worship on Saturday) but yeah, Islander is his name and he has been a missionary for the church for 5 years and he accepted a book of Mormon and came to church on Sunday (and he loved it, he was so excited about it that he said that he was going to invite his friends the next week!!)

5. We received a reference from the branch president of a return missionary who is inactive and his non member wife who want to start coming to church.

6. Sunday we received a reference of a woman named Andrea, so we went to visit her and we talked to her daughter for a few minutes (we found out that she is a less active member of the church) and then Andrea came in and you could tell right away that she felt miserable, so we said hi and she sat down and the room fell into a brief silence and I looked up at her and asked Andrea, are you happy? she responded No. As we asked a bit more and discovered the reasons why she was not happy I looked at her once again and said Andrea I promise you as a representative of Jesus Christ that if you complete the invitations that we are going to leave with you, you will feel happy. She committed to read the book of Mormon (mosiah 2) to pray, to come to church, and to baptism on the 10 of January. Then after she committed she looked at me in the eyes and seemed to stare into my very sole and said This promise of yours, it had better be true. And i cannot tell you how glad I was in that moment that I knew that I had been called and ordained by representatives of God himself and that my promise was as valid and god as if Jesus Christ himself had spoken the words.

7. I think that the biggest miracle of all is that in my heart right now there is nothing but gratitude and love towards my Father in heaven. 

I know that He lives and that His son does as well and so shall each of us. love you guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Elder Hutchins