Well This week has been difficult, but good. On Tuesday, I gave the district meeting about the faith, and increasing our faith to be able to see the miracles that we all want in our missions. The meeting was one of the most spiritual that I have been in, and I felt like I was inspired a lot during the meeting. Most of the time I feel like I am the one learning instead of the one teaching. At the end of the meeting we each made a list in companionships of what we are going to do/change to be able to baptize every week in October. I felt the spirit so strongly throughout it all, and left the meeting with a renewed excitement for the work.
Unfortunately, as we all know, our faith can't truly grow without trials of our faith. Well I really feel like this whole week after our determined descision to baptize every week, the Lord really tried our faith. We spent most of the week knocking doors, and getting rejected in most of them. It was really hard to keep up that determination and excitement with getting rejected time after time. On Wednesday we had the same thing happen, we taught a couple of lessons, but most of them were just standing in the doorway and teaching them. On Thursday, we found one new investigator, that only had 5 minutes to share. The rest of the day.... walking. On Friday, we ended up teaching a really good lesson with an investigator to start the day off. We set a baptismal date, and had a spiritual lesson. After that however, we ended up clapping houses almost the whole rest of the day. We walked all over the place, knocking doors, talking to people.... doing everything we could to teach people. Despite our efforts the whole day was just rejection after rejection.
At night, we were heading back towards the house. We were tired, rejected, discouraged.... ready to just sleep the day off. We arrived about ten minutes before 9. We decided despite our exhaution to knock a couple more doors until 9:00. We knocked a couple more, and nobody answered. Then I asked my companion: Do you want to try this house, or that house? pointing to two different houses. He picked the one on the right. It was the last attempt before we were going to go to the house. We clapped the house, and a man came out. We presented ourselves, and to my amazement, he let us come in. We sat down with him and his wife, and asked them to turn off the TV, and invite the other family members in. They only had a daughter that was also there, and she came to listen as well. We taught them a short lesson, but the spirit was really strong the whole time. Anyway the whole experience really fortified my testimony of the way that God tests our faith and our patience.
On Saturday, we also had a hard time getting in to houses. On Sunday, all the people we had commited to come to church, didn't show up, meaning almost all of their bap. dates fell. After church and studies, we went out to work. We went to a couple of appointments that all fell through. Our back up plan was to go to the other side of our area, and I didn't really feel like walking over there, so I asked my companion if he wanted to go over there or not. He decided that yes, so we went over that way. While we were walking we found 2 people sitting outside, and we were able to teach them a good lesson about prophets, and committed them to come to the conference this weekend. We also found another investigator while over in those parts of the area. Another thing that helped me learn, is the importance of including my companion in our decisions, even though he is new.
Well with a lot of introspection and meditation, I realized the biggest problem we are having, is the lack of help from the members. The percentage of baptism of people we find is 1/2000, whereas teaching a members reference in their house is 1320/2000, that's a big difference. We are putting together a plan with the ward mission leader and branch president to be able to recieve 1 reference from every household of members per month. If we can fulfil the plans, we should be getting more like 6-7 baptisms every month. We are going to be working hard this week to be able to encourage, and motivate the members to share the gospel with their friends and family. All in all, I know the Lord is teaching me lots of lessons every day in the missionary work. He gives me the revelation I need little by little, and I guess that's the only way that i actually pay attention to it. I know that every day of my mission I am learning and growing so much. I love being a missionary. There is no greater calling than that of sharing the gospel. I would like to invite you guys to talk with the missionaries and invite one of our neighbors or someone over to listen to them. Love you guys tons.
SHARE THE GOSPEL WITH EVERYONE!
~Elder Ryan Griffin
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