This has been a pretty sweet week! One of the main things that we do out here in California is service projects. On Wednesday, we helped this lady move some stuff out of her house... and it was SO gross. The whole house was covered in spiderwebs and beetles and lots of fun stuff! I got bit like 4 or 5 times by spiders. Pretty sweet! We probably do two or three service assignments a week, either with members, or investigators, or the food bank, or whatever!
Because Elder Adamson and I are over a YSA ward out here, the work is quite different. We try and find less actives or potential investigators given to us as referrals, and we just drive around all day trying to find people and hope they will even open their doors! We have found a couple of potential investigators, but they were both married, so we had to hand them over to some other elders. We are ONLY allowed to teach people who are unmarried and between the ages of 18 and 30. Haha it makes tracting not very effective! "Hi! We are missionaries, and we have a message about the gospel that can bring you eternal happiness, but we will only share it if you don't have a spouse and meet our age qualifications!" Hahaha! So we don't do that very much. :)
Although, I did get to go on an exchange with an Elder Achal, and I taught my first lesson with him! I know; "Elder Valentine, you've been out for like two weeks and you have only taught one lesson??" But like I said, the YSA work is very different. Anyway, we taught the plan of salvation to this girl Sasha, and she took it all very well, and wants to get baptized! It's so cool! I love feeling the spirit testify of truth and make people happy! It is SO gratifying as a missionary to see people happy because of the gospel. We also found this guy Willy while we were tracting, and he was interested in talking about what we believe; we found him because I had a prompting to knock on a random house! The spirit totally found him for us!
Speaking of the spirit, that's what I have been studying recently; learning to recognize and act on the promptings of the spirit. It has been very interesting and a huge blessing for me. I wanted to know how I could always act on promptings to be doing the right thing, but something that I learned is that God (Christ) doesn't need to guide us in every action we take; He trusts us to make good decisions and do what we think is right, and as long as we are trying to follow His example, He will make sure that we are successful. This is something I have always known but not needed to apply as strongly as right now. I mean, I just want to do everything right so that I can be the best missionary! But that doesn't mean that I need to be led by the hand every step of the way. My faith, testimony, and knowledge of the gospel and the truth of what I have to share will be enough to get me going and to do good work. This applies to all of us! If you ever feel like God isn't answering all of your prayers while you are struggling, remember that the teacher is quiet during the test. Heavenly Father and Christ want us to grow, which we can only do if we ACT for ourselves! When you make good choices, especially when they are hard, you are blessed more than you can imagine. I testify of that, and that Christ loves us. He will guide us when we are trying to follow His example.
Okay! Well, that's all I have for the week; I try not to leave important stuff out, but just let me know if there are things anyone would like to hear about. Bye everyone! The church is true! God loves us! We are blessed as the children of Heavenly Father! Don't ever forget it!
-Elder Valentine!
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