a practical-ly perfect church

Good things are happening in our zone every week as we see companionships working harder and harder to see success in their areas. Elder Argyle is quite talented at coming up with ideas to inspire and motivate others, and we have seen a lot of progress with planning and results in each companionship's area.

My eyes have been opened up recently to many ways that the Church is so perfect with all of its practical programs. We received a new assignment this week, which started yesterday. As a pilot program, four companionships in the United States have been assigned to work in the employment resource centers of the Church, one of the companionships being us. The other missionaries are located in Ogden, Spokane Washington, and Las Vegas. We will spend every Tuesday morning for four hours working to help people search and prepare themselves for better job opportunities. The employment centers were originally created to help members become better tithe payers, but the results have shown that more non-members are using the centers than members. Naturally, the idea is to invest on this opportunity to teach the meek and humble. The local senior missionaries are instructed to not proselyte in the center, but Elder Argyle and I are to follow the Spirit to make contacts, and get referrals for the other elders in the valley, inviting people to hear of the gospel. We also will serve as translators for the Spanish-speakers that come to use the resources in the center. We make a report every week to Salt Lake City on the work we do and success we see, and it is just a totally new type of task. It seems like quite a bit of hubbub has been made to get this program going, and we have a lot of specific instructions coming from Salt Lake just for us. That, as well as teaching English classes at the chapel during the week (I love teaching English, it is one of my favorite things I have done on my mission because I understand English so much better now that I have learned Spanish), I have a testimony that our church produces fruit worthy of noting. These assignments are so practical, yet evidence to me that we are guided by a living prophet. Even in conference, so much practical counsel was given from prophets of God on how to handle our money and manage our family stresses. I feel strange counseling others about how to find jobs, and I think in the end, I will know much more about it than I could have learned in any other way, which will hopefully prove to be intensely useful in the future.

I will include stories of more individual people from now on, but as for today, time is up. Thanks for the comments from last week.

Love to you all,

Elder Sam Bostwick