the master's hand

This morning was a temple day, which we scheduled to help get our zone ready for Saturday. Saturday will bring a meeting with Elder Richard G. Scott. He is assigned to a stake conference in Gilbert, and called our mission president. President Craig says the conversation was something like this, "Robert, I'm going to be in your mission doing a stake conference at the end of May, and I would like to meet with your missionaries on the morning of May 30th. Does that sound all right?" And in the obvious response to anything an apostle asks, President Craig said yes. I'll let you know how the meeting goes. When Elder Perry came, he was accompanied by a pre-apostle Elder Anderson. The two of them together took two hours. Elder Scott has requested three hours all to himself ... I'm very excited.

An amazing gift is to be able to look back in retrospect. The coolest part about it, is that a retrospect view changes every single day. We are able to see the Master's hand in everything we do, as long as we look for it. Even frustration of plans works to the overall benefit of the Father's purposes. Let me tell you some stories.

As a commitment to the Assistants and to help find new investigators for all areas in the mission, we are contacting inactive families, especially where it is likely that the inactive member has immediate family members (like spouse or children) who have not been baptized. This has been called the "low hanging fruit" though that might be less than true in many cases. We contacted a brother in the branch, and it turns out that he is the oldest in a family with three inactive brothers, two non-member brothers, and five non-member wives. The youngest brother is 11, and all the brothers want to get him into scouts and baptized. Being a pretty normal 11-year-old, Jorge (the youngest) didn't want to go to scouts until he found out that one of his friends from school goes to scouts too. This friend happens to be an investigator who will be getting baptized this Saturday, who was a referral from the recent-convert neighbor next door, and this chain to get a non-member kid to church to help reactivate his whole family and baptize all the non-members is in no way a coincidence or a stroke of luck, rather a calculated plan that our Father has always intended for each person involved.

One day, before getting out of our car to make some contacts in an apartment complex, another missionary called us with a minor problem that we had to fix immediately. We spent a few extra minutes in the car making calls to make sure everything would be okay. When we got out, I was disappointed that the time we could have used to contact some potential investigators and maybe have a quick visit and lesson had been used up fixing other people's problems. As we passed the mailboxes in the apartments, we met a lady named Manuela. She had been going to her apartment and was not planning to go to the mailbox, but kept getting the idea to go check the mail. In the end, she finally gave in and headed for the mailbox. When we met, she told us how she had had a phone number for missionaries in her house for a few years, but that she'd always hesitated to call. When she finally called, the number didn't even work anymore and she lost hope of talking to missionaries that spoke Spanish. She talked about how much she admired the members she had met and how she loved our style of life. She asked us if we had a Book of Mormon with us (which, of course we did) and if we could come by and talk to her and her husband. But then she said, well, we aren't married and we drink and I smoke so we have things we have to change .... If any returned missionary can imagine this kind of conversation on the street where somebody asks all the right questions and volunteers all the necessary information to know how to get this person baptized into the church, you'll understand how amazed we were. Each lesson we have had with Manuela and her soon-to-be husband, Jaime, we have had a different fellowshipper. This would normally be a bad thing, and we have tried to prevent it. But in the process of bringing various members into their home, each new friend has fortified this couple and been an essential step in their conversion. When they finally came to church on Sunday, both Manuela and Jaime felt like they were coming home and were so warmly welcomed that they left after their first time at church with a kind of conversion I have only read about in the scriptures. Both immediately committed to leave behind old habits and get married to prepare for baptism. A miracle that only the Master could provide.

I know this gospel is true. I don't believe it to be truth, or think it's true, but I know it. I have seen it in action, and seen it change lives, including my own. It really is all true. What did I do to deserve this blessing in my life? Or a better question, how do I make sure it doesn't go to waste? I love you all. Have a good week.

-Elder Sam Bostwick