Dear
people,
There
is a saying out here in the East that goes like this, "If you don't like
the weather, then just wait." We have felt a little of that this
week when out of nowhere we had temperatures in the high 50's. It has
hardly even snowed here so far. So we had a little extra time on one of
the warmest days of this week and went around trying to find some members the
ward has not seen in a while. Don't worry, I am getting to why this is
all important.
Now if you had to guess, would you say that
there would be people home at around noon on Thursday? I didn't think that we
would find anyone either but in fact every single house we checked at we found
someone home, who was willing to talk to us. I learned a little bit about
having faith that the Lord will put people in your path when you are doing his
work.
So
forgive me if I am retelling a story that happened in the past, but I can't
remember if I wrote about it yet. We ran into a member that had not been
to church in over a year. He told us that he was busy then because it was
Halloween, but that he would like to have us over for dinner so that we could
talk.
Well we came by for the time we set up to
meet and we found something that in all of my time as a missionary I had never
found before. It was a letter taped to his door, on the front of which
read "Dear Missionary Men." The letter said that he was sorry
that he had to cancel on us like this but he did not have our phone number or
any other way to get a hold of us. We thought it was really cool and kind
of him to leave a note for us because most people just cancel without telling
us or forget that we had an appointment.
Well we set up another time to meet with him
and he decided that we should meet December 4th. Now I do not think that
December 4th is a special day but for some reason everyone wanted to meet with
us on that day at 6:00 pm. Elder Graff and I soon realized that we had a
problem, because there was a ton of people that wanted to meet with us around
6:00ish on December 4th.
When missionaries have this problem they are
allowed to split up with the members so that they can get all the work done
they need to. We had about 4 of these splits/hand-offs. In the
midst of all of these splits something amazing happened that we did not learn
the significance of until Sunday.
A member named Brother Ax’ was going to pick
me up from Brother Ay's house, the member we took to teach J’, to take me to
visit the member who had left us the note. He was already late and was
about to turn back and go home when he decided that he would look one last
time.
Just a little before this scene, Elder Graff
and I realized that he might have a hard time finding the house and we should
go stand outside and flag him down off the highway. We were not out there
long before he found us and we were able to go our separate ways and have an
amazing night in several different places.
The member explained to me that the
experience he had with us was nothing short of a miracle and that I do not
understand the thoughts that went on in his head as he drove around lost
looking for us. Brother Ax’ then said that as he prayed for help, he
found us there on the side of the road the very moment that he closed it in the
name of Christ.
I
think I have talked enough about that story, and I can gladly say that the
lesson with that member was worth the trouble and we will probably visit him
again soon with Brother Ay.
I would now like to talk a little bit about
what happened in a different lesson we had with the Creamer family. Last
time we talked about "who Jesus Christ is" and at the end asked them to pray.
When we went to follow up with what had happened we found something that was
more shocking to them than to us.
So Sister Creamer had told us before that
she did believe that Jesus was the son of God, but her son did not. We asked
him if he did what we asked and he then said, very confused, "I prayed to
know if the things you taught last time were true, before I did, I did not
believe it was true. But when I prayed I felt that it made
sense."
Those were not the exact words he used
because he had a hard time explaining what he felt. We had the wonderful
opportunity then to testify of the Holy Ghost and how he is a person who can
answer us in many different ways. One of which is by bringing peace to
our minds like the peace that he felt.
I am glad that I have the chance to be here doing the Lord’s work. I hope
that I will never forget the joy that comes through service to my brethren.
Elder
Erb
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