Hello everyone!
This week was straight
up awesome. Elder Sweat (my companion) and I were pretty disanimated because we
have been working really hard the past few weeks to help the people we are
teaching, many of whom are in super tough economic positions understand that
the only guaranteed way to have happiness and to secure that everything is
going to be okay is to keep the commandments. Yeah it is going to be a sacrifice,
yeah it won’t always be easy, but God has promised us, many times, in the
scriptures that if we keep the commandments, we will prosper in the land.
So
for weeks now we have been doing all we can to help these super special people
help themselves, and their situations still haven´t really changed. Feeling a
bit disanimated and wondering what we have been doing wrong, or what we could
improve to better bless the lives of these people,we read in Mormon 9 and Moroni
7 about miracles, and how God has been, is, and always will be, a God of
miracles.
In Mormon 9 we read:
18 And who shall say that
Jesus Christ did not do many mighty miracles? And there were many mighty miracles
wrought by the hands of the apostles.
19 And if there were miracles wrought then, why has God ceased
to be a God of miracles and yet be an unchangeable Being? And behold, I say
unto you he changeth not; if so he would cease to be God; and he ceaseth not to
be God, and is a God of miracles.
20 And the reason why he ceaseth to do miracles among the
children of men is because that they dwindle in unbelief, and depart from the
right way, and know not the God in whom they should trust.
21 Behold, I say unto you that whoso believeth in Christ, doubting
nothing, whatsoever he shall ask the Father in the name of Christ it shall
be granted him; and this promise is unto all, even unto the ends of the
earth.
Elder Sweat and I
decided to try and do more fully the three things that verse 20 says are
required to see the miracles of God in our lives: we need to have strong belief and faith, we
need to be obedient, walking in the right way, and we need to know the God in
whom we should put our trust. Kneeling in fervent prayer, we asked to see
miracles in the lives of our investigators.
We did indeed see many
miracles these past few days, and it has been awesome. I want to share one in
particular with you all. I have been working with and teaching a family for
almost 2 months now. The father is the taxista that found us in a really cool
way that I think I told you about several weeks ago. Anyways, the father has
great faith and really wants to come closer to God. He has great desires to be
baptized and to marry his wife, but he has been struggling with unemployment
off and on for the past several weeks. We are waiting for the legal papers
necessary to get him married to arrive, but he still hasn’t been able to save
the 400 lempiras necessary to pay for them when they arrive. There are members
that are willing to help pay for them, but we feel that it would be best if he
and his wife really made the sacrifice to pay for the partidas as part of the
repentance process. He just lost his job as a taxista again last week, and they
are once again literally penniless, just like when we started teaching them. To
make things worse, we have barely been able to find the dad to teach him the
past few weeks because he is always away from home looking for work and the
appointments we have set he has not been able to make. I have worried and
prayed a lot about this family because I know they could be great members but
they are just suffering so much. One of the miracles we prayed for was just to
be able to find him in his house and to teach them. Long story short, we
miraculously found him and went with him to his house to teach him. We felt
inspired to teach him about tithing, and about the power of obeying the law of
tithing. That day, he had walked around practically all of La Ceiba looking for
a job with his 3 year old child, and someone had given his child 23 lempiras.
After teaching Javier about the law of tithing, how God requires that we give
him 1 tenth of all the money we earn, not to pay church leaders but to build
the kingdom of God (church buildings, temples, humanitarian aid etc.) and in
return he promises to bless us incredibly, he promptly took out the only money
he had to feed his family of 5 kids and his wife, 23 lempiras, or about 1
dollar and 15 cents, and handed us 3 lempiras, embarrassed at how small it was
but wanting to do all he could to have God be pleased with him. We taught him
how to fill out a tithing form, and as I watched him put his 3 lempiras, 15
cents, into the tithing envelope I felt the Spirit so so strongly. I couldn´t
help but start weeping at the incredible feeling of the Savior´s love for them
and their desires to follow him and I promised them that I did not know when
the blessings would come, how they would come, or what they would be, but I
knew that their faith and obedience would open the windows of the heavens and
that I knew that the blessings would come. Javier and his wife also began to
cry as we all felt the powerful witness that these changes that they are making
in their lives, these sacrifices, are indeed true.
I know that the things
we teach really are the words of a loving Heavenly Father that wants to bless
us so much. He is a God of miracles, and all we need to do to see those
miracles in our own lives is have as much faith as we can, to do the right
things and follow the commandments, and to put our trust in God. I am so
grateful to serve as a missionary and for the first and most powerful time so
far in my mission I felt the extent of the divinity of my calling, that these
commandments really will call down the blessings of heaven and that these
blessings WILL come, even though it may not be until after I am transferred
from the area.
I love you all and know
that miracles are real and possible in your lives as well if you do your part
to see them happen!
Love,
Elder Moffitt
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