Dear y'all,
In the mission field, every week is
a great week. That actually reminds me of one of my favorite things that Sister
Dinsdale in Pasadena would say "God only makes good days". That comes
to my mind a lot. No matter what is going on, God only does make good days, and
weeks, and weather, and circumstances...we are the ones who keep calling his
glorious creations bad!
It occurs to me that you may be
thinking, since I am philosophizing about how even seemingly bad weeks can be
good, that I may have had a bad week. Not so-my week was fantastic. I am just
pointing out that really, all of my weeks ought to be fantastic.
But let us talk about this one,
shall we? We had our first branch correlation meeting with our branch mission
leader over dinner on Tuesday. Brother Trichel is awesome, plus, it was nice to
have a home cooked meal for the first time in a good while. He has a little
girl, Emma, who is 7, and she and I are good friends now. We spent a good bit
of time looking for cats in one of those I-spy books.
Wednesday is the source of the title
of this email, as we were counting miracles and took stock of quite a few. The
first is a little bit trite: because we needed to go into the car dealership
for a repair on our car, we would be driving past Cane's tomorrow. And hey,
getting Cane's is a miracle in my book. Second, during our daily planning we
made a plan to contact by phone a certain person who had formerly been taught.
However, we felt that we should just go by. When we did we discovered that she
was still interested, but that her phone was shut off, so it was a good thing
we went in person!
On our way back home, we felt like
we needed to stop at another person’s house, who we had not planned for. Well,
we caught her just before she left, and she snatched the Book of Mormon out of
our hands and said she would read it. Sounds good to me!
After lunch, we went out to
Jennings, where we had filled our day with planned contacts. The first was a
man named L__. When we knocked on the door, a woman answered. In the ensuing
conversation, we found out that that very morning L__ had left, for good, and
that this sweet woman was having a very tough time. I am so grateful that the
Lord placed us in her path to be able to be instruments in his hands to bless
and comfort her. She declined learning more about the restored gospel, but
nonetheless we all felt the Spirit of the Lord, and Elder Hancock and I know
that we were His messengers. It was a really neat experience. I love it when we
are so clearly sent.
The last person we planned for, when
we clicked on their record, did not actually have an address, but just a
street. But, feeling that if we had planned for it, then it must still be
important, we decided to go anyways (funny story about a similar situation,
actually, which I think I forgot to tell last week. Unless it was this week, I
don't remember) we knocked on the door closest to where the dot was on the map,
and then decided that it was probably pretty futile. We were about to leave
when the neighbor comes out of their house, calls out to us "are y'all the
Mormons?" and beckons us over. It turns out this woman had lived in Utah,
was impressed with our church, and wanted to know when our services started
here! It was such a clear example of the Lord's hand, guiding us where we
needed to be.
Let’s see, don't want to make this
email too long...got Cane's on Thursday, hallelujah. Also got the cops called
on us on Thursday. The cop was very nice, poor guy getting called off of his
important work because someone can't be bothered to see who is knocking on
their door at 7:15. But, once it gets dark here people pretty much shut
themselves away. Did a Come Follow Me lesson with a part-member family, helped
a recent convert write a talk for a fireside on Sunday, attended the fireside
on Sunday, talked to a wonderful lady, a member, who reads the same kind of
high fantasy novels that I did back home, and loves sci-fi and dragons. I asked
President for my ecclesiastical endorsement for BYU, and he did my interview
over text 😼 , branch
conference was this Sunday, we had some awesome speakers and a linger longer
after.
Now, funny story time. Another
person we wanted to see had a street but no address, but we figured we were
already there, so we knocked on every door in an apartment complex: "are
you S__ M__? Do you know a S__ M__?". Well, we didn't find her, but we
still have the rest of the road to knock on.
Love y'all, have a great week, may
Cane's continue to spread throughout the world bringing joy and happiness and
weight gain to all, and may the gospel spread faster, bringing exaltation and
eternal life.
Elder DeFord
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