blog week of Jan 20

Hello everyone! I'm writing to you at the end of a rough week but the beginning of a much better one! This week was very emotional for a million reasons but we are moving forward! I'm glad that Missionary work is hard sometimes, it helps us to recognize the importance of it and know that we need to depend on the Lord. He is guiding this work and it's good to humble ourselves and realize that it's only through His grace that we can do His work. 

Last night we were feeling pretty discouraged so we call our District leader and told him we were calling in a request for a pep talk. He said "I'm great at those!" Haha, he really is. He pep talked us and reminded us that Salvation is not a cheap experience. That's why the work is difficult sometimes. This impacted me a lot because it reminds me of our Savior. He suffered the pains, sorrows and sins of every single person that has ever lived and ever will live. This inconceivable pain helps me put in perspective my trials. People will always ignore, cancel and reject us. But it's worth the hard work and disappointments when we are able to bring just one soul to the healing arms of Jesus Christ. So this week we are prepared and excited to move forward! 

Something that added to our disappointment yesterday is that the investigator (which is the name for the people that we teach that are "Investigating" the Gospel" that I told you about before that is particularly special and that I felt was particularly progressing has made it clear she is unwilling to ever come to Church and doesn't want us to teach her as often, so we know we are going to have to drop her tomorrow. When it is made clear to us that an investigator is no longer progressing we have to "drop" them. This seemed strange to me at first but I've come to realized that we cannot fulfill our purpose which is to Invite others to Come unto Christ if we spend our time with people who are not prepared to come unto Christ at this point in their life. We drop them in order to use our time to find the people that Heavenly Father has prepared to receive His word. We have faith that our efforts have not been wasted by any means, but that these people were able to prepare a little more through our teaching and that one day they will be ready to accept Christ. This is sad but it's another way that the Lord is teaching me that it is never through my own efforts that we have success in Missionary work, but only through His preparation and His Spirit comes conversion. It's a hard lesson but I'm grateful for that reminder.

We had our follow-up call with our District Leader last night where we go over our numbers for the week (the number of lessons we had, investigators we found and added, etc.) And we realized our numbers were better than ever. We even felt a little silly for being so sad when our District Leader pointed out the success we have had this week.

Well everyone, please keep praying to find opportunities to share this message of hope and peace with others! I'll keep on going as well!
Love,

Hermana Hurley