Service With a Smile

Lunch Line at Zone Conference with Package from My Sister

A normal week for the post Falls missionaries is usually jam packed with service at the food bank or Idaho Youth Ranch Thrift Store, but these past two weeks have been full of helping people move, gardening, and helping clean up at home so it can be sold. (I got to polish up my window washing skills.)

Some of My District

We have found that asking if we can help and do service while tracting, we can actually get in the home and teach a little about the Gospel.  One of those instances was when we were tracting in an older folks neighborhood. It's spring so quite a few of the small gardens there have fallen in disrepair. When knocking on doors we typically don't get very far because people think we are soliciting, but that is incorrect. We* are proselyting. (We have little cards that allow us to not get in trouble with the law, because there are many no solicitor signs that we ignore.) We knocked on one house in particular, and this elderly lady comes out and says, "Are you them Mormon missionaries? (with eyes narrowed)" and we said, "Yes that is the nick name, we are the missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." A after that you could tell she was done talking to us.  She said "ooohh right, 

well have a good day. (She says this with lots of attitude.) She then starts closing the door and we quickly say, "Wait quick question, do you know if you or any of your neighbors need service? We love helping move stuff and fixing up gardens." Then she completely changed. She was all ecstatic, talking about how she would be delighted to have us help in her gardening. She even told us that one of her daughters married into the church, and that she wanted to know more about it. This goes to show that "by small and simple things, are great things come to pass," kind of like Alma 37:6-7.

6.Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.

7. And the Lord God doth work by means to bring about his great and eternal purposes; and by very small means the Lord doth confound the wise and bringeth about the salvation of many souls.

Me, My Companion, and our Bikes

Here it shows that God knows what he is doing. He has a purpose in all things, and has a plan for all of us.

We had an exchange with our zone leaders, I went with Elder Feller, and Elder Judd went with Elder Homer. We got tons done during that exchange. For example, we went street contacting at the local park and met a huge plethora of people. We had to split off in conversations many times, because people kept walking by. One of the people I talked to was a Wiccan (there are so many beliefs that I had not previously known about, because I grew up in Utah) Another group of people I talked to were Pagans, a few of which lived near Elder Feller's apartment, and they did not mind him visiting in the future.

On our way out of the park, some of the people who worked for Columbia Bank were getting ready to do some community service and pick up trash at the park. We asked them if we could help them. So the story goes like this. We had spent longer than an hour outside at this point, and more than twice it would start raining hard for a minute and the stop. While we were trying to pick up trash. The wind felt like Spanish Fork in the morning. The sky rained sleet for a minute or two. Then the wind would stop and the sky would get all sunny, rinse and repeat this cycle 3 times, that was the rest of our afternoon.

Zone Conference

Other than with crazy weather and great success in our area, because of service, not much else has happened.

Thank you all for your support and your help with my mission so far, I really appreciate it.