A walk in Faith : My adventures in the Adriatic South Mission: "SWEET IS THE WORK" 9/14/15

First of all I cant thank my Heavenly Father enough for the blessings in my life and for the opportunity I have to be a missionary.

The past couple of weeks have been pretty slow here as far as investigators go. We have a mission goal that we will all pray with faith and work to find a new investigator every week. Our District leader Elder Schramm said to us "Pray like it all depends on the Lord and ACT like it all depends on you". So we did just that. In every prayer we prayed for the Spirit to guide us to these people, and for the strength to do what needed to be done. We spent hours tracting, street contacting, and working through members to find this new investigator. We tried our best to listen to the Spirit to let Heavenly Father guide us. We would feel certain that we needed to go to a certain place and nothing. Not a single person would let us in, but I've learned now on my mission, that the blessings don't always come when we expect them to or when we want them to. I know more than ever that everything is in God's hands which means its in HIS timing.

It was getting close to the end of the week and we still hadn't found an investigator. Our Zone Leaders called us and they said that they wanted to go street contacting with us so we could work together to find some new investigators. Since we cant teach men and they cant teach women we agreed that if they talked to a female we would give the lesson and if it was a male we would let them. We went close to our center that we use for lessons and stood outside on the street and literally just invited people to have a 10 minute lesson with us. We agreed that we were going to stay out and contact until we had at least one lesson. Within ten minutes of contacting Elder Anderson, our Zone leader, waved us down and introduced us to a man and his wife. We had an AMAZING first lesson with them and set a date for us to meet again. They both were very interested and asked for a Book of Mormon before we had offered it. As we walked outside we stopped another girl (M) and asked her if she had a couple minutes for a lesson and she accepted without hesitation. We had a short first lesson with her also and she said she wanted to meet this week. At the end of our contacting we exchanged numbers with the Elders of people who were interested but didn't have time to meet right then. We called those numbers that night and had another lesson set up for the following morning with a 20 year old girl (A). Our lesson was really awesome. She asked lots of questions and we were able to answer them by listening to the Spirit and paying close attention to what she needed to hear. So in the last two days of the week we were able to find 4 new investigators. They didn't come when we thought they would, but we trusted in Heavenly Father knowing for ourselves that if we did our part we would be blessed. AND WE WERE! Like Russell M. Ballard said "You can never do more for the Lord than He can do for you"

We also were blessed with a really good lesson with our other investigator Z. We have invited her to be baptized about 4 times now and every time she just says that shes not ready, but the more we meet with her (and we try to meet with her everyday haha) the more she opens up to us and the more comfortable she feels telling us her doubts. The last lesson we had with her we were able to listen/ follow the Spirit and discern her needs. She still didn't accept a date but she was able to open up to us and tell us the real reason why was because her husband was against it. After the lesson Sister Bennett and I walked out the door and hugged each other because we were so excited! We had finally found the real reason and we had felt the Spirit so strong. We knew that she had to. Ya, maybe she didn't accept a date, but everything doesn't have to go the way we want it to for it to be right. (A lesson I'm learning)

"Sweet is the work, my God, My King,

To Praise thy name, give thanks and sing,

To Show thy love by morning light,

And talk of all thy truths at night"

Sweet is the work here in Albania and I'm a thousand times grateful that I get to be a part of it. I cant say it enough.