Week 53

The Lord's Hand In Our Lives

Despite the rain, this last week was a great week for me and Elder Dalmer. It rained a lot because there was supposed to be a typhoon, but at the last minute the typhoon broke up and just became a lot of rain. However, we were still able to meet with a lot of people and also meet a lot of cool new people.

Last Monday, me and Elder Dalmer biked over to KenDing, which is about a 30 minute bike ride from our house. KenDing is full of beaches and ocean. There we ate at a really good food place and celebrated me being out on my mission for a year!

Then after Monday the rain started. It seemed to rain all day for 3 days straight, which makes missionary work hard, because then nobody wants to go outside or meet with you. However, because most of the people we are working with live close to the church, we were able to just go visit a lot of our investigators.

On Thursday the weather was a little better, so we biked over to ManZhou, which is our secondary area. Basically is it filled with mountains and farms. We have an investigator out there right now, who is a farmer. His name is 郭Guo. He is a really nice christian man, who always gives us something to eat from his field. I always love meeting with him, because he just lives out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by farming fields and mountains and he always goes on about the wildlife in the area.  He actually reminds me a lot of Dad. 

This last Sunday was a particularly awesome Sunday. As we did studies in the afternoon (after church) I read a talk by Elder Bednar all about the tender mercies of the Lord. He talks about how the Lord shows his hand in our lives from time to time and these little tender mercies are like anchors that can carry us through our lives. He talks about how the tender mercies come according to our faith and our obedience.  After reading this talk, Elder Dalmer and I discussed it together during companionship study. We talked about how we can be more appreciative and even more receptive to the tender mercies of the Lord. We decided that we would be actively looking for the Lord's hand in our work that night. 

Later that night, we had finished dinner early, and we decided that we would just start proselyting a little earlier than usual. Right as we left our house, we were self contacted by a person who used to go to a christian church and was really willing to start going again! That was the first time we saw the Lord's tender mercy that night. Then later we decided that we would call a member in our ward and see if we could visit her. She told us we could, so we went over to her house and had a great discussion about 1 Nephi 21(a scripture me and Elder Dalmer spontaneously decided to share with her) which talks about the Lord "engraving us upon the palms of his hand" and never forgetting us. After sharing that, she told us that before we called her that night, she had looked up in the sky and asked God if He had forgotten her. Right after she asked that, she said she got a call from us missionaries. It really struck me how the Lord is full of tender mercies and if we are willing to receive them, He is willing to show His hand in our lives. That is probably my favorite part about serving a mission. I think ever since starting my mission, I have been able to more easily see the hand of the Lord in my life and in the lives of others. I can't wait to meet more people who I will have the chance to help see the hand of the Lord in their lives! 

Love, 

Elder Quist