Okay, so about my week. Last Sunday was my first official Sunday in the ward, and I’m really liking it! The leadership in the ward is pretty young and the bishop got called 4 months ago and he’s really excited about missionary work. He gives lots of ideas and he’s ready to help us out. It helps sooo much when you have a ward that supports the missionaries and are willing to do their part! Our ward mission leader, Carlos, is awesome too. He’s about 55 years old and he’s super crazy! He’s constantly making us laugh. For example, on Sunday we had a ward lunch where every family brought something and we all ate together, he went up to a brother in the ward and kissed him on the bald spot on his head, then grabbed his fork and started feeding him. Elder Vilas Boas and I were dying! Carlos is always doing stuff like that. Not only is it entertaining to be around him, but he also likes to help the missionaries out a lot.
This week Elder Vilas Boas and I focused on and studied about the importance of talking to everyone. Lots of times, you see someone on the street and think to yourself “no, that person wouldn’t except our message” so you just pass him. But in reality, it’s our job as missionaries to give them the opportunity to use their free agency to either accept or not. We can’t decide for anyone what they’ll do! This week we had a pretty cool experience with this. We were walking to an appointment and saw 3 guys sitting in front of a store when I got a nudge to go and talk to them. Then the thought came to my head that said “you don’t need to talk to them, these type of people never want to listen to you!” but I looked at my comp and saw that he also got a nudge to go and talk with them, so we did. At first, they weren’t really paying attention to what we were saying until we started to talk about the Book of Mormon. Then one of the guys looked at us and said, “wait, Book of Mormon? This isn’t the Bible!” and started to challenge us a bit! He started to ask a ton of questions about the Book of Mormon and what we believe. But we just calmly answered all his questions and kept talking to him, and at the end of the conversation he was joking around with us and we were able to mark a day to teach him at his house. One thing that I noticed while I was talking to him was that what I needed to say kept popping into my head right as I needed it! The promise from D&C 100: 5-6 is real. If we just go out and talk to people, we will know what we need to say! I’m glad that my companion and I were able to talk to them, even if we were a bit hesitant at first. If we had decided to just keep walking, which is the much easier thing to do, we wouldn’t have had the experience we did! This is one thing I’ve learned on my mission, is that lots of times the easy way isn’t the best way. Lots of times stepping outside of our comfort zone is necessary!
The focus of my study this week was faith. I’ve been thinking; what does it actually mean to have faith? How can I trust more in Heavenly Father and Christ? Preach My Gospel has a part that I love about how we can grow our faith: “Your faith will increase
Your faith in Jesus Christ
This is an awesome promise, super direct and simple. If we want to increase our faith, we need to do these 4 simple things. I love how simple to gospel is! One well known chapter about faith that I decided to study this week is Ether 12. Everyone should check it out, I promise that you’ll get some better insight about faith out of it!
Well, that’s it. I’m grateful for all the experiences I’m having out here as a missionary, it seems like I’m liking my mission more and more everyday! Have a good week!
Elder Odom
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