Teaching By the Spirit

The week here went well. We did a ton of walking. We had a Zone Conference on Wednesday. We talked about knowing how you are a successful missionary. And how the measure of success doesn't come from baptisms or anything like that. But the success is told by your commitment to serve the Lord. We also talked a lot about lesson plans. We talked about creating more specific lesson plans and planning lessons by the Spirit. We tried to really work on that this week, and it went well. We had a couple of very good lessons because the presence of the Spirit was so strong. And we taught in more unity than we probably ever have. It was really cool because we planned the lessons totally by the Spirit and as we were teaching when one of us went off from where the plan was, we were able to know for a fact that it was because that thought and direction was prompted by the Spirit. 

Something that I have studied in respect to the opposition is that it is real and really doesn't want us to accomplish the Lord's work. If you think about Joseph Smith, when he went to pray, he felt an unknown power holding him back and binding his tongue. The adversary knew that he was about to have an experience that would change the course of history in a righteous way and really didn't want it to happen! Same thing with Christ after He was baptized. Right before He began His ministry, or at least that of which we have recorded in the Bible, He went to the wilderness to fast and pray and be closer to God. At this time, Satan comes and tries to tempt Him. I think it's because he knew that Christ was about to begin His earthly ministry and perform miracles and do the will of the Father, so he wanted to do his best to stop it. I have personally seen that on my mission too. As I take steps closer to the Savior, I feel the outside pressure from the adversary. It's super frustrating for me personally. It's bugs the heck out of me! I saw it with my mission papers and getting everything sent in and good to go, and I've seen it out here as I take steps that I know I need to take in order to progress. Sometimes it's hard to remember in the moment that it is just the opposition and that if we turn to the Lord in those moments then we will be fine, but that's what it comes down to. We just have to focus on the Lord and we will ultimately be ok! 

The other night we had about 30 minutes left at night. We decided to say a prayer and ask where to go. I felt determined to talk to anyone that the Lord put in our path because it was so late and dark and generally no one is out that late. I had faith that we would be able to talk to at least one person. We were walking down the street and a couple houses behind us a guy walked out so we kind of crossed the street and yelled over to him. I think he was kind of sketched out at first... but we started talking for a second. He wasn't interested at all, but we left him with a Book of Mormon. I felt that if that was the only person we saw, that was at least good enough because we talked to him and left him with something. As we were almost back to the church, we saw a truck pull up and park in his driveway, so we started to speed walk a little and we called out to him as he got out and started walking to his house. At first I had no clue what I was going to say, but a thought came into my mind "family history" so started talking about that. He turned out to be really into family history, so we gave him a family search pass along card and he said we could come back next week to talk about it with him. Who knows how interested he actually is, but it was just another testimony builder to me of the Holy Ghost putting the thoughts into our mind and how we are blessed as missionaries when we try to talk to everyone.