So first of all, P-day was cool
today. We visited Le Pantheon, which has got a bunch of tombs of famous French
people. My favourite, of course, was Marie and Pierre Curie, but we also saw
Victor Hugo, Voltaire, Louis Braille, Alexandre Dumas, and a bunch of others.
Forgot my camera, so no pictures, sorry!
This week was kinda hard. We're really focusing on finding
new amis, because those we have are really not progressing and they've been
meeting with us less and less. Every week we have around 9 people promise to
come to church with us, and every week we have around 2 or 3 actually show up.
We've called roughly a thousand old amis and stopped by about 346 more, with
only one or two visible results. But we'll keep going.
Other ways that it's been hard:
- Our bishopric made a new rule that we can only baptize on Sundays at 4.
- Our Relief Society President won't assign visiting
teachers to our less-active member until she starts consistently coming to
church for all three hours.
- I've been yelled at by
strangers twice this week, once for talking to people about God, and the other
for "following Paul instead of God."
I will tell you about one
miracle though. In contacting, we felt prompted beforehand to go down a
specific street. While on that street, we walked by a lady at a bus stop. I
felt like I should talk to her, but then I ignored the feeling. As I walked
past, the feeling got stronger, so I turned around to say something. Since we
had already walked past her and since I'm just overall an awkward person, I
decided to go for the "hey I'm not from here and I need you to confirm
that this bus goes where I want" approach. And the conversation went
nowhere, she wasn't at all interested. Then the bus came, and since I didn't
want her to know that I didn't actually have any need to get on that bus, we
got on with her. THEN! I ditched the awkward conversation with her, and
complimented the shoes of another guy on the bus, who ended up being a South
American who spoke English, knew a lot about the church, and was down for us to
stop by and give him a Spanish Book of Mormon! Hopefully we'll see him this week.
Another miracle is that Elder
Harris managed to convince an atheist in a park to meet with us again and hear
our message. It was in English, but still, pretty impressive. This will be my
first lesson with someone who doesn't already believe in something.
That's all for this week! Love
you all! Be good.
Elder Stanford
PS "In the name of Jesus Christ"
I've been thinking a lot about
that phrase lately.
As members of the church, we
use it quite a bit--after prayers, talks, lessons and testimonies. But do we
ever stop to think about what it means? Or is it just a way to end our speaking
time?
I think that "In the name
of Jesus Christ" means we affirm that the things we just said are things
that the Lord would approve, or even things He would say if He were there in
person. It means that He is happy we spoke them. (I've also learned recently
that it's actually much better to end testimonies and prayers in His name than
talks or lessons. If you'll notice, people in General Conference never say
"I leave you this talk in the name..." but always end with a
testimony.) As for prayers, praying in the name of Jesus Christ means we are
doing our best to align our will with his.
I think that all of us could afford to reflect a little more
on the things were members of the church use so often. When we finish with the
Saviour's name, do we make sure the things we said beforehand are really in
line with His will? Do we understand the significance of saying something in
His name? Or are we just going through the motions? We know the dance
steps...but can we hear the music?
