Dear Family and Friends,
One of the people I was closest to in the months leading up to my mission always told me that a mission was a “refiner’s fire.” I hope he is reading this because man, do I know now what he was talking about. I just hope I come out of it a better person than I was when I went in.
Any Advice?
I would really appreciate the feedback of you returned missionaries on this. I hope I’m not the only one who has ever felt this way! But seriously, there are some days when I feel so inadequate and so imperfect, I wonder, “really, did the Lord let someone like me come to do this?” I have been out for over 16 months and I still struggle! Sometimes, I sound like a greenie at the door. The words just don’t come out, or I say something stupid. Or there comes a time during the day when I literally just don’t even know what to do. Or the days and times when we come home at night and realize we didn’t really get much done. Man… it just provokes this never ending and constant self-evaluation and criticism because you are always trying to improve, always trying to become better. So you start picking yourself apart trying to find a “solution.” I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but it’s what’s been happening to me lately. I’m not saying I’ve been discouraged lately or anything like that. And this time on my mission hasn’t been any different than any other time on my mission. It has all been hard! haha I guess the way I am looking at it, I am on the last leg of this race, and I am not where I want to be at all. But then, am I being too hard on myself?
This Week was Better, Though
Anyways, this week went a lot better than last week in some ways I think we are becoming more comfortable with the ward members, which is the first step to success in an area. Build a good relationship with the members (ok, I mean a good “working relationship.” not only a good “social” relationship.) We are starting to get more members out to lessons with us. The problem we have found is that missionaries in the past in this area seemed to have been more interested in flirting with the young women than anything else. and so, the trust of the members went downhill. So now we have to clean up their mess. But things are going good. haha I can tell because of what the ward mission leader told the branch president at the end of one of our meetings. he said, “pues este espanol si sabe.” which means “this spaniard knows what he’s doing.” haha so that was comforting. in the meeting they gave us a list of part members and former investigators that we can work with. So I think we are heading in the right direction.
Hour of Power
Every Thursday at six o clock we do something called the Hour of Power. I think I have told y’all about this before. Every companionship in the mission meets with a member family and shares a message about faith and miracles, and then at 6 pm on the dot we kneel to pray and ask God that he will bless us and help us find some people who are ready to receive the gospel. Then we go out and knock in their area for the next hour.
There have been several baptisms in our mission that have come from this. So, we did our Hour of Power this week in Splendora. It’s a beautiful town! huge lakes, pine trees everywhere and dirt trails… oh man, it just makes me want to go camping!!! But anyway, we were walking down a dirt road and knocking the few houses that were on it. There were just trees everywhere. man it was pretty. So we pass this house and we thought we saw someone waving us away from the window. It was a pretty English speaking area anyway, and we are Spanish speaking, so we just kept going. On our way back, as we passed the house. I said, “Hey Elder Ewens lets go knock it anyway.” so we did. A Hispanic lady answered the door and we had a 30 minute conversation with her on her doorstep. She said that she had known several Mormons throughout her life and she always wanted to know more but was too timid to ask. She said that she had never seen a flaw in any of those people. So we talked for a long time and she said several times “I am very interested in this. Please help me. Please.” I felt like it was a dream. I get chills just thinking about it. since we aren’t in the area much we set up an appointment for this next Wednesday. So we are pretty excited! her name is Flor.
As we walked away Elder Owens said, “man elder Viitanen you must be really in tune with the spirit because I had no idea we should go back and knock that house.” I laughed because I didn’t feel anything, I just did it! It just goes to show you, and I hope that anyone who is getting ready to go on a mission and is reading this will pay attention to this. You just never know. Talk to everyone. It’s something that I still struggle with. But you just never know.
So… Elder Owens and I think that we have really been improving our teaching together and we were expecting about 6 investigators at church and none of them came. So…. I guess we didn’t do as well as we thought. you know what though, people have their free agency so I guess I Just need to remember that. There’s not much we can do outside of just inviting people to accept the gospel, right?
In our lesson with Cosme this week he told us that he loves the church and his kids love the primary songs and everything and it has been really interesting for him to see his wife become reactivated in the church, but he said he still doesn’t believe that Joseph Smith is a prophet. However, he said that “I guess that’s probably what most converts in the church start off like.” so, he has a long way to go, but he realizes that if he receives his answer he knows what he has to do. I think he will because he is sincere about everything.
5-Minute Mile!
Oh yeah… one more thing…. 5:53 on the mile baby! Heck yeah!!! I almost collapsed after, which shows you how bad of shape I am in still but it felt so good! I love running! which is probably something I never thought I would say before my mission.
Painting a House
On Saturday morning we went with the elders quorum up to Cleveland, Texas to help paint the inside of a recent convert’s house. It was a pretty fun project. Elder Owens and I and a bunch of Hispanics. It was fun. Man, they really know how to work. They have it down to a tee. You work for a couple hours and then grill a ton of meat and tortillas and eat and then work hard again. There was Mexican music blasting the whole time. It was pretty interesting 🙂 and fun! It was a pretty beat up house and none of the windows could open up. So, after about an hour of painting all of us had to leave the house because we were dumb and hadn’t thought about how dangerous that could be! My head was pretty cloudy for a while… anyway, that’s about all the interesting stuff I can think of for this week.
Love y’all
Elder Viitanen
