Stressful week! ha ha! 8-5-2019

Our class that we taught on Tuesday.

The main thing that kept us busy this last week, was doing all of our preparation for our talent show. We had planned it for Saturday for the Stake Center. It took a long time of setting up, printing, downloading music and all of that took many hours. Did it work out like we were hoping? Sadly no, ha ha. A few of the acts didn't even come and a lot less people came than expected. So to be honest, I was really upset with it and felt like it was a failure. Yesterday, I called Elder Knecht our AP to report on the zones progress and I told him about my feelings of the activity and this is what he said, "Elder, you have no idea how much good you did by arranging that activity. You probably touched some of those members hearts and gave them a memory they will never forget." After he said that, I said to myself, "He is right." We can be too hard on ourselves in life this life. We don't give ourselves as much credit as we should. Things may not work out, but is that what matters? No. What matters is your devotion to what you are doing.

I know it's a little different to give my little spiritual message at the beginning but I felt that it would make sense with how our week went. On Tuesday, we had our English Literacy class and our Book of Mormon class. Well guess what? Not a single person came to the English class and we had about seven people in the BOM class. I was so mad because I felt like we have been trying so hard to help the members to learn English and they didn't seem to care. Well while I started to teach the BOM class I started to get a feeling of obligation to help these people who made the effort to come. As I started to teach, I kept having all of these ideas and impressions I didn't think of before the class. As we continued with the class, I felt like they were really deeply learning. I think that I was especially learning as well. Then Elder Smith finished teaching the class, and he did so well with it. Afterwords, my companion and I looked at each other and said,"the Spirit really directed that class..." At first it seemed like it was a failure, but little did I know, the Lord provided a way for those seven people to learn something special from the scriptures.

 I helped this lady cut off all the loose ends on the wig that she just finished making.

Elder Fornah enjoying my camera.

And to end it all off. on Sunday we had only one new investigator in our teaching pool. We were hoping to have six all week but we weren't able to achieve that goal. There was a family that we were hoping to teach and they would increase our numbers to four or five new investigators. Well when we got there, only the mother was there. Then after a little bit of time her two other kids showed up and were ready and excited to learn, and then one of the kids friends came and asked he he could listen, and then a girl next door joined in the lesson! SO guess what? We got our six New People! And that wasn't even the best part. The best part was that the initial family we went to teach was so thankful for us coming and teaching them. They loved the lesson we had. The boy who came and joined us asked if we could come and teach his family later this week, and the girl who joined said we could try to teach her family as well. So from these three experiences I am really learning that the Lord is mysterious in his ways of bringing his children into the gospel. 

Our ceiling decided to fall out on Friday last week, ha ha! 

I love you all so much and hope you have a wonderful week. Make sure to give yourselves more credit than you think you deserve:)

Sincerely,

Elder Baird