Mission Miracle from Elder Benjamin Miles

This week we also had a really good day at the Blocks. We have been trying to be really organized in our block -knocking by making sure we hit every door! Usually we just go to a block and talk to the people that are home and if some isn't home they miss out and will have to wait till the next missionaries come. I know not the best way of doing things so we now have been keeping records of every door and if someone isn't home we go back and we do that block again. So this week we headed back to a block that we had previously down to make sure we had gotten every body! We went back to all the apartments were nobody had been home! At one of the doors we ran into an Orthodox Priest and we started to have a discussion with him, ended up calling him to repentance, really got serious with him, and told him that he needed to repent! Then we went to the next door and this older woman opened the door, and at first, she said to give her a second because she was still getting changed. She then opened the door, let us in, and we started to teach the first lesson. She was super interested and at one point she interrupted us and said, “Okay, if I'm not going to go to my church anymore, where should I go?” (implying that she wanted the address.) We told her, and we finished up with the Book of Mormon Promise and with our testimonies. She just loved the discussion and said she would read the Book of Mormon! It was the best first lesson I have had in a long time and we can't wait to go back! Her name is Doina and she is a physics teacher in Bucharest! It was a testimony to me that we need to go and make sure we talk with every one and give every one a chance!

Also, this week I had one of the greatest experiences of the mission! I was on an exchange with Elder Loveland, a missionary who is going home today because he is done with his mission, and he had set up for us to go and visit this member who is in the hospital. We went and planned on singing to this member. When we got there we met with her, sang with her, and afterward visited with her. After that we walked out and there were other people who were eating and we asked them if we could sing for them. They said “yes” and it was just incredible to see their faces and to see them smile. It was also incredible to see how the spirit came into the room and the lives of the patients as we sang about the Savior of the World and in some rooms people got up and sang with us. After we finished, people tried to pay and we told them no, that we were volunteer missionaries and that we wanted to sing just for them. We also had wrapped copies of the Book of Mormon with invitations to church and after every “concert” we did a little spiritual thought about the Book of Mormon, it is the greatest gift that we have to give, and that is the gift of our Savior! People took them so fast that we ran out!! Now we have to go back and give more and sing more because the people wanted it! After we finished at that hospital, we went to another and we went around singing. At one point we went into this room and there were two very sick old ladies that could barely understand us when we asked them if we could sing to them! So we started to sing and the lady went from being in the depths of despair, to crying and at one point during the performance we sang a Romanian carol and the old ladies sang along with us. They just kept asking us to sing and the spirit was so strong. So we finished up and I walked over to talk to her and she was crying. She kissed my hands and said thank you, I said thank you, and we went on to the next room. As I was half way down the hall, I heard a Romanian carol being played on what sounded like a harmonica and so I went back and there was that old lady playing a little children's harmonica. I started to sing with her and when she finished she looked at me and told me that she knew that the song she had played wasn't much and that it was just a kids harmonica, but she had wanted so much to play us a song. I went up to her and said thank you and told her that I knew that Christ was her Savior, and that even in these hard time she doesn't need to feel alone; he is always near and he will always love her because she is a Child of God. She was crying and she said “Slava Domnului” which means glory be to God. I have never felt more like a representative of Christ in any other moment then I did then in that moment, and I have never felt the love of our Savior and the Spirit of the Lord more that I did in that moment. For the first time In my life I think I finally understood the true meaning of Christmas and the mission of the Savior, and that is to love others, to bring joy to those who mourn, and at that moment I better understood my duty as a member of the The Church. It is to help those who can't help themselves just as the Savior suffered for me when I couldn't suffer for myself. It was a Christmas miracle for me and a lesson that I will never forget!

Mission Miracle from Elder Brian Foote

A miracle story for you happened early this week. I was going to be Santa Claus for a bunch of kindergarten aged kids, but I didn't have a beard. A member had a Santa beard, but when we arrived at her house her mentally handicapped daughter was happily wearing the beard. The member told us that if her daughter some how gave up the beard in the time we had our lesson that she would give it to us. If not she had a less than desirable alternative of an old Halloween Santa mask. It seemed like the entire lesson I was praying that we would be able to get the mask, and in the last 5 minutes, her daughter took it off and I was able to be a great Santa Clause for the kids.

Mission Miracle from Elder Benjamin Miles

We had a miracle this week! This transfer Elder Campbell and I have been working are tails off! Let us just say we put the C in constant contacting, but we really haven't had a lot of success! Then on Sunday we had a miracle; a man came to church looking for a copy of an Ensign and so I gave him one. We started talking to him and he told me he has been an investigator for 8 years, he knows this church is true, and he thinks he needs to get baptized! So I stated talking to him about that and I told him he needed to be interviewed too. He has repented and then he started to tell me that he has stopped drinking, smoking, hanging out with bad friends, and that he wants to follow Christ! And now he has a baptismal date for the 28th of this month! It just shows that God blesses hard work!

Mission Miracle from Elder Thomas Letham

The best lesson of the week was a lesson that Elder Hruska and I had together with a member referral (that's the real miracle, it's the first one I've ever gotten). He's a really cool kid (23ish), and his mom stayed in on the lesson as well. This lesson was Sunday night at 8:30pm. Right when we walked in, his sister says, "Wait, weren't you guys just on the TV an hour ago?" It didn't take long for people to notice that! But she said she liked the show. And then we sat down and had a truly good lesson with him and his mom. Towards the end we started talking about the Book of Mormon, and I said, "Have you ever heard of the Book of Mormon?" The mom responds, "Yes, I have one actually", and she runs to the back room, and brings back one of the old translation copies of the Book of Mormon. Apparently she'd gotten it from some sister missionaries a few years ago. Anyway, they're good new investigators and it was nice to get a member referral. It was way easier than the hours of block knocking it would've taken us to find comparable investigators at the average rate of finding new investigators in the blocks.

Mission Miracle from Elder Thomas Letham

Spiritual Experience: We needed to meet up with the other elders one early afternoon. We had setup a time and place. We got there 5 minutes early. We waited 10 minutes, and they still weren't there. We called them, and they said they'd be there in 5-10 minutes. We waited another 5 minutes, and I started to feel bad for having stood there for 15 minutes when we could've at least been street-contacting people to kill time. So we decided to go street contacting until they got there. Right when I made that decision, we started setting off down the street a little, and there was only one person coming our way. So obviously he is the person that we stop. I say, "Hi, we're missionaries!" He says, "I know, I know what you want to talk about." I say, "No, I don't think you do," and start to tell him about the Book of Mormon. He says, "No, I really do, I used to be a member of this church."

That struck me as an odd comment to make, so we started talking, and it turns out that he got baptized in 2001, was active for a few months, then went less active and moved to Germany, never even looked for the church over there, moved back to Romania a few years ago and had never even thought about coming back. We talked with him about repentance and about how he can come back. At first he was really, really wheefy, but then we kept pushing him and he gave us his phone number.

We called him Friday, he said he was too busy to meet, but that he'd come to church on Sunday. Sure.
But the fantastic part was that he actually did! We randomly (well, obviously not randomly, but seemingly so) bumped into a member that had been less-active for 7 years on the street, and then he comes to church the following Sunday. It was a great fast and testimony meeting too, and he was clearly touched.

Mission Miracle from Sora Krista Gibbons

(Sora Gibbons was back in America for a few weeks healing from an ankle injury)

1st Flavia Butters, is moving through the discussion, reading and having the missionaries over when ever she can. She has found a new fire for the gospel and is soaking it up. I talk in Romanian, and she asks and expresses worries, I try to help, then turn her toward our missionaries here. She is doing wonderful, and she sees a baptism on the horizon. The second good news is that Trisha has set a baptismal date. I love missionary work. Finial my best friend called me yesterday, and said her life was in a rut, she did not want to go on. I began to talk to her about the gospel. I asked her, Do you know who you are, where you are going, where you came from. She said "no". I testified to her of her worth, and that God has a plan for us, and that through this gospel, all those questions can be answered. She is meeting with the missionaries next week.

2nd and the main event. I went to the most amazing Baptism. I was working with a wonderful woman named Ruby and her son Hasan before I left to go on my mission. She was receptive and loving the gospel so much. However she was not a citizen and so could not be baptized till her paper work was done. It was amazing, I got home and visited her on occasion and she came to church every Sunday. Then this Saturday, she and her son got to be baptized. I was the only sister missionary there so they had me help her get a baptismal dress, show her where to go, and then I got to be there to help her when she came out of the font. The glow she had was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. She had to pause in the font, the tears blocking her view, then she turned toward the stairs, she flew into my arms and whispered, “ I feel so light.” I smiled she pulled away and said sorry for getting me all wet, I gave her another squeeze and shifted her so she could see her son be baptized. It was the most amazing, I think I have said amazing enough, Wonderful event. To see them change to hear there sweet testimony, makes missionary work worth every second. They were confirmed this Sunday and that was also wonderful to experience.