Mission Miracle from Elder Benjamin Miles

May 10, 2009

The first miracle we had at the beginning of the week. We had just finished are church presentation and Elder Van Noy ( a senior missionary) asked us if we could come with him to a lesson with a less active. We did not know this less active at all but we were free so we said that we would go with him. We meet and this lady was really friendly. So we meet with her at her hotel which she runs and we started to have a present discussion about her son who was recently accepted to a prestigious university in the United States. So we gave her advice on how to help him register for classes and so on and so forth. Then Elder Van Noy started on the spiritual thought which we didn't even know what it was going to be. He started talking about scripture study and it was absolutely a miracle because the spirit came so strong in to the room. And we were all saying exactly what needed to be said. And you could tell because she just got happier and happier and at the end she just kept telling us how happy the visit had made her and that we would have to come back as soon as possible. It was a wonderful experience and I'm so thankful to the spirit because he brought all the teachers in harmony. Because of the spirit, we could teach. Because of the spirit, we could convince.

The next miracle is our investigator Radu. I think I have talked about him before. Well he's doing great.He meets with us 3 days a week and is keeping his commitments! We just got to help him to not pray to Jesus. But that shouldn't be too hard.

Another miracle is more personal We went to visit this less active family out in the country (which was a miracle in itself that we could meet with him.) but the miracle was a lesson I learned during the lesson. We were visiting this family and the wife was talking about why they don't come to church but she said that she knew what church meant for her. And when she said that I began to think what does going to church mean and then the Holy Ghost went to work and I started to have all of these wonderful thoughts and Ideas come to my mind about church. The following thought process came to mind. A question came into my head. Elder Miles if you lived in Jerusalem 2000 years ago, would you have gone to listen to His Sermon on the Mount or any of His sermons? The obvious answer is yes. Then the questions came: how is this like church. Well we get to learn about Jesus. Then I thought, “But I can do that in my home with my scriptures.” Then the thought came, “At church we learn from Jesus.” Then another question came to my mind. “Who was always with Jesus when he taught.” I responded, “people.” The spirit responded “his authorized servants.” Then I realized we go to church so we can be around authorized servants to receive ordinances that can only be performed by them. But it is more than just this. I can hear about and learn about Christ in many different ways but I can only know Christ if I will come to where he is. If I go to the mountain on which he preached, which mountain is our wonderful chapels, we can come to know the savior---not just know about him. It was really cool.

Next miracle. Vasile! We took this eternal investigator over from the sisters because he lives in our area and he has been an investigator for a long time. I wasn't sure what we were going to teach him but we studied and prayed and all the sudden we had the idea to talk about service. So we set up with him for 7 at night the next day and planned a lesson on service. We got there the next day at seven and Vasile had been waiting at the church since six. We started the lesson and he said, “Elder Miles, I want to to tell you a story and I said let's hear it. So he told us that as he was waiting for us, a lady came to him and asked him what church this was and so he gave her the first lesson about Joseph Smith and told her that this is the true church of God and Chirst. Then he told us that this experience had made him so happy and had given him a never ending joy! Then I felt the spirit tell me this is the blessing of service. And we went on to have a wonderful lesson about this is what is expected of members and that when he is baptized he will always have this feeling because he will always have opportunities to serve. The spirit was so strong and he is definitely starting to feel the answer that he has been looking for. We are going to commit him to be baptized next week.


Another miracle. Out of the blue, an investigator of ours came to church. Inouti, our investigator, called me while I was in front of the church trying to invite people to come in to the service. He called and asked what I was doing. I told him I was going to church and I invited him to come. He came. It was really amazing and we are looking forward to meeting with him this week!