Mission Miracle from Elder Alden Campbell

June 8, 2009

I just wanted to tell you of an experience I had on exchange with Elder Anderson.
It was amazing. We had a really good exchange. We planned out a decent day...covered all aspects of missionary work and got drenched in the rain storm! It was sweet. I want to relate an experience from this exchange though. He had asked me to teach him how to learn to be better at thrashing out the weefy people and concentrating on those who want to listen. I brought to his remembrance Alma 32:6-7 and then we talked about that for a bit. Near the end of the exchange it was starting to rain a lot harder and so Elder Anderson chose a block to knock. We went in to the block and no one was really interested. We got to this one lady who told us to go to her neighbor and that she would talk to us. We went to the next door and told the lady at the door that her neighbor told us to come talk to her. She said...are you Mormons...? Well yeah we said and then she invited us in and we sat down and started talking. She told us that she had been investigating the church for about 2 years off and on and had talked with the missionaries on numerous occasions. Before long it was apparent that she wasn't really interested as she would get up and complain about the lights or something else in the house. At about this time her daughter (about 40's..?) walks into the room and so we get her history too. She actually wants to listen to us and so while her mom was in the other room we talked to her. We discovered that she wants to know if the BOM is true but that she didn't get an answer and so stopped trying. We explained to her what was expected of her and what "her part" was so that she could do it. She accepted to read from the BOM and pray with real intent and keep coming to church (she had been coming for a while but had missed the last 2 weeks). Alma 32:6-7 was put into practice in to different ways. First of all, we left the door that said she didn't want it and went to the door that wanted it...then in a more "refined" way we stopped talking to the mom that "accepted" us and talked to her daughter...the one that wanted to receive us. It was a good lesson for both of us.