"Marvel not that all mankind,
yea, men and women, all nations, kindreds, tongues and people, must be born again;
yea, born of God, changed from their carnal and fallen state, to a state of
righteousness, being redeemed of God, becoming his sons and daughters; and thus
they become new creatures; and unless they do this, they can in nowise inherit
the kingdom of God."
Back home,
the family arrived home late Sunday night from a trip to Utah. It was a
great time, and slowly the family size is shrinking – Jack stayed in Utah to go
to Scout Camp with some old friends and maybe to get a summer job and more.
Thursday
night William and the rest of the family talked and made the decision to stay
another day to help make final preparations for school and to finalize an
apartment. Therefore, Friday was spent taking care of that with him –
affording us all a day to spend extra time with him as well.
We know that
there is one Lord, one Faith, and one Baptism (as found in Ephesians 4:5).
We also know that straight is the gate, and we know that the natural man is an
enemy to God unless he yields – all from various scriptures. Man has fallen –
not just in the sense that mankind is fallen due to the Fall of Adam, but in
the sense that we all have fallen down from a heavenly presence so as to gain
our bodies – bodies that bring about urges and physical temptations. We
find ourselves trying to accomplish the things our “minds” tell us are important
through ways that our “arms” can accomplish. We forget to listen to our
hearts as to what we need to do and to rely upon our spirits and Father in
Heaven as to how we can accomplish much.
We forget
that we must be born again – the first being of the flesh or through our
mothers. Being born again is not just a declaration that “I am here” or
“I got it” but a true sense of yielding, submitting, of recognizing that the
arm of flesh and your own power “to do” is not sufficient to really accomplish
things that are important eternally. This act of true spiritual submission is
what helps us truly be changed in our hearts – to recognize that Father in
Heaven is able to perform many mighty miracles for us if we choose to stay
close to Him and to do our part.
Not all
lessons and “learning” comes from being hard on yourself or repenting for
things where you may not have done your best. Sometimes you learn simply
by understanding how to approach situations better.
Another thing Elder Schmeltzer realized this week and reported: Elders hate tracting. I don't know of any missionary who
likes it. Most of the time people will take a pamphlet and say they'll call us
(which means they likely will not) but they don't slam the doors on us luckily.
Overall this
past week was good, we started working even more as we have noticed that we haven’t
had the results we were expecting. We seemed to have less people to share our
message with and less people would want to talk to us overall.
One guy we
met this past week is of a Methodist faith. He asked about baptism and how one receives
the Holy Ghost. I think Ghanans generally believe that the Holy Ghost brings
about miracles. For example, he told us stories of how he prayed for water when
a girl fell down and fainted - he got some water and poured it in her mouth and
it healed her. I had a feeling that it was just dehydration and any water would
have healed her but I could be completely wrong. We had to explain what the
spirit is and how he works and what he does. With people like that it's hard to
get them to attend church.
Hopefully if
we can teach about the Restoration (which the adversary tries very hard to
stop) and we can bear testimony clearly, he will understand the importance of
coming to church with us and being baptized by the proper authority. Other than
him we didn't meet any investigators this week. Just the "yeah i'll call
you" type people. It's not too bad though overall.
However, on Sunday
we realized something. In one of the wards that we cover there were several
investigators at church without any invitation. We met one guy who seems to
have potential and we've been running into past investigators who had dropped
away before. We may not have baptisms yet but as we "plant seeds" and
salvage every "piece of fruit" by doing all that we can do we will be
blessed and Heavenly Father will be pleased with us.
I got two
packages this week. The big one (actually a medium sized box from the
post-office) and the small one with a journal. I had to pay 20 cedis (quite a
bit of money for a missionary with very little) for the big one. Honestly if
you send 2 of the small ones that will be cheaper than a big one and almost the
same size – tip for friends and family sending packages:
We sent a
small package (from any US post office) that had about 2-3 pounds of stuff and cost
less than $20 to send and had no taxes on the receiving end. The medium size box from the post office was almost
6 pounds and cost about $50 to send and cost the missionary another 20 cedis to
receive. Dad’s conclusion: Aim small, miss small.
My companion
and I ate almost all of the candy and we're saving the pancakes (pancake mix)
and teriyaki chicken seasoning and Jello for this coming Sunday. We have had so
much fun lately. We have some pretty deep conversations at night also. More
candy in future packages!
Today we went
to the Accra Mall. I saw Elder Rane there and ran up and gave him a big hug, we
have a bro-mance; it's pretty fun. Everyone was laughing at me because I
dropped my bags and ran across the hall. He said he's doing well and he was
glad that I'm doing well too.
P.S. My new
saying is "Dream Big, Love Bigger"
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