Jenny is dunked!!

Message to friends:

Hey Boys!

How is everybody? It’s weird to think that Tim is pretty much dead. Sucks for you, bro! Ha ha just kidding, Tim, you rock. But seriously. . . .that does suck. . . .

Anyway so this last week I found something out that rocked my world. In a good way, of course. Remember, if you will, the story about Jenny. She was the one from Greece that we talked to in her stairwell and ended up having the best lesson of my entire mission. Yeah, that one. Well anyway, I was tracting on Thursday night and I got a phone call from Elder Smith in the office. I answered the phone and Elder Smith asked me if I was busy or if I had a second. I said, “Nope, we’re just tracting! What’s up?” He replies with, “We just got an e-mail from the Greece mission. Guess who just got baptized.” Jenny is dunked!! That seriously made me so happy. We had been having a pretty rough week as well so it just made it that much better that we saw a HUGE blessing from the Lord in the midst of all that other frustration. Anyway, I was just really excited about that and I wanted to tell somebody. =)

Like I said we had a pretty frustrating week other than that awesome announcement. I was pretty dang discouraged by the time Sunday came around. We had had no success finding and those investigators that we had found before turned out to be like all the other ones and didn’t show up for their second meetings. Even the members that we tried to visit were cold to us. Ha ha lets just say I was not in the most positive mindset ever. So Sunday rolled around and church was actually really great. Several members brought friends to church and we even had a couple of young men from our English class there. I taught my investigator class about Abinadi and his story and we did a reenactment of it—pretty fun. But then the night came and we had two sure lessons set up. At least I thought they were sure, but they both ended up being no-shows which didn’t help my already supremely un-Christlike attitude. We finished the night with one of the worst lessons I have ever seen on my mission and headed back to the house. We got back and planned and I started getting ready for the night. I realized that I could have been way more positive about this whole week and could have acted a lot more like a servant of Jesus Christ than I did. I got down on my knees to say a prayer and as I was praying, the story of Abinadi that I had taught earlier that day came into my mind. I thought about Abinadi’s last week. The people of Noah hated him. They put him into prison. Abinadi didn’t see one person converted from his “mission.” Not one. And in the end he died burning at the stake. Awesome week, eh? Makes mine look pretty pathetic. But anyway, that’s not the point. The point is what came out of Abinadi’s efforts. Alma came out of Abinadi’s efforts. How many people were converted because Alma was converted? Well, just in that group at the waters of Mormon around 450 were baptized because of the spirit that they felt coming from Alma’s teachings not to mention however many people after that.

Abinadi didn’t see any success and in fact I can guarantee that he was probably pretty frustrated, but because of his powerful testimony, tons of people received the blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Abinadi is the man. I’m grateful to be a part of this work. It’s really hard, but at the same time I have learned more than I could have asked for. I know the Lord is with us. He loves us and he sends us so many blessings. I love my Savior. I’m grateful for the sacrifice that He made so we wouldn’t have to suffer. I love these people even though they bug the heck out of me from time to time. ;) I’m grateful that I still have time left to serve them and I know that the Lord takes care of His servants. I love you guys. You are incredible examples for me. I feel like I would feel so amateur being any of your companions. I can’t wait to hear your stories. Have an awesome Christmas!!

“Pains, nor toils, nor trials heeding, And in heav’n’s good time succeeding, God speed the right. God speed the right.”

-Elder Swenson