Blessings of Smart Phones

July 15, 2019
This has been a really crazy week. All of our grinding and all of our contacting finally resulted in a week full of lessons. We barely had time to contact. Some of the highlights -

Met with this awesome family in our ward who had us over to eat. He randomly knew a bunch of Nacho Libre quotes which was so funny.

Met with this one girl who is one of our new investigators. She's really interesting, kind of hard to keep on topic. She randomly included the fact that she has "Already died before." We tried to follow up on that a little bit, but she just said "Later, later..." Interesting to say the least.

We met with an amazing new investigator named Sergei. He said that he used to be religious but now he's atheist. We still proceeded with giving him the Restoration lesson and giving him some chapters to read in the Book of Mormon. At the end of the lesson we asked if he would pray and he said sure. It was one of the most powerful, most sincere prayers that I have ever heard. He started crying during the prayer. We met with him a second time this week where again he said that he's an atheist, but we can see that there is a strong testimony buried somewhere deep inside. We'll continue to work with him.

Another amazing new investigator we met with is Иаков (which is the Russian equivalent of Jacob). He's this really interesting guy who really likes history. We invited him to this baptism that was happening for a man in the other ward, but still in our building and he came. He said it was really interesting. We met with him after and he was so great to teach. When we gave the First Vision I felt the spirit so strongly and I could tell that it was very interesting to him. At the end of the meeting with gave him a Book of Mormon and he said "I'm also coming to your church meeting this week." I was so amazed. We didn't even invite him, he just wanted to come. He came and it was so great.

Went over to this other family's house this week and they are just the nicest members ever. We ate and then shared a spiritual message and then said "OK, now we're going to play a game," and pulled out the board game Munchkin. They said that "When the missionaries leave early the kids get really sad." So we complied and played the game with them for a little while. They're just so nice and so fun. The members here are absolutely amazing.

Something I learned this week - I have been blessed with some very interesting and enlightening personal studies this week. One of my new goals with personal study is to learn enough about the subject to the point of repentance, or rather when I begin to understand and see the higher law that Jesus has put forth. One of the most interesting things I learned about was trials. For example, Romans 5:3 made me realize that I need to "glory in my tribulations" and thank God for giving me these opportunities to improve, not be sorry that I have a new challenge facing me. I would talk more about it all, but I left my study journal at home sadly. It's just been super interesting to learn in the scriptures recently and search for things that will broaden my horizons.

Something that has been a really great blessing is smartphones! I have been on that Quizlet grind. I now make flashcards for every word that I'm studying and whenever there's a moment to study them I just hop on and get memorizing. It's way more convenient than carrying around a little book or flash cards and has been really useful. It's been a great opportunity to be more diligent and find ways to be a more effective missionary.


Thanks to the Lord and his many blessings in response to my attempts to be a more diligent student of Russian I was blessed in one of my more recent lessons. It was a meeting with a new investigator and during the lesson I could understand him really well, and for the first time I was able to say almost everything that I wanted to say. It felt amazing to feel the Holy Ghost working through me in that moment to testify to him about the reality of our Savior and his restored gospel. I know it is thanks to the Lord's blessings in response to my acts of faith. Another amazing tender mercy this week - me and Elder Larson were riding on the bus towards the metro station when I randomly looked out the window and spotted this man that we have been trying to meet with. I turned to him and said "Should we get off?" he said "Yeah." so we bolted it out the door and walked over to him. It was an awesome conversation and he really wants to meet. Really strengthened my faith in the fact that the Lord puts us in the right place at exactly the right time.


Anyways, love you all. I hope that you have a great week!