Californian in Kansas: Week In the Heart Land

Another great week in the heartland! Each day I seem to love my mission more and more. We had a pretty tough week but even though it wasn't as successful as we had hoped, my testimony of missionary work has grown immensely.

I'm serving in a branch, and we are the 1st and 2nd counselors in the elders quorum, we do the sacrament, have done music, taught primary, taught the youth class, all while trying to manage our investigators at church. I also had to give a talk this week in sacrament so church it's kinda crazy. But the branch is growing so fast, when I first got here, we had 26 people in sacrament meeting. This week we had 73! We are working our tails off and We are gonna turn into a ward. #ProjectKelloggWard

It seemed like everyday this week we faced some sort of really harsh rejection from someone. We were sworn at, yelled at and had doors slammed in our faces. But each time that would happen, the lord would turn around and bless us with a huge miracle. A couple weeks ago, we received a Media Referral and tried to contact them right away. We met the mans wife, who had no idea her husband requested to learn about our church, he wasn't home but she was really nice anyways. We tried to return everyday for 2 weeks and no one answered the door, so we never got in touch with "Miguel". We eventually gave up and decided it wasn't a good use of our time to head to his house. Fast forward to this week, we went to go find a potential in our area book that was taught 3 years ago but seemed really promising because his mother was a member. When we got there, it turned out that they had moved in April. We had driven quite a while and decided to make the best of it and knock on a few doors before heading to the next appointment. We knock on the next door neighbor and guess who answers.... MIGUEL! Of course we didn't know this because we had never met him, but he immediately invited us in and we taught him an amazing first lesson. At the end we were getting contact information for him and then that's when it clicked that he was the same Miguel that we could never get ahold of. It turns out that he was visiting his parents house that day and we happened to knock on their door when he was there!! Super huge miracle, it wasn't even his house and he said he doesn't visit very often.

Our week was full of amazing miracles like Miguel, where the Lord put people in our path that he had been preparing to hear the gospel. It took some initial rejection, but when we mustered up the courage and talked to everyone in our path, that's when the lord would bless us. I know that this is the lords work, that he guides us each and everyday to those whom he has prepared. It's the best choice I've ever made to serve a mission and I love helping everyone we meet come closer to Christ. Elder Sperry and I had made it a point to never miss an opportunity to share the Gospel and I even taught someone random person a lesson over the phone after she misdialed a number and called us. She really wanted to grow her relationship with Christ and was very open to having missionaries come teach her.

I know that Christ is hastening his work on the earth and missionary work is the best way to be apart of that. I really loved the scripture I found this week in personal study that says, "Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life" (John 8:12). Christ is our light and with him anything is possible. Christ is my savior, redeemer, light, example, teacher, guide, and my best friend. I testify of that and know that if we put our faith in him we can overcome all trials and be strengthened though his love.

Elder Murphy