Monday, June 15, 2015

The Miracle of Goals

Wow, this week has been crazy! We started off doing a visit with the area of San Agustin in our district and then we had a work visit with the zone leaders and later had the baptism of Patty, the daughter of Josefa, and finished the week with one of the best lessons of miracles I have received of my mission. But first, to answer your question about my companion. It is such a different experience having Elder Mickelson as my companion. As co-district leaders we have a ton of time to devote to helping the district and planning visits.  This has been one of the best transfers of my mission!

So as I said, I had the chance to work with Elder Aoki from San Agustin for a day, and it was such a learning experience for me. I know that I was the leader and should have been teaching him, but he has 22 months in the mission and was recently a zone leader. He is one of the most humble missionaries I have met and spent most of the visit asking me what he could improve on. He ended up teaching me how a true missionary should act and strive to always improve until the airport itself. 

A couple days later I had the chance to work with Elder Watson, one of our three zone leaders, for a day. He is such a great leader. We got some great lessons in and ended the day joking with the other zone leaders and Elder Mickelson via cellphone at night. 

The highlight of the week was clearly the baptism of Patty. She has some problems mentally, but knew, and still remembers, much of the Bible. Her faith is incredible and is still growing! This time around it was Elder Mickelson's turn to get wet and he got her under the first try. It was such a great day because we also got a visit in with the Sisters in our district and got to watch three other baptisms before Patty. The sisters had two children of a less active and the ward had another boy to baptize, the room was packed with people and the spirit.

I never had a reason to complain about the week, but due to the visits and baptism, we were a little behind in our goals for lessons for the week and contacts. Well, we went into Sunday knowing that it would be hard, but we started with a prayer and went off to church. Our ward council ended pretty late and so lunch did too. But with faith and a strong will we saw one of the greatest miracles of this transfer. We put works with our faith and ended the day with 9 lessons and 27 contacts. That brought us to our goals of 33 lessons and 102 contacts for the week. That day really opened my eyes to how miracles work. Sometimes we have no control over life and God gives us miracles due to our faith in Him. Other times, we need to work, hard. And after the trial of our faith and works, God extends the miracle for us to take. It was truly the whip-cream topping of my week.

I am sorry to hear that Uncle Norman died. I will always remember when he danced in the back of Grandma's yard! But I understand the plan God has for His children and take peace in that. I hope everything else is going well and will try to send some more pics later. I love you all.

Elder Bradford 
PS. No Elder Spencer was not on my team. 

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