Hola,
This was an incredible week, and one that will never be forgotten. Our entire mission had the blessing of coming together to hear the words of an Apostle, 2 members of the Seventy, and a member of the Presiding Bishopric. I might spell their names wrong but we spent an hour with Elder Quentin L. Cook, Elder Costa, Elder Keele, and Bishop McMullin. There are several things that stood out to me that I would like to share:
- Elder Cook made an amazing promise to us. He started by saying that he was making the unique promise as a Special Witness of Christ. He said that there were some of us who have siblings struggling with activity, parents getting ready to lose a home to foreclosure, and other trials occuring at home, and that we may wonder why we are serving a mission instead of going home to help those we love. He then gave us a blessing that our family will receive greater blessings for our service as a missionary and there is no where else we could help them more. He continued the blessing by adding that not only our family, but everyone we love will begin receiving greater blessings because of our missionary service. And then he finished it by powerfully saying that for the rest of our lives everyone we come in contact with will be blessed as well.
- Elder Costa taught me something that I did not know. He testified that the United Sates is the BEST and MOST fruitful part of the Lords vineyard, and then added that missionary work here is easy. He said that this is where he would have wanted to be called on a mission.
- Bishop McMullin taught us missionaries that we are out here to share a unique message with the world, that the gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored through the prophet Joseph Smith. If we do not testify of the first prophet of this restoration we are not fulfilling our call.
- Elder Cook taught us that while testifying of the prophet Joseph Smith to investigators is crucial, it is even more important when teaching less actives.
- Elder Cook mentioned that a missionary is responsible for lifting the spirituality of the entire ward they serve in, and that we should be such good examples that more young men want to serve missions.
Love!
Elder Inman
Monday, April 25, 2011
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Tough one
Hello again,
Well, the Lord saw fit to try us this week, which I am confident means there are some amazing blessings just around the corner. I do not want to go into detail about the trials because some of them probably should not be posted on the internet, but it was one of the more spiritually trying weeks of my mission thus far. Sunday afternoon I felt very worn and wanted to find a place alone, which is impossible as a missionary, and just cry for a little while because of things that happened with investigators that I really care about. I started being very critical of myself and tried to criticize every thing I did to find out why certain things had happened but I kept running into a wall because it seemed out of my control. I have worked hard and been dedicated, but I could not help trying to root the the sad events to something I had done. Finally that feeling faded and I knew that everything that had happened was in the Lords hands. I felt peace wash over me as I sat and listened to our Stake's Easter Music production, and reflected on the events of Christ's life.
There were some really great things that happened this week as well though. I got my new companion and he seems like a great missionary. It is taking our ward's a little while to get used to seeing me with another missionary, but so far it seems they are warming up to him quickly. We had some amazing experiences that are helping both of us grow and become better missionaries. He just hit his 18 month mark so this is a great time in his mission to have trying experiences to test what type of missionary he is, as well as who he wants to be going home in 6 months. I look forward to this coming transfer with him as we learn from each other and bless the lives of many people in Las Cruces!
Love,
Elder Inman
(from April 11th)
Bitter Sweet
Hola everyone,
We got transfer news this morning and my companion Elder Yardley is leaving to Abq again :-( We were doing so well together, and in the area, so I am not real sure why he is being transferred away after just 3 transfers in this area. The University ward is doing so well right now that we have almost no time to work in the other ward because of all the teaching appointments we have each day, along with the training we are doing with missionaries in our zone. Our investigator pool has grown by at least 5 fold in the last transfer compared to many transfers before. But I am confident the transfer is inspired so I look forward to whatever is in the future. My new companion, who I will be picking up on Wednesday, is Elder Karren(who I know nothing about). I will be training him how to be a new Zone Leader, and Im sure he is very excited about where he is coming considering his very first half day here is packed with appointments during every hour of the day, and the zone is doing great.
This was another week of miracles and a lot of fun being a full time servant of the Lord. For the first time in this stake, and mission for all I know, we are holding a stake training for all ward mission leaders and missionaries combined, so we spent some time this week preparing for that with the high counselor over missionary work. We also hit a new high for new investigators in this zone and stories of miracle findings are spreading to create even greater excitement. The weather is great, we are teaching lots of amazing people, members are coming back to activity, miracles are happening about every day, and there is no where I would rather be. This is such a great feeling!
Love,
Elder Inman
Well, the Lord saw fit to try us this week, which I am confident means there are some amazing blessings just around the corner. I do not want to go into detail about the trials because some of them probably should not be posted on the internet, but it was one of the more spiritually trying weeks of my mission thus far. Sunday afternoon I felt very worn and wanted to find a place alone, which is impossible as a missionary, and just cry for a little while because of things that happened with investigators that I really care about. I started being very critical of myself and tried to criticize every thing I did to find out why certain things had happened but I kept running into a wall because it seemed out of my control. I have worked hard and been dedicated, but I could not help trying to root the the sad events to something I had done. Finally that feeling faded and I knew that everything that had happened was in the Lords hands. I felt peace wash over me as I sat and listened to our Stake's Easter Music production, and reflected on the events of Christ's life.
There were some really great things that happened this week as well though. I got my new companion and he seems like a great missionary. It is taking our ward's a little while to get used to seeing me with another missionary, but so far it seems they are warming up to him quickly. We had some amazing experiences that are helping both of us grow and become better missionaries. He just hit his 18 month mark so this is a great time in his mission to have trying experiences to test what type of missionary he is, as well as who he wants to be going home in 6 months. I look forward to this coming transfer with him as we learn from each other and bless the lives of many people in Las Cruces!
Love,
Elder Inman
(from April 11th)
Bitter Sweet
Hola everyone,
We got transfer news this morning and my companion Elder Yardley is leaving to Abq again :-( We were doing so well together, and in the area, so I am not real sure why he is being transferred away after just 3 transfers in this area. The University ward is doing so well right now that we have almost no time to work in the other ward because of all the teaching appointments we have each day, along with the training we are doing with missionaries in our zone. Our investigator pool has grown by at least 5 fold in the last transfer compared to many transfers before. But I am confident the transfer is inspired so I look forward to whatever is in the future. My new companion, who I will be picking up on Wednesday, is Elder Karren(who I know nothing about). I will be training him how to be a new Zone Leader, and Im sure he is very excited about where he is coming considering his very first half day here is packed with appointments during every hour of the day, and the zone is doing great.
This was another week of miracles and a lot of fun being a full time servant of the Lord. For the first time in this stake, and mission for all I know, we are holding a stake training for all ward mission leaders and missionaries combined, so we spent some time this week preparing for that with the high counselor over missionary work. We also hit a new high for new investigators in this zone and stories of miracle findings are spreading to create even greater excitement. The weather is great, we are teaching lots of amazing people, members are coming back to activity, miracles are happening about every day, and there is no where I would rather be. This is such a great feeling!
Love,
Elder Inman
Sunday, April 10, 2011
GC Weekend!!!
Hello from the Windy City :-)
I am finding out that spring in Las Cruces is extremely windy, but I still wouldn't trade our 80 degree, windy, days for the icy rain I hear many others are getting right now. Plus, General Conference marked the end of suit season, so now I get to enjoy the weather without a suit jacket. Its amazing how much spending some time in the sun can help lighten moods and put smiles on peoples faces, which makes meeting people on the street much more enjoyable.
This has been an amazing week since I lost wrote. Since there are so many stories I would like to share Ill just go ahead and start:
It has been recommended that we take any extra time we have during the evenings, when we have NOTHING else to do, to go night tracting. Two weeks ago we had one such evening so we went out knocking, which is not something we regularly do anymore. We drove out into the country side, picked a random street, and began. We knocked for a good amount of time with no success, meaning no one even opened the door or showed any signs of life, and then we saw a couple people walking down the street. We approached them and had a fun conversation, but they showed little real interest in our message. One of them said that he had taken the lessons long ago when his girlfriend was a member and she has since "married in the temple for eternity and then divorced". Before we left we asked if we could come by on Sunday to drop off a video we had talked about, and they accepted. That Sunday was unusually busy and we forgot about them, probably because they showed little promise in actually listening to the message. Yesterday after Conference we rememberd them and decided to at least drop off the video, and they surprised us by inviting us in and telling us they will watch the video this week and would like for us to come back next week to talk about it with them.
Another great first lesson happened this week with a young girl in college here. When we first knocked on her door she answered looking slightly unhappy that we were standing there. My companion started in with the usual intro about who we were when all of a sudden I felt strongly that we needed to do this approach differently. I cut in and began talking to her about her high school basketball team, college, and a couple other friendly topics. After a few minutes she had visibly relaxed and I told her that we have an amazing message to share and that we would love to stop by some time and talk to her about it. She accepted and set up a return appointment, and we taught her for the first time last Wednesday. She is friends with a member in our ward and he told us that she wanted to close the door on us from the get go but decided that would be mean and left it open out of courtesy, and that we were just " way to nice to say no to". In our lesson she confirmed that about the only reason she invited us back was because of how nice we seemed :-)
I wish I had more time to continue telling you about everything happening here and with my mission, but there are so many other things I need to do today so I better close this one out. I am praying for you, and am very thankful for your prayers on my behalf!
Love,
Elder Inman
Temple Trip!
Hi everyone,
I meant to upload some pictures today but I forgot my camera so I guess you will have to wait for that. A good friend I am teaching in the University ward looked me up on her phone to facebook friend me and showed me my profile picture so now I am in an even bigger hurry to get some new pictures sent off! Well as always, time is short so Ill go ahead and tell you about as much of my week as I can.
Yesterday we had another mission temple trip!! It was an incredible experience and now I am even more revved up to go forward in this great work. President Shumway, the temple president and past mission president and general authority, stood up and spoke to us about the wonderful blessings available to our family through our service. I thought over some of the miracles I have heard about from home and felt very thankful for my service so far, and that I still have another year to help my family receive even more :-)
There have been some very trying experiences I have gone through lately and stress seemed to be ebbing away at me so I prayed for help. I have still loved my mission, but stress was having some bad effects and I was hoping for direction on how to rid myself of it. I felt prompted to take the following week and simply thank God for all of my blessings in my prayers and not ask for anything more, so that's what I did (minus 4 or 5 exceptions for my investigators). At first it was really hard and I cheated a little. I would say "thank you for helping me tomorrow" instead of "please help me tomorrow". But as the week continued and I pondered on my prayers throughout the day, I realized more fully how much I am really thankful for and how blessed I am. Praying like that for a week brought me so much more joy and the things I had been stressing so much about seemed to fall into place. There is so much God is doing for me and those I love that I seem to look over in my day to day life.
We ended up spending 15-20 hours throughout the week serving that lady I talked about in my last letter. She had been falling really far behind and we were the answer to her prayer to get her pecan fields irrigated. She is a little, old Chinese lady who is attempting to attend school full time, take care of her grand-daughter, and grow 120 pecan trees by herself. Two days before we got the call to help her we found a Chinese Book of Mormon in our apartment and she was very happy to receive it. We are also going out to her farm with one of the top agriculture professors in the nation, who we are good friends with, to give her a little more guidance.
Time is short :-)
I love you all!
Elder David Inman
I am finding out that spring in Las Cruces is extremely windy, but I still wouldn't trade our 80 degree, windy, days for the icy rain I hear many others are getting right now. Plus, General Conference marked the end of suit season, so now I get to enjoy the weather without a suit jacket. Its amazing how much spending some time in the sun can help lighten moods and put smiles on peoples faces, which makes meeting people on the street much more enjoyable.
This has been an amazing week since I lost wrote. Since there are so many stories I would like to share Ill just go ahead and start:
It has been recommended that we take any extra time we have during the evenings, when we have NOTHING else to do, to go night tracting. Two weeks ago we had one such evening so we went out knocking, which is not something we regularly do anymore. We drove out into the country side, picked a random street, and began. We knocked for a good amount of time with no success, meaning no one even opened the door or showed any signs of life, and then we saw a couple people walking down the street. We approached them and had a fun conversation, but they showed little real interest in our message. One of them said that he had taken the lessons long ago when his girlfriend was a member and she has since "married in the temple for eternity and then divorced". Before we left we asked if we could come by on Sunday to drop off a video we had talked about, and they accepted. That Sunday was unusually busy and we forgot about them, probably because they showed little promise in actually listening to the message. Yesterday after Conference we rememberd them and decided to at least drop off the video, and they surprised us by inviting us in and telling us they will watch the video this week and would like for us to come back next week to talk about it with them.
Another great first lesson happened this week with a young girl in college here. When we first knocked on her door she answered looking slightly unhappy that we were standing there. My companion started in with the usual intro about who we were when all of a sudden I felt strongly that we needed to do this approach differently. I cut in and began talking to her about her high school basketball team, college, and a couple other friendly topics. After a few minutes she had visibly relaxed and I told her that we have an amazing message to share and that we would love to stop by some time and talk to her about it. She accepted and set up a return appointment, and we taught her for the first time last Wednesday. She is friends with a member in our ward and he told us that she wanted to close the door on us from the get go but decided that would be mean and left it open out of courtesy, and that we were just " way to nice to say no to". In our lesson she confirmed that about the only reason she invited us back was because of how nice we seemed :-)
I wish I had more time to continue telling you about everything happening here and with my mission, but there are so many other things I need to do today so I better close this one out. I am praying for you, and am very thankful for your prayers on my behalf!
Love,
Elder Inman
Temple Trip!
Hi everyone,
I meant to upload some pictures today but I forgot my camera so I guess you will have to wait for that. A good friend I am teaching in the University ward looked me up on her phone to facebook friend me and showed me my profile picture so now I am in an even bigger hurry to get some new pictures sent off! Well as always, time is short so Ill go ahead and tell you about as much of my week as I can.
Yesterday we had another mission temple trip!! It was an incredible experience and now I am even more revved up to go forward in this great work. President Shumway, the temple president and past mission president and general authority, stood up and spoke to us about the wonderful blessings available to our family through our service. I thought over some of the miracles I have heard about from home and felt very thankful for my service so far, and that I still have another year to help my family receive even more :-)
There have been some very trying experiences I have gone through lately and stress seemed to be ebbing away at me so I prayed for help. I have still loved my mission, but stress was having some bad effects and I was hoping for direction on how to rid myself of it. I felt prompted to take the following week and simply thank God for all of my blessings in my prayers and not ask for anything more, so that's what I did (minus 4 or 5 exceptions for my investigators). At first it was really hard and I cheated a little. I would say "thank you for helping me tomorrow" instead of "please help me tomorrow". But as the week continued and I pondered on my prayers throughout the day, I realized more fully how much I am really thankful for and how blessed I am. Praying like that for a week brought me so much more joy and the things I had been stressing so much about seemed to fall into place. There is so much God is doing for me and those I love that I seem to look over in my day to day life.
We ended up spending 15-20 hours throughout the week serving that lady I talked about in my last letter. She had been falling really far behind and we were the answer to her prayer to get her pecan fields irrigated. She is a little, old Chinese lady who is attempting to attend school full time, take care of her grand-daughter, and grow 120 pecan trees by herself. Two days before we got the call to help her we found a Chinese Book of Mormon in our apartment and she was very happy to receive it. We are also going out to her farm with one of the top agriculture professors in the nation, who we are good friends with, to give her a little more guidance.
Time is short :-)
I love you all!
Elder David Inman
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)