¡Hola mi familia y mis amigos!
A couple of weeks ago, I began to memorize the Articles of Faith, one each day. As I would memorize, opportunities would present themselves day by day to recite in normal conversation one of the Articles of Faith that coincided with a doubt or had to do with what we were talking about in the street contact or lesson in the moment. It was really cool, and I have already used every one of the articles of faith in normal conversation to explain clearly and simply basic gospel doctrines. It was actually really neat how right after memorizing one, an opportunity to recite it would come out of nowhere. For example, in a street contact, we talked with this man on the sidewalk like this:
us: "We're missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints."
man: "yeah, but you're a cult because you force everyone to think like you do."
me: "actually, we claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may."
It was sweet, because I had just barely memorized that in the morning. Elder Oaks said something like, "Coincidences are just miracles where God chooses to remain anonymous."
As I look back on the mission, every success that has been achieved has been because of faith and obedience, and going forth to work our hardest, and then God will decide to drop a miracle on us. I've never been able to, and think never will be able to, achieve anything truly successful from my own strength or ability or words, but God asks that we just do the task at hand in His way, and He will almost magically do the rest. For example, we've been having a rough time as of late finding good new investigators who will accept the call of the Savior to be baptized. We began praying for God to put in our path people who have a firm light of Christ within them and who will follow the promptings of the Spirit that they feel. On Thursday, while giving a Book of Mormon to a man on the sidewalk, a car pulled over and waited for us for a few minutes to finish, and then called us over to talk. It was a couple who wanted to know where the church was, since they had moved here from up north recently and had been members a few years ago.
On Friday, we went to their house to meet with them. They are the Olivares-Marambio family, and are 12 in total. The youngest 3 kids and the dad haven't been baptized yet, and we had a killer first lesson with them, in which all four accepted enthusiastically to be baptized, and the dad, who wasn't baptized before with his family, said now finally was the time. The next day, we found out while with them again that the parents aren't married... so that turned into a quick-think situation, and we pulled out the Proclamation to the World and began to read it with them. We explained the commandment of the law of chastity very clearly, along with the sacred purpose and design of the family within God's plan, and then explained the importance of fulfilling all the commandments before being baptized. I had just read that very morning in my personal study Mormon 9:29, so we could use that and a few other scriptures to settle his doubts and invite the Spirit to teach them. At the end of the lesson, he told us that they knew he probably couldn't be baptized until they got married, but he said it was the first time that the missionaries had even dared to talk to him about it, and how they had been going to church for a long time when they were active before and everyone just kind of avoided the topic. Now he understands the commandment and they are super excited and willing to get married, and we're going to go with them to get signed up for a marriage date!
We also got all the branch excited by telling them a family of 12 was coming to church, so everyone was ready in church on Sunday to give them a big, warm welcome, and the family felt really good and at-home, and they're all even more excited to be going back to church again. I love you all!
Love, Elder Kimball
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