Following the Spirit

Hi everyone! This was a really, really good week. After the multi-zone last week my companion and I have been really trying to put in practice a couple of the things that President said.

1. Minister instead of administer.
Sometimes it's difficult for me to follow every prompting from the Spirit that I receive (I think it's like that for everyone:) But my companion has been helping me with that. If I feel like I should stop and talk to someone, or call someone, or offer help- he always tells me to do it- because it might be the Spirit. This week in our zone conference I noticed that one of the missionaries seemed to be a little down and disanimated. I kept feeling like we should talk to him. Finally, after we had finished and everyone was leaving we pulled him into a classroom and talked to him. We were able to help him with a few things he was going through, and it was a really beautiful experience.

Yesterday we were in a lesson with a part member family. The mom is an investigator and the dad is less-active. I won't share details, but he's in some pretty deep doo-doo. As soon as we entered the house I felt a difference- he usually is pretty happy and talkative- but not at all during the lesson. That day he watched some Mormon messages, and kind of had a realization of how bad off he was- salvation wise. He had a lot of weight on his shoulders that day.  I felt like I should offer to give him a blessing, and put the feeling off for about half an hour. Finally, as we were leaving I asked him if he would like a blessing. He said yes, and asked me to give it. It was one of the most beautiful blessings I had ever heard- it definitely was not me speaking. I realized that Heavenly Father had probably been trying to speak to him all day. And I was able to be the messenger. It was amazing.

My companion is also trying to do the same thing that I am- follow the Spirit to be able to minister- and is also having spiritual experiences. It's amazing. I remember I saw a diagram once. In the shape of a triangle with God on top, and a man in one corner at the bottom and a woman in the other corner. As the man and the woman move closer to God they also move closer together. I feel like the same thing is happening in our companionship. (In a NOT gay way). The closer we try to get to God, the closer we are getting to each other as well. It's pretty cool. We're getting along really well. I call him my Latino twin.

2. Analyze everything.
We've been focusing on the small things- and the bigger things are coming together. This week we had been praying for something to elevate the zone (we are way down). On Wednesday we received an inspiration (or maybe revelation) about something we were doing wrong. We realized what it was, lack of clarity and directness in baptismal invitations, and all invitations in general-we repented- and put it in practice. This week we put more baptismal dates than the rest of the zone combined. And of all the investigators brought to church we brought half of them.  We realized that the rest of the zone is also doing the same thing wrong that we have been doing. This week we're gonna have to teach a lot. But I believe that when we sincerely ask the Lord for guidance, he will reveal to us what we lack. Amazing how merciful is our God.  It's interesting though that we never had words pop into our head, or anything like that. It went kind of like this:

Elder Goodman: Man, what's wrong- why can´t anyone put fechas?
Elder Zelaya: I don't know- why can't we?
EG: Let's do a practice and analyze what we are doing.

Practice

EZ: I kind of felt like it was an option- that wasn't a very good commitment- or even invitation. It was just a suggestion.
EG: That's a good point- does Preach my Gospel say anything about that?
EZ: Here we go- it says we need to be direct
EG: What do they do on the district? (the training dvds)

Watch it

EG- man, that was sweet, she totally accepted.
EZ - let's do a practice, but like how they did it

Practice again

Go out to work super excited.

That wasn't exactly how it went- but the point is that the Lord let us figure out our problem for ourselves- and he just helped us use the tools we already had to come up with a solution. Interesting!

Well, that's about it for the week. Love you lots!

-Elder Goodman