Lessons of Faith and Dedication

I'll start this week's email with a funny story - they teach you to "hook" your audience from the start, right? Anyway, we were teaching this Cambodian woman a few days ago - it was my second time going over there to teach her. After starting the lesson, I pulled out my Cambodian scriptures to read from. She seemed surprised and asked me if I knew how to read and write in Cambodian. I responded that I did. Mind you, the last time I was there we spoke in Cambodian the entire time, and we had been speaking Cambodian the whole 5 minutes or so we had been there that evening. So, a couple minutes later, she stops mid-sentence, looks at me quizzically, and says (in Cambodian), "You know how to speak Cambodian?!?!" I'm not sure why it took this long to register in her mind. We tried to stifle our laughter, and we laughed pretty hard about it afterwards in the car!

The Lowell ward is so unique and multicultural! There are Sunday School classes in Cambodian, Portuguese, Spanish, and of course, English. Sacrament meeting is also translated into Portuguese and Cambodian. Guess who does that? Yeah, we do. It was really difficult. Elder Ang did most of it...I tried a few times, though. I did one of the sacrament prayers, part of the announcement of the program, and the closing prayer. I'm definitely going to be adding "practice translating" to my list of things to do for language study.

As for the work here, things are going alright, I'd say. We've got a great Cambodian investigator who, unfortunately, wants us to speak English when we teach him. He's really interested in the gospel though, especially in eternal families. I'm excited to see how he progresses. One of the recent converts here, who's also Cambodian, has finally agreed to go to the temple! She's had some fears about it, but she made the decision to go, so we're happy about that. We've also been trying to visit less-actives and we've been some detective work for our Bishop.

These last few days have built my faith and taught me a lot. I got sick in the middle of last week, and for a couple of days it was rather minor. It got worse on Friday, and I had the prompting to ask for a blessing. I shrugged it off, telling myself that it wasn't "bad enough for a blessing" yet. I then "felt" the words, "Have you done EVERYTHING you can?" This made me stop and think. Yes, I took medicine, and yes, I was going to bed on time, and yes, I was drinking plenty of water...but I hadn't asked for a blessing. I then got the distinct feeling that I was going to have to show my faith if I wanted to be healed. This time, I listened, and I asked my companion and the other Elders in our ward for a blessing. They gave me a blessing that night, and I woke up Saturday morning feeling differently. I felt more sick than before, but strangely enough, I felt like I was in the stages of getting over a cold. It was like my body had just skipped the two or three days when the cold is in full swing. I know that was because of the blessing I received and the faith I showed. My lesson doesn't end there, though. We worked all day Saturday, and yesterday (Sunday) morning I woke up feeling absolutely awful. We went to ward council first thing, and I struggled to get through Church. By the end of the second hour my condition had worsened dramatically, and I realized that I wasn't going to be able to make it and that I should be resting. We organized an exchange - Elder Maldonado came with me back to the apartment do that I could sleep, and Elders Ang and Stradley covered the appointments for both areas the rest of the day. From this I learned that we need to be sure that we're taking care of ourselves before we can take care of others. I also learned that we need to do EVERYTHING we can first and act in faith, and then the Lord provides the miracle. I didn't take the time I needed to rest to allow my body to recover, and so I didn't get better. When I woke up this morning, I felt immensely better than I did yesterday. BUT the story doesn't end there! I had another miracle happen to me last night - we switched back to our companionships around 5:30 PM, and we got a call at 6:10 from an investigator who wanted us to come and see him since he wasn't able to meet last week. I decided that I was going to "man up" and go to the appointment, and so I prayed and asked my Heavenly Father to allow my sickness to subside so that I could teach for this appointment. I mustered up the strength and drove to the appointment, and as we walked up to his door, I felt my symptoms melt away. We had a fantastic, Spirit-filled lesson, and as we left and walked back to the car, I started feeling sick again. I know that that was a miracle, an example of the Lord's tender mercies in our lives.
Elder Ang and I had an interesting discussion during weekly planning this last Thursday as we had our companionship inventory. He said to me that he can tell that I want to help "rescue" Lowell, and complimented me on that. He told me about how he and his last companion didn't plan effectively and didn't get much done during their time together, and as a result, this area kind of "died," so to speak. As he was telling me these things, I thought back to the goal I set for myself when I found out that I was being transferred. I was just in a very busy area, with tons of potential investigators and a small handful of progressing investigators, with a large number of recent converts. The active members there are great, and I had the opportunity to serve with my best companion yet. I loved the work, and I was excited to be a part of it each and every day. I told myself as I prepared to move up here that I wanted to take that same excitement and joy with me up to Lowell, and so I set the goal to do so. As Elder Ang spoke with me, I realized that I'm really passionate about this work. I love being a missionary, and even though I've only been here just over a week and a half, I really want this area to become successful. I determined right then and there that I was going to do everything in my power to make that happen, for both the Lowell ward and the Heritage Park YSA ward (almost no work is being done there). I see absolutely no reason why these two wards can't be as successful in their missionary work as the Revere 2nd ward, and that has become my approach to the work here. After all, Pres. Monson just spoke to us about seeing people as they can become in the Priesthood session of General Conference. For me, that includes investigators, members, and entire wards, and I'm really looking forward to helping this area reach its full potential.

Love,
Elder Justin DeLong