Another Alright Week (July 8, 2013)

This week was a little disappointing. I am not sure what it was, just a hard week. I started out the week really excited for missionary work. I was thinking of all of the announcements in the last year about missionary work. First was the lowering of the ages and the increase of missionaries, which is continuing to grow and is supposed to be close to 100,000 by the end of the year. Then 58 new missions have been created to hold the increase of missionaries. And now the new broadcast is going to help all of the new missionaries be more effective and also asks a little more of members to assist the missionaries. 

So I was excited about thinking of all of that. I'm not sure but maybe in my mind I thought all of a sudden missionary work was going to magically get easier, well I learned it has not. More than normal people were not interested, and it has been hard to set up appointments with our more promising investigators. Hopefully we will do better this week with this. 

This coming week should be better though. We have zone conference some time that we will listen in through a conference call. Then President and Sister Lindsay with the rest of the mission presidency will be coming up this weekend for branch conference. It will be really good to see him and to receive some training, and I always feel inspired every time I hear him speak. It will be a little weird to see someone else wearing a name tag though. Last week all of the missionaries went to the temple except the country areas, but we learned that when we serve in one of the city zones we will be able to attend, which will be nice.

I love you all. Remember that the Lord is hastening his work for a reason. That means that there are more people than ever that are ready to receive the Gospel. We just have to recognize them. One of my favorite scriptures is D&C 84:88: "And whoso receiveth you, there I will be also, for I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up."

I love this because of the imagery. God is going before us to personally prepare his children for us. If that wasn't enough he will be there right next to us. Then he will give us one of his most precious gifts, the Holy Ghost to help us know what to say. And if that was not enough Angels will be surrounding us to protect us and help us. How can we fear at all when we have this heavenly battalion around us?

Love,

Elder Cook