Let Him Show You...
Highlights
⛪️ - This week we had our Multi-Zona council in Coban and it was super super good with so many amazing thoughts.
➗️ - One of the days this week, I spent about 45 minutes teaching a 9-year-old how to do long division. Flashed me back to Facetiming my dad in a taxi to help me with a math problem. We had to take down the Chen family somehow.
🇳🇮🇺🇲 - This week I did divisions w/ two goats Elder Richards and Torrez from Nicaragua. Great times.
Spiritual Thought
So, this week has been an interesting week. I'm writing this in the middle of my week, and I have probably felt my highest moment on the mission and my lowest within 24 hours. Let's get into it.
This transfer has been a different experience. I have had more control in my work than I have had before and ultimately been the one being able to control the area. At points, I felt like I was doing it. I was figuring it out. I felt as if I was proving myself. Almost at times it was as if I was saying, "Look, God! Look at me and everything I have been able to do. Look at me. I put lots of people on baptismal date in my first 2 weeks. A big number that ultimately led me to nowhere. I wasn't seeing the success and the growth of the people I was teaching, and it was getting to set on me. Why wasn't I seeing the successes the people around me had. I had people “interested” but when game day came around (Sunday) they withdrew from the tournament and didn't show up. When I went to try again, they didn't want anything. No matter what I did, I couldn't get the “success” that I had envisioned and felt was going to happen or maybe even the success I thought I deserved. I felt like I was putting in X and not getting Y. It was getting to be pretty hard and discouraging. Monday night I spent a big time just praying, crying, and thinking, trying to come to learn what the Lord needed me to do to fulfill my missionary purpose. I had just had a baptism I had felt so confident about for so long absolute fall through. The mom wouldn't talk to me, and she hasn't responded to a text or call since last Tuesday. All I wanted to know was how I could become a missionary of success and help the people around me and ultimately complete my missionary purpose. How could I be the missionary the Lord needed me to be and do the things he needed me to do. What I was doing wrong and how could I fix it.
As we know, the Lord works in mysterious ways. That next day I had come back from a great day of work but still was feeling a little discouraged. For the first time in my mission, the APs were suddenly calling me to talk with me. We talked for about 40 minutes about what had been going right what had been going wrong in my area. But ultimately one of them made a comment that changed my mentality and what I imagine will be the rest of the mission. Without me telling them anything of my cries the night before and the emotions I had felt, he told me:
“My three transfers in Tactic (an area) are exactly like yours right now. I didn't see a lot of visual success I didn't see any people in all white. I was training and couldn't get the success to come. There were so many hard nights I spent discouraged praying to find how to be better. I realized at the end of my time there I had been missing the most important part. I was trying to show the Lord how great I was. What I could do. Show him my worth. When the whole time I needed to let him show me how great he was. Let him show me what he could do. Not show him how great I was but let him show me how great he is.”
There was my answer. It was so clear. It was almost as if God was sitting next to me telling me this was my answer. Elder Wilde, stop trying to show me how great you think you are but let me show you how great I am. Don't show me the things you can do but let me show you how much more I am able to do. It seemed simple but I cleary had lost sight of this simple principle. Instead of looking for divine help I was trying to show how I could do it. I could do it all by myself.
Sometimes when we are having our times of “success” we forget to look towards who has given that to us and provided the way. Sometimes we put in all the effort and feel as if we give everything but still do not see the results we think we are going to see. God's work is not transactional. You don't put in X and get Y. It is all in the will of God and as we look towards him through his will and his timing, he will magnify everything we do more than we can think. But before he does that we need to stop and think, maybe we are trying to show him how great we are instead of letting him show us how great he is.
I'm writing this on Thursday and do not know what I am going to see this week. I don't know if I will have anyone come to church and I don't know if I will see the “success” I have envisioned, but I do know that one day the Lord will show me how great he is but that is on his time. But I have never felt more sure that he will show me whether that be tomorrow or June 30th, 2027, I know that he will show me. I know that if I try my best and do my part and leave it up to the Lord, he will fill in the gaps and magnify the rest. I'm so grateful to be a missionary and for this opportunity to serve.
Mosiah 4
9 Believe in God; believe that he is, and that he created all things, both in heaven and in earth; believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth; believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend.
I love you all. Have such an amazing week.
Elder Wilde
Wow. I could never forget the things I saw this week and the feelings I felt. This IS the Church of Jesus Christ. He IS in the details. He IS a god of miracles. I just had to let him show me...
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