Sometimes It's Hard to Be a Missionary

Not a ton to report this week.

Missionary work is hard, but it's just life though.

We were at a dinner appointment yesterday, and we were talking about faith as it relates to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We talked about how it leads us to keep the commandments, and to do whatever it is that God would have us do. It takes faith that these things will be to your benefit and happiness. A lot of times we'll relate that to the joy promised with the efforts of doing missionary work and invite members to experiment on the word and invite friends to learn more about the gospel.

The lady whose house we were at has really had a lot of great opportunities lately to share the gospel, but they haven't made it to the next step yet. She asked us how we handle that. And it takes faith--sometimes we're granted glimpses of the fruits of our labors, but more often than not, we probably don't see the results.

We talked about Abinidi. He boldly proclaimed the gospel and died for it--without knowledge that it had any effect. But Alma heard, and did something about it--that's a big deal.

We talked about how sometimes we are the seed sowers, and sometimes we are the harvesters, and if we could see the whole picture, it probably would be more satisfying to be the seed sower.

We talked about the way we react to spiritual promptings. Sometimes we'll receive a lot of inspiration and revelation on how we can be a better person from a particular church meeting. We'll resolve to do and be better. And then we come home and stay the same. We don't like to change, even if it's for the better. People feel the spirit when they hear about the first vision or the plan of salvation, we invite them to do something about it, and they agree to. And then second guess the reality of the spirit they felt, or get lazy. Just like we do :P

It takes a special person to change religions, no matter how true it might be.

Somebody told us the other day that this is the most snow Indiana's ever gotten. And we're lucky enough to be here! It's getting a bit old though. On Friday, we weren't allowed to drive 'cause the roads were so bad. We couldn't really ask members to sacrifice their lives or their Valentine's date night to take us to appointments :P And then people's Friday activities/events got moved to Saturday, so all those appointments cancelled too.

And that was the week--cancelled appointments, lots of snow, and people who told us they'd be at church and didn't make it.

Such is life, eh?

We got kinda down and depressed and frustrated. With the situation and with ourselves. But we're looking forward to being better missionaries, and better weather (which might come someday). This week we've got a baptism, zone conference (in Bloomington!), exchanges, a missionary movie night (where members invite their friends--we're watching "17 Miracles") and a youth missionary fireside (with no fire involved :P) So it looks like it'll be a good week with lots of good things goin' on.

Hope all is well

Love,

Sister Bowen