Angry Prayers

Well team, it's been another frustrating, yet somehow inspiring week. 

Sometimes I feel like divine intervention is working against us. We've been doing absolutely everything to have lessons with investigators with members there. Normally this isn't super hard. But here it is. I've never had so many instances in which we set an appointment with somebody for the next day, confirm it two hours before, and they still forget. Or when they actually keep the appointment  then the member doesn't show up. Weird. And insanely annoying.

But the inspiring part is that Heavenly Father still blesses us in unexpected ways. To take a step back, we have key indicators which help us to focus on what we need to do to help things progress--these make it easy to pray specifically for things to find success: for example, we may have a goal to teach two lessons to investigators with members. If it is an inspired goal, and if we do everything in our power to make it happen (which includes praying for it to happen), it usually happens. 

But that is a simple truth we have been neglecting lately. So we recommitted to praying to reach these goals. And somehow we did. Even though it's been super hard to get lessons to investigators with a member (I think this week we had 10 set up that all fell through) Heavenly Father still enabled us to reach our goal--usually through nonmembers being in places where we had appointments to teach members, and allowing us to direct the message toward them. 

I dunno if my description makes any sense, but it was a good reminder that this is God's work. And I should probably let Him help me more than I have been.

Also, I feel like I have found the value of angry prayers. It sounds strange, but it's real. I think God would much rather have us say an angry prayer than to not pray because we're angry. I feel like the ideal attitude we should have in prayer involves more reverence, respect, humility, etc. But life is rarely ever ideal, and I've been learning the necessity of doing what you're supposed to be doing regardless of the ideal situation. In many circumstances, it may not be graceful, smooth, or pleasant, but doing what we're supposed to be doing will always be better than refraining--whether it's because of anger, apathy, awkwardness, or anything else.

That's all for today, and I hope everybody has a fantastic week!

Sister Bowen