Mark has officially been on his mission now for six months. Two and a half months in the MTC, and three and a half months in Russia. To some, it may feel as if he just left, but I seem to feel everyday that he is gone :-(
It has been hard, reading the disappointment in Mark's emails each week. He works from sun-up to sun-down with no success. Actually, that idiom doesn't really work in Russia considering they only have a few hours of daylight each day :-) Let's just say that he works from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. each day. He was made a trainer for the last transfer, and he was sent to a small city where there had been no success before. Because the former missionaries had no investigators, Mark and his new trainee had the task of finding an investigator. ANY investigator. In the United States, new investigators usually come from member referrals, or from knocking on doors. Because there are very few members in Russia, and because there are no homes, both of these options aren't possible. There is only one way to find new investigators: street contacting.
Having never been a missionary, I asked others who have served missions about this. Turns out, 100% of the time I was told that this is the most difficult way of finding someone who will listen to the missionaries. Just think of how many times you walk past people handing out pamphlets, or flyers. This is what street contacting is: the missionary walking up to anyone on the street (or on a bus, or tram) and trying to convince them to listen to a message about Jesus Christ.
Mark has been incredibly obedient to all of the mission rules. He was given the task of making 10 contacts per day by his mission president. This means actual conversations on the street; not just walking up to someone and being rejected. While others in the mission were making the 10 contacts per day and seeing success, Mark was not. However, he was always positive in his emails, saying that he couldn't give up on being obedient; blessings were sure to follow.
This is terribly hard on a mother's heart. There's not much to do but write back and tell the boy to hang in there, and to keep being obedient. In my own mind, I am thinking, "Why isn't this working for him?" After last week's email, an overwhelming need came over me--a need to pray. I pray everyday, over my meals, when I wake up in the morning, and before I go to bed. But this was different. I knew that there was no one else to help Mark but the Lord, and all I could do as a mother was to ask him to help my boy. I felt like Nephi when he wrote about his people, "For I pray continually for them by day, and mine eyes water my pillow by night, because of them; and I cry unto my God in faith, and I know that he will hear my cry." There was a depth to my prayers this past week that I haven't felt in a long while, and I felt close to my Heavenly Father.
Mark emails at 3 a.m. EST, so the first thing I did when I woke up was check my email. I could hardly hold back the tears as I read the following words from him:
So, the week started off like any other. Just not a whole lot of plans. I dreaded Monday night, the evil 6-9 p.m. time slot which is honestly the WORST! It's kind of the same feeling you get on Sundays when you know you still have some time before school starts again, but the rest of Sunday is ruined because you know no matter what you do, the week of school is looming :-( Anyways, in the afternoon I called up some potential investigators, praying that one of them would be able to meet. I called a guy named Sergei, and he said he could! Woohoo! Of course, having been dogged so much, I was worried he wouldn't come to the lesson, but he did! We taught him the first lesson and gave him a Book of Mormon, and although he said he didn't believe in God, he really wants to meet with us again. Woohoo!
Second, a member of the ward set up a meeting for us with a lady who lives with her so we could teach her a little more about the church. Member present lesson/referral, CHECK! Woohoo! The lesson wasn't that great (as in the lady wasn't very open to listening to us), but she still accepted the Book of Mormon and said she would read it! We have a potential meeting with her on Wednesday. Guess what that would mean if it works out? New investigator!!
Third miracle (and this is the BIGGEST ONE). So, I hope I've told you before about Kostya, the guy we are teaching. He is the one man who is living with the less-active member whom we met our first week. He has a LOT of problems he's working through. There are a lot of crazy things that happened in the past that would keep him from being baptized, so we were really worried about him. He has been progressing though, and he shows desire.
So, we called him Friday night because we hadn't met with him all week, and he said he could meet the next day, Saturday. We planned out a REALLY nice lesson on prayer (because although he's Orthodox and he knows how to pray he always gets scared in lessons to pray, so we wanted to teach more about it so it could help him). Anyways, we showed up and sat down and just asked how he was doing, because we hadn't seen each other for a while. All of a sudden, he starts telling us how one of his friends found out he was investigating the church, and started telling Kostya we are a sect! AHHHH! Not good. But then Kostya told us that he turned to the guy and told him we weren't a sect or cult, and he even invited this friend to talk to us and have us teach him! Sweet! He's doing missionary work!
The coolest thing was after this though. So, we were still just kind of talking to him and just out of the blue he got really quiet, and then said, "I've thought a lot about our first meeting when we talked about the Restoration and this church, and at the end I remember you asked me to be baptized. And if you remember, I said I wasn't ready and didn't want to, right?" I just said, "Yeah, I remember." He stopped, and then just straight up said, "Well, NOW I'm ready to be baptized. I want to be baptized."
...............................WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTT????????!!!!!!!!
Seriously, that's how it all went down. One second, we were talking about what was new in his life, and the next he was telling us how he wants to be baptized! Literally, I wasn't even sure he remembered our first meeting, because for some reason at our first meeting, he was really beat up and not feeling good at all. Of course, my reaction at first was just typical Mark: I just paused, blank face, and did a "Wait, WHAT?!" Okay, maybe a little better, like "Okay, if I understood you, you just said you wanted to be baptized, right?" Haha, to which he said, "Yes". How awesome is THAT?! Seriously, right then, all the rejections of the past couple weeks went away. Everything faded into the background. There were no language issues, there were no people yelling at us, there were no people trying to tear us down, and there was no depression. It was just pure AWESOMENESS! Of course, I didn't jump up and down screaming, but I wanted to REAL BAD :-) And even better? The reason he wants to get baptized is for two reasons: he thinks the gospel is awesome, and he thinks everybody should have it, AND he and his wife want to be sealed in the temple together forever! AHHHHHH!!!! So, not only have we found a person who is ready for baptism, but is aiming further and for something even bigger than baptism: the TEMPLE!
Short to say, miracles are happening. We had to wait for the blessings, but they have come. And I'm not sure where they came from (like, we weren't even thinking about baptism for Kostya yet), but they have come and there are A LOT of potential blessings. They are here--we just need to keep working and they'll come. And as a side note, we had so many meetings this week that I actually only got 50 contacts this week (instead of the suggested 70). We literally did not have enough time to contact people :-) So now we just need to figure out how to contact with all this success!
This time the tears wet my pillow for a different reason. I was so thankful to Heavenly Father for hearing my prayers on behalf of my son, and for answering them. Too, I was thankful to have prayed with the fervency that I had--I believe Heavenly Father wanted to hear from me in that way, and I was grateful that I responded to the promptings of the Spirit. Boy, I sure am happy for Mark. The blessings DO come after the trials of our faith.
It has been hard, reading the disappointment in Mark's emails each week. He works from sun-up to sun-down with no success. Actually, that idiom doesn't really work in Russia considering they only have a few hours of daylight each day :-) Let's just say that he works from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. each day. He was made a trainer for the last transfer, and he was sent to a small city where there had been no success before. Because the former missionaries had no investigators, Mark and his new trainee had the task of finding an investigator. ANY investigator. In the United States, new investigators usually come from member referrals, or from knocking on doors. Because there are very few members in Russia, and because there are no homes, both of these options aren't possible. There is only one way to find new investigators: street contacting.
Having never been a missionary, I asked others who have served missions about this. Turns out, 100% of the time I was told that this is the most difficult way of finding someone who will listen to the missionaries. Just think of how many times you walk past people handing out pamphlets, or flyers. This is what street contacting is: the missionary walking up to anyone on the street (or on a bus, or tram) and trying to convince them to listen to a message about Jesus Christ.
Mark has been incredibly obedient to all of the mission rules. He was given the task of making 10 contacts per day by his mission president. This means actual conversations on the street; not just walking up to someone and being rejected. While others in the mission were making the 10 contacts per day and seeing success, Mark was not. However, he was always positive in his emails, saying that he couldn't give up on being obedient; blessings were sure to follow.
This is terribly hard on a mother's heart. There's not much to do but write back and tell the boy to hang in there, and to keep being obedient. In my own mind, I am thinking, "Why isn't this working for him?" After last week's email, an overwhelming need came over me--a need to pray. I pray everyday, over my meals, when I wake up in the morning, and before I go to bed. But this was different. I knew that there was no one else to help Mark but the Lord, and all I could do as a mother was to ask him to help my boy. I felt like Nephi when he wrote about his people, "For I pray continually for them by day, and mine eyes water my pillow by night, because of them; and I cry unto my God in faith, and I know that he will hear my cry." There was a depth to my prayers this past week that I haven't felt in a long while, and I felt close to my Heavenly Father.
Mark emails at 3 a.m. EST, so the first thing I did when I woke up was check my email. I could hardly hold back the tears as I read the following words from him:
So, the week started off like any other. Just not a whole lot of plans. I dreaded Monday night, the evil 6-9 p.m. time slot which is honestly the WORST! It's kind of the same feeling you get on Sundays when you know you still have some time before school starts again, but the rest of Sunday is ruined because you know no matter what you do, the week of school is looming :-( Anyways, in the afternoon I called up some potential investigators, praying that one of them would be able to meet. I called a guy named Sergei, and he said he could! Woohoo! Of course, having been dogged so much, I was worried he wouldn't come to the lesson, but he did! We taught him the first lesson and gave him a Book of Mormon, and although he said he didn't believe in God, he really wants to meet with us again. Woohoo!
Second, a member of the ward set up a meeting for us with a lady who lives with her so we could teach her a little more about the church. Member present lesson/referral, CHECK! Woohoo! The lesson wasn't that great (as in the lady wasn't very open to listening to us), but she still accepted the Book of Mormon and said she would read it! We have a potential meeting with her on Wednesday. Guess what that would mean if it works out? New investigator!!
Third miracle (and this is the BIGGEST ONE). So, I hope I've told you before about Kostya, the guy we are teaching. He is the one man who is living with the less-active member whom we met our first week. He has a LOT of problems he's working through. There are a lot of crazy things that happened in the past that would keep him from being baptized, so we were really worried about him. He has been progressing though, and he shows desire.
So, we called him Friday night because we hadn't met with him all week, and he said he could meet the next day, Saturday. We planned out a REALLY nice lesson on prayer (because although he's Orthodox and he knows how to pray he always gets scared in lessons to pray, so we wanted to teach more about it so it could help him). Anyways, we showed up and sat down and just asked how he was doing, because we hadn't seen each other for a while. All of a sudden, he starts telling us how one of his friends found out he was investigating the church, and started telling Kostya we are a sect! AHHHH! Not good. But then Kostya told us that he turned to the guy and told him we weren't a sect or cult, and he even invited this friend to talk to us and have us teach him! Sweet! He's doing missionary work!
The coolest thing was after this though. So, we were still just kind of talking to him and just out of the blue he got really quiet, and then said, "I've thought a lot about our first meeting when we talked about the Restoration and this church, and at the end I remember you asked me to be baptized. And if you remember, I said I wasn't ready and didn't want to, right?" I just said, "Yeah, I remember." He stopped, and then just straight up said, "Well, NOW I'm ready to be baptized. I want to be baptized."
...............................WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTT????????!!!!!!!!
Seriously, that's how it all went down. One second, we were talking about what was new in his life, and the next he was telling us how he wants to be baptized! Literally, I wasn't even sure he remembered our first meeting, because for some reason at our first meeting, he was really beat up and not feeling good at all. Of course, my reaction at first was just typical Mark: I just paused, blank face, and did a "Wait, WHAT?!" Okay, maybe a little better, like "Okay, if I understood you, you just said you wanted to be baptized, right?" Haha, to which he said, "Yes". How awesome is THAT?! Seriously, right then, all the rejections of the past couple weeks went away. Everything faded into the background. There were no language issues, there were no people yelling at us, there were no people trying to tear us down, and there was no depression. It was just pure AWESOMENESS! Of course, I didn't jump up and down screaming, but I wanted to REAL BAD :-) And even better? The reason he wants to get baptized is for two reasons: he thinks the gospel is awesome, and he thinks everybody should have it, AND he and his wife want to be sealed in the temple together forever! AHHHHHH!!!! So, not only have we found a person who is ready for baptism, but is aiming further and for something even bigger than baptism: the TEMPLE!
Short to say, miracles are happening. We had to wait for the blessings, but they have come. And I'm not sure where they came from (like, we weren't even thinking about baptism for Kostya yet), but they have come and there are A LOT of potential blessings. They are here--we just need to keep working and they'll come. And as a side note, we had so many meetings this week that I actually only got 50 contacts this week (instead of the suggested 70). We literally did not have enough time to contact people :-) So now we just need to figure out how to contact with all this success!
This time the tears wet my pillow for a different reason. I was so thankful to Heavenly Father for hearing my prayers on behalf of my son, and for answering them. Too, I was thankful to have prayed with the fervency that I had--I believe Heavenly Father wanted to hear from me in that way, and I was grateful that I responded to the promptings of the Spirit. Boy, I sure am happy for Mark. The blessings DO come after the trials of our faith.
prayer makes all the difference, you know it if you do it and you don't if you don't
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