The Law of Conservation of Mass; and how it applies to Missionary Work.

 

I hope you all gained at least five pounds this 26th!!!

Turkey's a little bit of a rarity here, so I'll have you know I thoroughly enjoyed my Thanksgiving dinner composed of bagged *Chaufa and soup (they were both bagged).   If you order soup or a drink to go here, they just put it into a thin plastic bag that you can eat later at your leisure.

So.....although the feast may have been a little disappointing, it was pretty good overall!!! We found a great investigator that day!!!

His name is Carlos. He's received all the missionary lessons, and came to church this week. We talked to him for about 20 minutes in the church, he said he was super excited to be baptized, and he had been preparing himself for about 6 months now. We asked where he lived so we could visit him and he said he lived in "El Olivar" which I don't know if I've told you guys before, but that was right next to my sector in Jorge Chavez.......we ask him why he came to church here. He says he'll be moving soon. We get excited again. He says He'll be moving here in January, one week after his baptism (not going to lie, I was a little disappointed we weren't going to be able to teach and baptize him).

So, we told him we'd be in contact when he came here, and would be happy to teach him. Eh, it's ok, we say. We'll have another convert to teach, it'll still be cool.

Then Monday, we find and teach a lovely family from Huancayo!

-They're married

-They're Christians

-They have 3 kids ages 11, 9, and 3.

-They reminded US about the meeting 10 minutes before the scheduled time.

-They attentively listened and asked questions throughout the lesson

-They accepted baptismal dates.

And just when it looked like it couldn't get any better. They said

"Well it sure has been a pleasure....too bad we'll be moving back to Huancayo next week".

We thanked them for their time, set a meeting for this Tuesday (they day before they leave), and left.

I felt a bit sad as we left. After all, we had found a great family this week, and a promising investigator at church......and we wouldn't even be able to baptize them.....Other than that we had had a pretty lousy week too....not many people were home, and our pool of investigators has been steadily drying up.

And then I thought for a minute.......It really wouldn't make a difference if they were baptized here or in Huancayo.....would it?.....Yeah, I wouldn't have as many pictures.....and maybe I wouldn't get to know them as well.....but I still got to play a small part in their conversion. In fact, we were the means by which an entire family learned about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. That's still pretty neat!

Then I got to thinking......there's an awful lot of things I've done that (as far as I know) have gone unnoticed.......I think the same principle applies.

All of us at some point have become acquainted with the law of conservation of Mass:

"Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed from one form to another".

I think this law ties in quite nicely to missionary work.

Our efforts as missionaries do not "create" baptisms. They all just form a part of the wonderful work of spreading the gospel. A missionary who introduces 50 people to the gospel has played just a big a role as one who has found 50 prepared people and baptized them.

Unfortunately as humans, we tend to only view the outside results as successes, therefore the energy and efforts given by others; that do not have visible fruits, we often see as failures.

I want to testify to each of you, that that is not true.

I know this principle extends far beyond missionary work, and I hope you can all begin to realize it.

Entirely too often we let opportunities to help, serve, share the gospel, brighten a day, forgive, and love, pass by simply because we think "It won't make a difference".   According to both spiritual and physical laws that simply isn't true.

I want to invite each one of you to do 7 things this week to help someone else that you wouldn't normally do simply because "It wouldn't make a difference". You'll see that it makes a difference in their lives as well as yours.

Well that's it for this week!!!!! I'm sorry I don't have pictures!!! It's the computers fault!!!!

I love you all!!

Elder Winn

*Chaufa is a Peruvian fried rice dish consisting of rice, vegetables, eggs, meat  and seasoned with soy sauce.