Sunday 18 October 2015

Reunions

October 12th, 2015

So I am in Hayward 4th now and it is weird being back. But here are some things that happened this week. We ran into a Spanish member who is less active and he is planning on coming back to church! It is so sweet that the Lord puts people in our path, or us in theirs, and miracles happen! 

We cycle a lot here and it keeps us fit! There is a lot of work we can do here so it is fun! My companion and I are working hard and at least twice a week we have a member who we go with to visit less active members. Just as Jesus went after the one lost sheep and left the ninety and nine we try to do the same.

The members here are very diverse. We have Tongans, Fijians, white people, and others here. So we get fed decently when we have dinners. 

We visited Ron this week. He has been investigating for a few weeks now but is not willing to pray - which is not good, because it is only through prayer that we can know of spiritual truths. I know for my self that Heavenly Father does answer prayers. But He answers in His own time.  

On Sunday I saw a lot of people whom I know! In the morning we had stake conference where I was able to catch up with a few people from the Hayward 1st ward! It was so wonderful to speak to them and to see how they are doing :-) Our stake president gave us all a few challenges, one of them is to give one card about the Book Of Mormon out to a friend or someone before the next stake conference. We as missionaries get to follow up with our members to help them. 

We went to Why I Believe this week. One of the people who spoke talked about how the Book Of Mormon is true and how it changed his life. He spoke about how he was not a good person at all, but he changed around because of this book! Another man said that he was very stubborn. But, then, for some reason he said he didn't know if this was Christ's church or not and he started taking the lessons. But for him to actually say that he might be wrong was a big change for him - even when he was young he said he didn't like french fries, and for 6 years he said the same because he didn't want to say that he was wrong. Our two recent converts spoke from Hayward 4th! Lyana and Clare also spoke! It was neat to hear their testimonies. 

It was super nice to be able to catch up with people whom I have served and I look forward to continue to keep up with them after my mission as all the people who I have met on my mission mean a lot to me. 

I, for sure, know this is the fullness of the Gospel! It is so wonderful to see people join, to see how much more joy they have in life. To see that they are reaching so much more potential, and why? Because they took a leap of faith! I know that God loves all of us, even though it seems like so many suffer in this world, and they do,  doesn't mean that God doesn't love them, it means that we don't have a full understanding of all things, But He does and we can trust him. "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” - Proverbs 3:5–6

Love, Elder Kloosterboer 

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