Prayers on First Street

Ah I'm back. Back to the pressure, back to the grind. This is my new companion's first time as a zone leader... and I've only been here for five weeks so I'm just trying to show him the ropes of the new assignment that I haven't figured out yet. His name is Elder Gasser, from Spanish Fork (Spanish Fark). He's a pretty cool guy. We work hard. I've always heard that, "ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith." (Ether 12:6... maybe) I think I've been seeing that play out in front of me. I'm stressed. I felt pretty overwhelmed... The zone isn't doing too well and our own area wasn't keeping up either. I've been focusing a lot on desire and prayer this past week. I wanted to know what I can do differently to help things again. I don't exactly know what it is that changed but things are definitely moving. We've been talking with everyone around us and we've had a lot of people say they would like us to teach them. Good week ahead of us.


We went to visit a lady in our ward this past week. She wasn't feeling well so we offered a blessing. She invited us in but there wasn't any other "responsible adult of the same sex present" ha so we asked if we could come by tomorrow (obedience... nice) She was fine with it and we came back the next day with Brother Countryman. Except this time something was different. She brought a friend to be with her during the blessing. So we started talking to her friend and told her a little bit about what we did as missionaries and bore our testimonies about this gospel. She was pretty stoked and we already have taught her again this week. (Obedience blessings whooh!)


We were street contacting one night in the down town street of Snohomish. We had a lot of good talks with people there. On our way back to our car to head in for the night I saw this lady looking for something on the ground. She seemed confused so I asked her if everything was alright.. she stood up really fast and then smiled. We talked for a little bit and she started to tell us about how her Mom is about to pass away and she has hit rock bottom. I was fighting back tears. We just listened and told her about the comfort that we have seen from knowing about the plan God has for us and our families. She was touched and in the middle of the busy street she held our hands and said a vocal prayer together. Sounds weird, looked weird, felt.... peaceful.... and weird. But mostly peaceful.




Elder Trent Jay Merrill