Elder Mason Moon: Prospering in the land of MoVal

The woman we taught a few weeks ago named Margarita came to church this week! We had the Relief Society second counselor take her to church and then at church, she met a lot of the hermanas and made a lot of great friends. She has been busy with a lot of family things and work, so we are going to catch up on teaching her and help her work towards baptism later this month.

Fernando, Yesenia and Chris also came to church this Sunday and they are loving it. Briana and Natalie were gone this weekend in Mexico, but Briana wants to be baptized and Natalie is right there with her, so we set a date for next month.

We scrapped together a white shirt, pants, shoes and a tie for one of the YSAs we are teaching because his excuse for not coming to church was because he didn't have the right clothes. He still didn't come to church, but we were able to get his less active roommate to come to church which was a miracle!

Something incredible that happened this week was the baptism of Robert Steele. Last transfer, Elder Davis and I were talking with a couple from the English ward and they mentioned that their son-in-law isn't a member and that he has come to church a few times. We referred him to the missionaries that were there, but the next week, both those missionaries left and two new missionaries came into the zone. I caught them up with what was going on, they went over, taught him and he progressed really fast and was baptized this Saturday.

Elder Dundon and I also executed our first "Beat to teach" game where we played 2 on 2 basketball at the park, beat our friends Alex and Johnny, then taught them and their friend Omar. After that, we taught another YSA at the park named Ryan. Ryan was the one who told us to meet him at the park for the lesson but showed up late, so we had the extra time to find some more people. Ryan was really cool though and he accepted a baptismal date for April 20th. We were able to teach him another time as well before the week was up.

We also had Multi zone conferences this week and then a Missionary correlation meeting with the stake. That pretty much filled our whole Thursday.

My favorite thing I learned this week was in Alma 48:15-16.
And this was their faith, that by so doing God would prosper them in the land, or in other words, if they were faithful in keeping the commandments of God that he would prosper them in the land; yea, warn them to flee, or to prepare for war, according to their danger; And also, that God would make it known unto them whither they should go to defend themselves against their enemies, and by so doing, the Lord would deliver them; and this was the faith of Moroni, and his heart did glory in it...

I feel like what I learned is that "being prospered in the land" really just means having increased revelation from God and a constant sense of protection that comes from the Gift of the Holy Ghost. These things dont take away any of the trials, just like how the Nephites in this example still had to defend themselves from the Lamanite attacks, but it will definitely help us and save our spirituality. The way to be prospered is simply through our personal faith and obedience.

Elder Moon