Missionaries are the Teachers, Only The Lord Harvests Souls

10/21/2013

Well, here I am with three weeks down….And I’m really starting to realize how hard this teaching is. Here in Honduras, Jesus is really popular.  Almost all the people here are religious in some way or another.  There are mostly four kinds of people here:  Evangelicals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Reformists, and Catholics…. We go to teach lessons, and we always begin with prayer. Everyone says a prayer out loud to themselves while we pray, and when we teach they just sit and listen. They don’t ever have questions, and I feel as if the things we teach are just going in one ear and out the other.  Anyway, it’s just really hard to have hope that these people can and will feel the spirit in the lessons, and want to know more when they just sit there, and they say their own prayer.  We try and contact people on the street and give them pamphlets. …But we haven’t had anyone contact us back that we’ve given pamphlets to.  I’m glad for our investigators and that we have people to teach, however, I feel that some of them just aren’t accepting.  

As for our investigating family, the Familia Espinal, they were supposed to be baptized this past week.  They weren’t.  We are having problems.  They have to be married before baptism and that is really difficult here in Honduras.  Papers are hard to get, and you have to pay a lot of money, which is a problem because this area is so poor.  We are working on it and I have hope that they will be baptized.  As for Hermano Marvin, (the husband), he is making progress and he is saying prayers.  He hasn’t been reading because he comes home from work really tired. And for some reason we hadn’t thought to give him a copy of the Book of Mormon. So we took care of that.  This family is my one saving grace. I love teaching them.  They listen and I have seen the gospel change their lives.  They have the light of Christ in them and I have seen it grow.

Also this week, we met with Hermana Marta and her children.  She is probably one of the poorest people we teach.  Her kitchen area is a mud and stick hut.  She has four kids and a husband.  Her husband can’t read and he barely talks.  We’ve met with him once.  I don’t remember if I wrote about that, but I don’t think he understood a word of what we taught.  She also is about the same.  She barely talks and it’s really hard to teach.  Her kids are absolutely awesome. When Christ talked about the meek inheriting the earth, he was talking about this family.  I love them to death.  We helped them shuck corn for a half hour and I really got to talk to the kids.  Kids are really the only people I feel comfortable talking to because they are so forgiving of my Spanish. They are awesome!  We went to remind her of church on Saturday and invited her and her family.  She barely talked to us. We invited her kids then left.  Sunday rolled around and we had one investigator at church, Hermana Mercedes (the wife in the Familia Espinal), so I was really disappointed.  Then ten minutes late, but still there, every single one of Hermana Martas kids showed up. But no Hermana Marta.  It’s just amazing to me that these kids showed up even without their parents. Oh yeah and the really frustrating thing, is that Hermana Marta had a baptismal date, last year.  She’s afraid of water. So we have some major challenges with this family.  So that’s about all here.  It’s really surprising though, because there are so many people who were baptized here. And they just don’t go anymore.  Our area is full of them….we have plenty of work to do.

One of many joys I experienced this week!

…I’m really going make sure we are being exactly obedient, because as missionaries, our success isn’t measured by baptisms. It’s measured by our obedience and if we are trying our best, and living worthy of the spirit. We have some work to do there.  I feel we could work harder and be more obedient and as we do, the spirit will be there more.  I feel that as we try to do this, our area will become more successful too.  So that’s my goal for the week. Let you all know how it goes next Monday!

Elder Ollis

Excerpt from an email to his sister:

…all we can do is have faith in the Lord’s plan for everything.  Thankfully, if not in this life, we have the great plan of salvation and people can accept the gospel even after this life.  Trust the Lord knows what to do.  There’s a quote I like, I don’t remember exactly but it says “Missionaries are the teachers, only The Lord harvests souls.”  We have to rely on His power to speak to people the truth in our hearts.