And God Answered My Prayer

12/29/2014

Well, hello again all you family and friends. Hope you all had a marvelous Christmas and are suffering from all the food you ate, ha ha.  My Christmas was basically a normal day.  Just a bunch of fireworks and some tamales, so not much to tell you all there.  We had to go to the house at 7:00 on the 24th and that was it. Christmas in Honduras is very different.  But anyways, it has come and gone.  

I don’t have much time, but I just wanted to share an experience I had recently. I honestly don’t really remember what I said exactly, but the other day I kneeled down and started to pray.  And I actually stayed awake this time, so that was the first miraculous part.  But I just remember asking my Heavenly Father that I could find greater joy in this work.  That he would prepare people to listen to our message.  Things like that.  I don’t really remember exactly what I said, just saying if it’s not His will, I’ll just keep working.  But I prayed and asked help from God.  And then I went to work, and we actually were able to find some of these people.  I was able to see an answer to my prayers this week.  I’ve been really frustrated and down about the work lately, about how baptisms just aren’t coming and how we don’t have many people that want to listen and act on our message. And God answered my prayer.

Christmas day, we were walking to an appointment we had set, and it was like the second visit.  We hadn’t taught very much yet, so we shared the restoration, and at the end of the lesson we challenged her to baptism. She said yes and we set a date, which is always the hard part, and she just accepted without any comment or doubt.  It just happened.  So after the appointment I walked out and I was just thinking, and I thought WOW!  I remembered my prayer and how I had asked God to help us find prepared people, and there it was.  Better yet, the same thing happened again.  We had another appointment the other day with a guy who was really interested and had lots of questions.  It was funny because the first time we went, he told us he had a Book of Mormon.  He had it in the house since he was little and he had always thought that Samuel the Lamanite, in the painting in the Book of Mormon up on the wall, was a bad guy. ha ha. But anyway, we had an appointment, and he told us he would call us. I’m thinking, well we´ll never talk to him again, because they generally say that when they aren’t interested. But we called him and set up another appointment, and he said yes.  So we went and taught about the Book of Mormon for the second visit and then challenged him to baptism.  He said yes, so we set a date.  He expressed some concern about how he had to change things in his life, and know more and everything, but we talked and explained about how he can change through the gospel.  He then accepted the date too.  So this week we were able to triple the number of people we have with a baptismal date.  

I know that was an answer to my prayer; that these people were prepared by God. I know God listens to our prayers because He loves us.  I know that when we express the desires of our heart and ask for help, He will help us according to His will. I know that as we do that, we will also grow closer to Him and come to know Him better. I hope that we can all keep praying to come to know our Heavenly Father more. 

Love, Elder Ollis

12/29/2014 - Elder Ollis Breaking into the Church

In a separate email to his sister:

This week we had to break into the computer room in the church.  It’s crazy here.  They have a four-inch metal doors to close the room with the computers.  And in the church they also put reinforced metal gridding in the ceiling.  So I crawled up between the roof and the ceiling and opened up the ceiling tiles and used a wood pole with a wire to grab the keys that they locked in. ha ha, I’ll send the picture.