My People,
What another wonderful, fantastic, great week we’ve had here in Wetumpka, Alabama! Things are just looking up and we couldn’t be more excited! I hope everyone is doing just as great and is full of food from their Super Bowl party! Elder Harris and I forgot about the Super Bowl until we were knocking on some doors at 5:30 and realized that everyone was having their respective Super Bowl parties...that put a damper on our ability to talk to some people, but it was a good week nonetheless!
First I am going to talk about Lisa! Lisa is an older black lady who we found while tracting a couple weeks ago. She was walking down the street and we stopped to talk to her about the Book of Mormon. She accepted the challenge to read and pray and then when we went back to teach the Restoration she had read and comprehended (which was good because at first meeting she didn’t seem like she was “all there”). But, we went back again to teach the Plan of Salvation with a member of the Ward and Lisa had received her answer that the Book of Mormon was a true book! We then were able to commit her to be baptized on February 25th and she came to church yesterday with another member. Things are just moving very quickly with Lisa...and for the lack of a better term she is, or at least seems to be so far, GOLDEN! We are excited to help her progress into the waters of baptism and the Ward is so ready and willing to help. Lisa is awesome and I’ll be happy to keep y’all updated with her story as we get closer and closer to the 25th!
We also had a lot of “success” in seeing people that we had planned to get in contact with. Jeremy, a guy who we found in our area book and called the first week we were here was one of them. We finally were able to see him at his house and are trying to get more consistent with him so that we can help him and his family progress in the gospel. As far as his records go he, at one point, had a baptismal date so fingers crossed with him. TJ, the investigator we’ve been teaching since Elder Harris and I got to Wetumpka fell off the face of the earth. We didn’t see him for a week and then one day we saw him walking down the street. That was amazing to me because I felt like we should just walk a certain way home to (in my thoughts) “Maybe catch TJ.” Sure enough we did, AFTER we had stopped and talked to a member for a few minutes. Had we not been stopped, and had we not walked that specific direction, we would have missed him. But who knows, that might be a coincidence.
Wednesday we spent about half the day going through a Prospective Elders list that was beyond outdated trying to determine who actually lived where our records said they did. It was an interesting day for me because I didn’t feel like we had gotten a whole lot done, however, by going through that list we were “establishing the church.” And that phrase was used a lot in the Worldwide Missionary Broadcast, about how our job as missionaries is to establish the church, which is done in many other ways besides convert baptisms. Friday though made up for it because we were busy Friday and we had lots of people to go visit (and it was the day that we put Lisa on date, wahoo!).
Zone Conference this week was awesome, as always, but it was different this time because I wasn’t only listening for myself but for my District, because this coming week I’ll have the privilege of conducting my own District Meeting based on the trainings from Zone Training and Zone Conference. A lot of what the mission is doing is going back to the basics of The Doctrine of Christ (Faith, Repentance, Baptism, Receiving the Holy Ghost, and Enduring to the End) as well as “Teaching Repentance, Baptizing Converts.” I love the way that the church is headed with their missionary work! It’s going to be amazing! :)
One more cool story and then I’ll get to my funny blips of the week. Church was the best. Lisa came and all the members welcomed her and I couldn’t be happier about that but there was another amazing thing that occurred. Aaron got up to bear his testimony. Now, Aaron is not a member of the church. His friends-two of the youth in the Ward-have been, as he said, “opening his eyes to the gospel.” He is Catholic with his family but from what it seemed like loves this place (this being the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). Last week he came to basketball on Saturday with Isaac, one of his friends from the ward. Isaac was asked to give the opening prayer before we started and Aaron was called on the say the closing prayer. Before Aaron got up to bear his testimony Isaac shared this experience over the pulpit and explained that after basketball he told Aaron what a good job he did saying the prayer and ask how he knew what to say. Aaron responded that he said exactly what Isaac had said in the opening prayer. So, Isaac shared his testimony on how people look up to us as members of the church even if we don’t think they do. Then, following the same pattern, Aaron followed his friend and bore his testimony on the stand. What courage this 15-year-old boy had and what a testimony he already has. Before we had left that morning I grabbed a pass-along copy of the Book of Mormon to take with me. I didn’t know why, I just did. Then, after Aaron’s testimony I knew why I had brought it. We talked with Aaron after Sacrament, gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon, and Isaac and Kayden (his other friend) are going to set up with us a time to meet and teach Aaron.
So, that story was kind of not as fluent as I would like but it gets the point across. With that experience and many others this week I have come to know that the Lord knows who we are, individually. He knows what we all need and His hand is ever present in the smallest aspects of our lives. Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ micro-manage their work and they micro-manage us; it just takes some Faith, Hope, and Charity to see it (Moroni 7).
- I made a pen out of Desert Ironwood and broke two pieces.
- A different guy this week asked us how we resisted women during our mission work.
- Elder Harris and myself mistook a chair for one of our investigators.
- I did a rubix cube for a couple of 9-year-olds who were very impressed.
- We got beat by a couple of 9-year-olds (same ones) in backyard basketball.
- We had dinner with a family that was planned for 5:30, was postponed to 6, we were actually picked up at 6:15, I had to drive to the member's home because his eyes we getting fuzzy from some medication, he hadn’t started grilling until we got there, they put on a Mormon produced movie for us to watch, we didn’t start eating until 7:45, the Less-Active that was invited didn’t show up until 8, and at 8:45 the member asked “You have to be home at 9:30, right?” We left soon after that and couldn’t believe everything that had just happened.
- A Prospective Elder Brother Cook invited us in and then talked for an hour straight, praising God and quoting all sorts of positive scripture. We didn’t say three words.
- My mission is finally complete: We beat a couple teenagers in street ball who didn’t think we could ball-up in church clothes. 21-6 :)
Thank y’all for your thoughts and prayers as always! I hope that you have a wonderful week and continue to do the Lord’s work wherever He has called you-and we are all called! Love y’all! If you need anything let me know!
Much Love,
Elder Milius
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Godspeed,
ELDER MICHAEL S. MILIUS
ALABAMA BIRMINGHAM MISSION
"Behold I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I have been called of Him to declare His word among His people, that they might have everlasting life." ~3 Nephi 5:13
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