Email 2/25/13

Sounds like it was a rough week for Elder Beatty, but the testimony at the end is priceless!  Thank you for your prayers and love and support!

Hello everyone.

Well, really I feel like this week I just have existed and not really done anything. This week was a little harder for us. We spent the majority of the week just looking for people to teach. We started out the week really really excited and we were pumped to just go out and find some new golden people who were going to be baptized. We were doing pretty well until Wednesday.

Really to tell you the truth I went on divisions to another area on Tuesday and so I wasn´t in my area. They had found 2 people and put them with a baptismal date and so I came back and we were pretty excited to start working. We went and visited first our investigators that were supposed to get baptized next week. We talked with them about the sacrament and why it is just such an important thing in our lives to show our faith and to be cleaned of our sins.

At the end of the lesson the dad just kind of starts sending us some weird signals. He kept on saying stuff about how his family is not to happy with us coming by and that he doesn´t want to have any problems within his family. It went on like this for about 10 minutes when finally I just felt that I needed to ask him if he wanted us to come back or not. He spilled the beans in that his wife and daughter have been talking a lot with their neighbors and that the people have been telling them not to let us come by and not to listen to us because we are only here to steal their money and to make them go to jail and all sorts of crap. He said that he didn´t believe that it was true but that his wife did and that his daughter did as well. That the rest of his family says that it is his fault that we keep coming by and visiting them. He said that he wanted to avoid any conflict with his family and so it was just better that we didn´t come back.

 We talked with him about how he felt while he was reading the Book of Mormon and going to church and praying. He said that he felt great and loves what we teach him. We asked him if he felt that those feelings he felt came from God or from Satan. He said from God. So we told him to ponder in his heart if really GOD wanted him to stop listening to us or if he should stop. He said that he felt good but he didn´t want to have problems with his family. That it’s better if we just forgot the whole thing.

At the beginning of the experience I felt a lot of Anger, anger towards the people who lied to this man who was simply trying to find God and be obedient. Then after seeing that I couldn´t convince him to keep listening to us and to be baptized I felt Sadness. I felt that really this child of God was going to lose so many blessings that come from the Gospel. After attempting several times I finally bore my testimony of the greatness of God and that God loves him and wants him to be in his church and I asked him if we could come back. He said no.

I was torn apart that my testimony had no affect on his heart at all. I left that lesson very very heartbroken and discouraged. I got to the point where really I questioned my testimony and if I really was doing the right thing. The rest of the week was a disaster. I really wasn´t focused at all the rest of the week. Everything just seemed to spiral down into a never-ending disaster of problems. We were supposed to have 10 baptisms in the zone this week and tons of the missionaries lost their focus and we only had 4. The Assistants were all up in my face because so many baptisms fell and my comp as well was depressed because I was depressed and everything was just dead.

For the first time in my mission I didn´t feel like doing anything and didn´t know what to do to get out of this hole. We got to church and no one had come to church and we had a super super small attendance at church. Everything was going down until we sang the first song in the sacrament meeting. We sang “Choose the Right”.   I really didn´t pay too much attention because I was so preoccupied with how pitiful my life seemed like.

During the sacrament I wasn´t all that focused either until I realized that I still had the hymn book open to that same song. I looked down and began to see the words. The whole song is about doing the things that the Lord asks us to do. It was about being obedient. It doesn´t mention in the song that everything will be all songs and roses and happy days, but it does say that the Lord will bless us.

I realized in that moment that I had a decision to make. I could decide to be happy. Sometimes it’s hard to realize that the Lord gives people their agency even when they reject something good. President Callan would always say that the Lord is going to give us our agency even if we kill ourselves. It is exactly that way. After reflecting on the words of the hymn I really came to realize the love the Lord has for me. I realized that everything is true that I had testified earlier that week. After taking the sacrament the words of a famous scripture came to my head. ¨ And if you shall bring but one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my father¨ That one soul that matters most that I bring unto Christ is my own.

I HAVE a testimony of this work that it is the glory and work of God. I KNOW that I am important to Him........ I have much of my life to live still but I WILL do His will and I WILL follow Him so that I can be with Him someday. I will continue to testify of His divinity, His love, and that He lives. I will invite all to come unto Him and be transformed as I have been transformed. I LOVE HIM, The Prince of Peace, the great Jehovah of the earth and heaven, the Savior of the world.

I am grateful to Him that I can be His servant and do His will and help all people find His light and love even in the darkness of this world. I hope that we can all find a new desire to follow Him. He was perfect, and we too must become perfect. Only by following Him we can find that path that will lead us to an Everlasting Glory.

Rohaihu

Elder Beatty