A Feeling of Peace, Worth, and Accomplishment

Hey Fam!!

Sounds like things are going great. I’m very glad to hear that. The Lord really is taking care of all of us and helping us succeed in life. We just need to follow the commandments and do all we can to help those around us and our life will be full of happiness and peace.

I just got an email from Drew. I can't believe he's home already. He sent me pictures of his homecoming in the airport and at home it was cool. He's gained some weight, but looks great. I truly do love all my friends and am so grateful for the role my friends have played in my life. What a blessing the Lord has given me, a circle of great friends who only pressure me into doing good.

This week in the mission field was great. We sat back and thought about how to better the area and be better tools in the hands of the Lord. Much happened just like you guys did in the business. We sat back, after working till death every day, getting home and not having my head on straight because I was so tired from just pounding the streets. We prayed and talked about it, and were guided in how to be smarter missionaries. Because smart includes hard work into it. We made some changes and put them into play, Let me tell you this week was full of more miracles then I can begin to say. The Lord just placed people in our paths. We ended with 7 people with baptismal dates. But these aren't just people with dates, these are souls that know what they need to do to progress in the gospel, they know our expectations for them, and they are willing to do it. Every one of them is like a golden investigator. We only taught 19 lessons this last week, but everyone of the lessons we filled our role as representatives of the Lord Jesus Christ. At the end of the week it just felt full. We felt like we had accomplished what the Lord had set out for us to do. A feeling of peace, worth, and accomplishment. It was great! It all came from working smarter not harder.

We met with the Sister Guan, the one who invited me to meet with her and teach her about the Book of Mormon. We set expectations and she set a date to be baptized. Then we taught her a first lesson, gave her a Book of Mormon and invited her to start reading it. The second time we went back, she had great questions from the introduction and the 3 witnesses part. She is really studying it, and really wants to know if it's true or not. It was a great gospel discussion that we were able to have with her. She is truly a prepared soul, we will continue to work with her and help her reach her goal to be baptized into the church of Christ. Then Sister Ou Yang, she is doing absolutely great too. She is an amazing woman - 26 years old and just wants to be happier in life. She wants to be married and have 6 kids, she just loves family. But she is progressing very well. She has no understanding of Christ or Christian so we have to take things slow and simple with her in order to help her understand the importance and reality of these things. It's cute; she'll always ask such innocent questions about Christ, because she just flat out doesn't know. It's been really fun to help her progress and feel the love that Christ has for her. Sister Wang, she is a new investigator we met with on Sunday. She is golden! She just was like what do I have to do to go to the temple? How can I get baptized, she really wants to be happier in life. She also came to church along with the others and really liked the feeling of home at our chapel and enjoyed it a lot. It was great! We also met with her after church; she just really wants to know how to prepare for being baptized. She's awesome. Sister Wei, is still moving along. Her biggest problem is she doesn't think that she can follow all the commandments completely; she's worried she will fall short of the standard of God. But we are working with her on building her faith and helping her overcome these little worries that she has about being baptized. There are also a couple others but yeah the work is going great. I’m grateful to be here in this area serving the Lord. It's been an experience of a lifetime.

You only have 2 years to serve a mission
But a lifetime to think about it!

One thing we are going to focus on the zone this month/week is diligence and accountability with the Lord. We feel that some missionaries don't quite fully get it yet, but we hope that through this week’s training and the help of the spirit that they will start to feel it and understand the importance of doing the work in the Lord's way, which in reality is the only true and capable way of doing the work of the Lord. I thought talking to everyone was just a natural thing that you do as a missionary, but there are a bunch of elders in our zone that are scared, or for whatever reason they aren't really opening their mouths in the way that they should. So we hope to help them understand the doctrine and importance behind talking to everyone. Another thing we are going to hit on is the quality of the things that we are doing. We were thinking about it, the golden standard for new investigators in a week is 5 for the mission. But there are a lot of companionships throughout the mission that are getting well over that, but not baptizing anyone. We were thinking about in all reality, getting 1 new investigator and having them progress, then getting 10 and having none progress is a lot better. Even though when you report the numbers it doesn't look half as good. We are going to focus on finding the prepared souls that will actually get baptized. This is what my companion and I focused on this week, and everything we did in the work had more quality and was more effective. It was a great new way of thinking that went into our companionships' work this last week, and now we hope to carry it down to the rest of the zone and help them understand this point as well.

This is the hardest time on my mission. I don't know why it's really draining me mentally and physically. It’s hard to get out of bed early now, but I need to continue in order to have more time to study the language, and become a greater tool in the hand of the Lord. Really you just get more and more tired every day, but happier and happier every minute. It's a great calling, and I’m grateful to be a part of it.

We are moving right along in the hands of the Lord. I know He lives, and loves us. I’m grateful for his atoning sacrifice. I love my mission, and pray that I will stand at the end of it with the utmost assurance that I've done my best and have been accepted by the hand of the Lord!

Thank you guys for all you do, I love you all so much!

Elder Rasmussen