This week I got the privilege of attending a baptism in Owen Sound, the other area in my district. The person baptized was a 12-year-old girl named Shelbi that the missionaries had been trying to get baptized for months. Her parents were baptized like 3 months ago and they took a while too. I had the chance to teach them with Elder Cozzens, who is only 1 transfer older than me, when we did travels last transfer. And then I got to see their oldest daughter get baptized, which was a great experience. There was a 3-day leadership training conference down in Kitchener where our zone leaders are, so my district leader stayed in Walkerton with my companion and I went up to my district leaders area and worked with his companion for 3 days. The district leader and Elder Bennett had to wake up at 6 and drive two hours each day to the conference and then they would drive back in the evening and practice what they learned. They set Leah, one of the investigators I mentioned a few weeks ago, with a baptismal date, October 2nd.
So this week I was able to see someone get baptized. On the flip side of that, we had a pretty terrible thing happen to our most promising investigator, the lady that I talked about in my last email named Tammy. She had received a powerful spiritual witness that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. She knew that the church was true and that she needed to be baptized. She felt the spirit so strong while we were there and when she read the Book of Mormon. But when we left her house, Satan didn't. She felt fear and doubt about what she needed to do, even though it should have been clear. Eventually she began to explain away what she had felt and yesterday morning, when she was supposed to come to church, she called us during our personal study. She told us that for the past week she had been pulling arguing with herself over and over and when she woke up this morning she was just calm and she knew that she needed to stay at her church. Elder Bennett pleaded with her for about an hour, but she told us that she didn't think the Book of Mormon was true, that the feelings she felt came from us being good people, that God sent us to her to make her realize that she should stay in the Presbyterian church(that one confuses me) and that she didn't need us to visit her anymore. It was a really depressing conversation to listen to. She knew it. She had a powerful spiritual witness. But she fought against it, and eventually after fighting against the Spirit for so long, the spirit withdrew because she was exercising her agency against it. And that's the calmness she felt. The good side stopped fighting the bad side and then there was nothing.
It's interesting, because as a missionary I haven't really felt or had to deal with the adversary. I kind of forgot that he was even there because I've been living in my own peaceful doubt-free world. But now I see just how real he is and I don't like it at all. This experience made me sad, as it should if I love the people I am teaching. But we have our agency, and I am on the Lord's time. I will choose to be happy, because I don't have much time to be sad. Tammy has had a spiritual experience and that won't go away. She will return to the Book of Mormon. But who knows what sort of tragedy it will take to get her to remember how she felt.
Yesterday we studied the book of Job in Sunday school, and Elder Bennett made an interesting point. Satan's goal wasn't to take away everything that Job had. He wasn't trying to take away his property, his family, or his health. His goal was to get him to curse God. Satan knows that temporal things don't mean anything just like God knows. Let us always remember the things that matter, and not become bitter over things that are meaningless.
--Elder Wade
