Elder Hill, Miracle of the Week and Some Scriptural Thoughts

Things this week have been great. I love serving with Elder Hill. He is a really great guy who is so incredibly easy to get along with. I just wanted to say Thank You for your support. I would love to say words of wisdom for all of you, but I just have loads of stuff running around in my head. We have been working really hard to get everything organized so we can just continue to oil a high-powered machine. We are excited about the progression of our investigators. We have a baptism this Saturday with a Golden Investigator named C******. He is universtity student over here from Malaysia. We are trying to get our investigators there so show them how great it is. We also had the opportunity to be in a threesome for about 24 hours. Elder Brewster came over from the area next to us to spend some time while his companion is in the hospital with appendicitis. He left the next day though to be with the other Elders in his area. It was nice to have an older, British companion for a while, just because the accent is awesome, well at least his is.

Stretford is becoming such a blessed area, and we are working to get the most out of it. We depend so much upon the Lord though, because there is no way this work would happen any other way. It is amazing everything that must go on to accomplish the work.

Miracle of the Week:

We had a lesson with an investigator named K** yesterday. She really like her achohol and enjoy smoking too. We have of course talked to her about how those things are bad, but this time we decided to say why. Why we have commandments and why we stay away from things like that. We went through the Plan of Salvation and talked about what we are here for, and the Plan that God has for us. She is slowly becoming closer to the idea. This time she said, well what if I just drink every once
in a while . . . so that is better. We have had a lot of people being able to commit to those things, so the desire is there.

Another miracle happened on Monday in the town centre. I saw this lady and was a little scared to talk to her. At first, I just ignored the prompting, but then I turned a 180 and just went for it. To my dismay, she had been stopped by a charity person, but I patiently waited my turn. I stopped her and she just unloaded her life on me. At the end she said such a sincere thanks for being able to share that with someone. She has had some trials in her life, but she is so ready for something the is better
and will help. We got all of her information and are anxiously awaiting our lesson with her. Follow that prompting Elder Davies!

Mosiah 23:21 speaks about how the Lord sees fit to chasten his people. That makes sense to me, but others might see that as cruel. Helaman 12:3 gives us the answer. So that we will remember Him. Men have the habit of being prideful and giving themselves the glory(sounds a bit like Satan), so God must helps us remember, because we cannot do so ourselves. It really is a mercy in the end. He wants us to turn to Him with our faith and just experiment upon the word. Our witness will come after the trial of our faith. Ether 12:6. The trial is to lift our ability up to the task. God sends us these to help our progression. Our trial will never be brought down to our ability, but God will lift our ability to equal the trial. I talked to a man on the bus one day, and he said that he had a really religious friend who had lost his faith because of what had happened in his life. He decided that having faith did him no good, but he never exercised that faith. It can be really tiring, isn't exercise always tiring?
However, that doubt is from the devil. 2 Timothy 1:7-8. We shall not fear when we have the God with us. That involves getting the Spirit. So now we know what to do, now how do we do it? When Nephi was in a similar position, he talked about who his strength was and where it had come from. He received this because he would pray mightily. 2 Nephi 4:24. So one is to pray. Pray for strength, pray for the spirit. Number two is to hold strong to the word of God. Helaman 3:29 explains what we can do with the word of God. It will lead us through a STRAIT AND NARROW path ACROSS, not around. Alma had a situation that sums the whole concept up. It is contained in Alma 8. He has loads of success in Melek (v.1-6). On his spiritual high he is told to go to Ammonihah, and things don't turn out so well (v.7-13). In the middle of those verses (v.10) he prays that things will go better, but when he goes back(v.11-13). Things don't go any better. What must have been going through Alma's mind? 'God, I wrestled with you in mighty prayer! Now where is my answer?' He had to exercise his faith. He got his answer when an angel appeared unto him and told him to rejoice. REJOICE? ARE YOU SERIOUS? Why did he tell him to rejoice(v.15), because he was keeping the commandments of God. After this Alma returned speedily(v.18) and boy did things work out. From then on, Alma and Amulek were forces for bringing thousands into the fold.

Sorry that was so long. My companion has been done for a while, so I better go. I love you all!

Elder Davies