God Prompted You to Talk to Me

Hello family!

Hope you're all doing well! I hear Mom is sick! What the heck! It is The Month of Mom (with a side of Spencer on Saturday--Happy Birthday Bro!)! That's just not right! I will pray for her!

I'm doing pretty well. Can't really complain! The weather is beautiful here. I am currently sitting in a park next to a river writing this email. The wind is swishing through the grass below and the trees above and the birds are flying around. It's a very peaceful day.

This week has been really great with a lot of highlights. We were able to meet with our investigator that has a baptismal date just about every day. My companion and I actually just finished teaching him about enduring to the end. That is the last part of the fifth lesson. He is all ready for his baptismal interview coming up this week.

We were not able to meet with any of our other investigators though which is pretty frustrating. We will get with them soon, though, I'm sure. With that being said, we have had a lot of time for finding, during which we saw a lot of miracles. One outstanding one happened last night. We had about thirty minutes before a lesson with a less active member, so we went housing around the church. Nobody was interested (they have probably all been talked to many times by missionaries). My companion and I felt like we were wasting time but we had felt inspired to do that kind of finding. So we continued and just as we called it quits and turned back to go to the church for our lesson, we saw a friendly looking man walking toward us. We stopped him and talked to him for a long time. There were a lot of little miracles during the conversation that led to me, especially, being able to build a good relationship with him. We ended up testifying to him about the restoration and gave him a Book of Mormon. He took it and asked us for our contact information! He then said the most amazing thing that I have ever heard from a nonmember Japanese person. He said he believes that God prompted him to go for a walk, and prompted us to go out and do housing, and then he said to us, "God prompted you to talk to me." I was shocked and then told him that I believe the same thing. 

I have seen over and over again the hand of the Lord postponing me. Prompting me to do something that appears to not be effective at all, but that puts me in the path of someone who has been prepared. Sometimes I wish that He would do it in a way that doesn't seem to waste so much time! If only he would just send me directly to the person so that I can help them, get it done, and head out to the next person I need to help, but I don't think that way would require me to exercise faith. The faith is in the persevering to the end; in following what seems to be a dead-end prompting until God gives you a witness and validates your faith with a miracle. It has taken me a long time to learn that, and seems to be thoroughly against my nature to work that way. I would love to quickly and efficiently get things done, but that doesn't seem to be the way the Lord wants me to go right now. Patience. I have a LOT to learn.

Love you all! Gotta go!

Elder Siebach