Opening our mouths to people with open ears

(Elder Cummings)
We have done so much this week!  I don't even know where to start!  From a teaching standpoint, this week has been the busiest of my mission.  Elder Ostler and I shattered both of our personal "bests."  It has been an amazing adventure.  I have loved every second of it.

Our beloved farmers, sadly, have quite literally moved on to greener pastures this week.  In traditional Hmong fashion they up and moved without telling anyone.  They all work from sun up to sun down trying to support themselves and children, spouses, and sometimes extended family in Laos.  They went the way of the work--north to Sacramento.  I pray that they will soon come into contact, again, with missionaries.

Blessings have come from this as well!  We were able to open our mouths and share the gospel with some others in the neighborhood, and meet several others who were more than happy to meet the missionaries!

One of the highlights of the week was another miracle from opening our mouths!  Elder Ostler and I were walking through the biggest apartment complex I have ever seen, searching for a less active's home.  We have been trying to get in contact with this family for a few weeks now, and they finally got back to us and told us to come by.  That is exactly what we hoped to do, but as we kept walking deeper and deeper we started to doubt if the address was real.  We took a moment and talked about what we should do and we felt that we should go and share the gospel with the eight or nine African-American children playing by the volleyball court.  That is exactly what we did!

From that we received three referrals to hand off to whatever English missionaries cover the area.  Miracle number one!  It gets better though!  One of the boys, Isaiah, really wanted us to tell his mom about Joseph Smith as soon as possible, so he took us for a walk that led right past the address we had been looking for!  Had we not opened our mouths and shared the gospel with whoever the Lord put in our paths we would not have been able to reach out to the members who had temporarily lost their way.

Another day I was on an exchange and felt prompted to talk to a woman who had just passed by us.  Realizing that there wasn't any subtle way to approach the situation, I turned around and very loudly asked her back if she believed in Jesus.  This was met with a laugh, a polite no, a short conversation about families, and an accepted invitation to come and teach her and her boyfriend sometime.  Two days later the same woman was referred to us by an investigator.  God puts prepared people in the paths of the missionaries all the time.

He puts them in your paths as well, I am sure of it.  As Preach My Gospel puts it "You are surrounded by people.  You pass them on the street, visit them in their homes, and travel among them.  All of them are children of God, your brothers and sisters.  God loves them just as He loves you."

I am so grateful to be here in Fresno among such a wonderful people.  There is nothing that compares!

With love,

Elder A. Jared Cummings