Week of Miracles

(Anziano Wilkinson)

This week has been full of amazing experiences with teaching and fellowshipping investigators with the help of members. As any missionary can attest, missionary work is far more effective when done with the assistance and support of faithful active members of the church. One of our investigators, for instance, Stanley, has been making amazing progress lately, every day comprehending more of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and making steps closer to making covenants with our Heavenly Father. We have been enlisting the help of many of the members in the Verona Second Ward to help him in this process and as we have done so his progress has accelerated. An unbelievable number of members have stepped up to help provide rides to allow him to get to church on time as well as to get home afterward. On top of this, we have had some amazing support from several families who have opened their homes to help us teach him there. Many of our members have expressed great desires to assist in the work in any way they can.

As we have taught alongside the members of the church here in Verona we have seen not only our investigators grow, but also those who have helped us. It's amazing to see the Lord work through these faithful members in bringing to pass His great work of salvation. Even when their assistance is no more than the offering of a warm home and an additional testimony, the difference is tangible. The Lord works through all those who are willing to be tools in His hands and He magnifies our efforts as we put ourselves in the position to help.

It's hard sometimes to help those we teach to make the transition from learning about the Gospel of Jesus Christ to making it an active part of their lives. Members of the church help with this immensely. As full-time missionaries we live different lives than the average person, dedicating our full time and attention to the work of our Father in Heaven to preach the gospel to "every nation, kindred, tongue, and people," so we do not represent great examples of how one can apply the Gospel of Jesus Christ into an everyday life. However, with the help of faithful (and quite frankly, normal) people that are truly trying to live the gospel everyday, that transition becomes a lot easier. Their friendship and support reassure new hearers of the gospel that the path that they are beginning to go down is both rewarding and possible.

I'm very grateful for the support that the members give to missionaries here in Verona and I can't wait to bring more new people into their homes to teach them about the word of God. Their faithful assistance makes a huge difference! Have a great week enjoy the first week of summer!

-Anziano Jake Wilkinson

Many miracles, many languages, many fun memories

(Elder Cummings)

Hello all!  This week has been full of amazing blessings and treasured experiences.  It has all flown by so fast.

As of yesterday, it has now been a year since I graduated high school.  Where has the time gone?  I cannot believe it has been that long already.  This time last year I still had no idea what Hmong really was, but my bags were getting packed ready to go find out.

I still don't really know what Hmong is, but I learn more every day.  Just this last Saturday I was trying to ask an older woman "what do you think about that?"  but instead informed her that "you are offended."  After assuring us that she wasn't offended by anything we had said I remembered an MTC instructor saying something about how he had made the same mistake on his mission.  Elder Bagley and I also volunteered to help a member of our ward tear down some chicken coops in his backyard.  The Hmong are a very resourceful people, and it was an enjoyable experience to take apart the coups and guess what the wood had come from.  I made war with black widows that night, and even got to hold my first rooster!

Sou will be getting baptized this Saturday!  The Hmong branch here in Merced covers the YSA aged Southeastern Asian population.  When we first met Sou he had no real comprehension of what Christianity is, and now he has a burning testimony of Jesus Christ, of His gospel, and of the restoration through Joseph Smith.  The change that has come into his life has been amazing to watch.

Elder Bagley and I have been so blessed to work together for these last few weeks.  We are having a great time being back together.  In the car we are either speaking English, White Hmong, Green Hmong, or broken Spanish together.  It is a great time.

Elder Bagley's Spanish is much better than mine.  Two weeks ago we checking up on less-active members when we ran into a hispanic woman, Maria, who was getting ready to move.  She had met missionaries in the past, and told us that she knew that we were messengers from God.  She was so grateful to have ran into missionaries.  Elder Bagley, who had been leading the conversation, said a prayer for her and we gave her information over to the Spanish elders.  Yesterday they told us that Maria will be getting baptized!  That was a tender mercy, to know that we played even a small part in helping her.

I hope you all told your dads that you loved them yesterday.  I wasn't able to due to mission rules, so I am going to take the opportunity now.  I love you Dad!

I hope you all are having a great summer!

With love,

Elder A. Jared Cummings

Small Things Show Forth Great Power

(Elder Cummings)

This week can be summarized very well in one of my favorite scriptures in holy writ, Ether 3:5.

Behold, O Lord, thou canst do this.  We know that thou art able to show forth great power, which looks small unto the understanding of men.

As Elder Balgey and I have been teaching, and contacting, and praying together for direction, this scripture has been on my mind.  So much of what the Lord does for his children looks so small to us from our mortal mindset.  In fact, one of the greatest manifestations of God's power, the quiet whispering of the Holy Ghost, is not even observable with the human eye.

One of our investigators, Sou, has been pushing through a lot of opposition from his family to continue meeting with us, and to prepare to be baptized.  We have been meeting him for several weeks, and he now knows God's desire is for him to be baptized.  He is still unsure of a date.  In addressing this concern, we invited him to select a date and to pray about it.  Following a prompting from the Spirit, I pulled out a card and wrote a date on it for him to pray about, not really knowing why.  The visit progressed, and when it was right, I gave him the card and the Spirit filled the room.  The date I had written was the same one he had been thinking about.  The Spirit had inspired me to act in a small way to confirm to Sou that the thoughts he had were inspired.

Another day, we knocked on the door of a less-active member who had not been contacted in a while.  While waiting for them to come to the door, an adult male pitbull turns the corner of the house and walks up to us, sniffs our legs, and sits down at our feet.  A small thing, but not the normal thing for that dog.  The family invited us in, and we had a wonderful visit.  They are happy to have us come back this next week.

One afternoon Elder Balgey and I were walking back to our car from contacting a referral and said hi to a pedestrian, and casually asked if he believed in Christ.  Not a very tactful approach for a street contact, but he said no, and said we could come by and meet him to help him understand Christianity and especially Mormonism.  So we did, and he is now is investigating the church and reading in the Book of Mormon.  He immigrated from Vietnam three years ago and has a curiosity to learn that he didn't know he had.

It really is the small things--the smallest things--that show forth God's greatest power.  We can come to know God best in some of the slowest times of our lives.  God is always there.

Have a wonderful week!

With love,

Elder Jared Cummings

Verona!

(Anziano Wilkinson)

Here to Stay,

So transfers have come and it turns out that I get to stay in Verona for another transfer! I'm excited to stay in this amazing city! And still with the added bonus of Mantova for part of the week! Anziano Te Maari is still my companion too, which is really good because he is the one that knows Mantova and I'm still learning it.

We have a new mission president coming in at the end of this month who name is President Allen and as such, President Dibb has asked us to make June a month of "consecration". In essence, he has asked us to work as hard as ever and with even greater focus on and concern for the people we teach and encounter. The difference has been seen as Anziano Te Maari and I have tried to invite the Holy Ghost more than ever into our teaching appointments and daily routines. We're making efforts to be more prepared for the lessons we teach and to look for more opportunities to uplift and serve. Although this week we spent a great portion of our time with transfers, adjusting our apartment to accommodate two again rather than four, traveling and waiting in lines for visa documentation for Anziano Te Maari, and planning for the month's upcoming events, we can tell that great things will soon come from our increased efforts to bless the lives of others.

I've been thinking a lot about gratitude recently. I'm extremely grateful for the blessings that richly define my life. I have a loving family back home, loving friends both in the mission and at home, and the amazing chance to be in the position to uplift and edify others as a full-time missionary. Our Father in Heaven wants us to be happy. He knows what is meaningful to us. He knows what will make us the most happy. He has a plan for us all and it exists for the only to help us realize our fullest potentials as divine sons and daughters of God. He sent His only begotten Son to set an example of righteousness for us and ultimately pay the price for our sins so that if we would rely on Him, we wouldn't have to. We have a God watching over us 24/7 making sure to keep His promises to bless us when we do right and teach us when we don't. I'm so great full for the knowledge that we will never be alone as long as we keep close to God.

There are blessing all around us to be grateful for! Take a moment to count your blessings this week. You will find many. each of us has been richly blessed with our own strengths and weaknesses, loved ones, and tender mercies. Look for them and you will find them!

Have a fantastic week!

-Anziano Jake Wilkinson

Turning up the heat!

(Elder Cummings)

The work in Merced continues to build and the temperature continues to rise!  The hottest it got this week was 112.  Our apartment, despite our best efforts, stays in the 90s all night, so sleeping and showering have become uncomfortably relate-able experiences.  Nonetheless, we are having fun and working hard.

Our finding has been on point!  They were such a blessing!  Elder Balgey and I had fasted that we could find families to teach and we have been blessed.  We were able to meet a half dozen individuals who would be interested in learning more with their spouse and children present.  What a miracle!

This week has also brought with it my first interactions with the Hmong gangs!  They are much bigger down in Fresno and up north in Sacramento, Wisconsin, and Michigan, but we managed to run into them in Merced.  Only good things came from it, and we began visiting one of them who was baptized a member of the Church, but has since gone astray.  They have a strong desire to come back to church, but they want to take it slow.  Many changes will have to be made, and through Jesus Christ they can be made.

A lesson we had with this new friend was one of the most incredible experiences of my life.  As we talked I had a distinct memory of a few obscure verses in the Book of Revelations that talk about the war in heaven that occurred before this life that were first brought to my attention five years ago at an EFY (Especially For Youth) summer program but on by BYU.  I have seldom, if ever, thought about these verse since, with the exception of reading over them.  Because of an experience I had had five years previous, I knew those specific scriptures well enough to use them in a teaching situation that helped this less-active member feel the Spirit strongly and to reopen their heart to the message of the Restoration.  Despite what may seem like a wild introduction, the visit went smoothly into teaching about prophets and the Atonement.  They have began rereading the Book of Mormon and praying daily.  It was an incredible lesson for all who were present.  Our new friend even mentioned that Elder Bagley and I were the first missionaries that had been able to make learning the gospel fun!  It was an amazing experience.

God truly does prepare us for all we are called upon to do.  He guides our life to give us the experiences we need to accept his gospel.  I know that He lives.

With love,

Elder Jared Cummings

Picture update

(Anziano Wilkinson)

Born to grow, built for change

(Elder Cummings)

Hello friends!  Merced is treating me well!  Elder Bagley and I have been working hard all day every day.  This area has challenges for Hmong missionaries very different than Fresno.  We had only two appointments this week where we actually needed to speak Hmong.  If we are not making an effort to speak Hmong to each other then our language study time is often the only language exposure we get in the day.  We try hard to speak it as much as we can.  This last week was the first weekly planning of my mission that was conducted in my beautiful second language: Hmong.

Being in YSA work has opened my eyes again to what normal concerns of my peers are.  Last night we had a beautiful lesson with two amazing recent converts who recently went to the temple for their endowment in preparation for moving away and for missionary service.  They shared their conversion story with me as I had not yet heard it.  Something that struck me was how frequently they would express their gratitude for how complete the change in their life had been over the last year.

There is a lie being pervaded in society "by that old serpent, who is the devil, who is the father of lies" that seeks to persuade us that we are unchangeable (2 Nephi 2:18).   From this lie comes excuses that claim to say that change is not possible because "it is just the way I am" or because "I was born that way."  True, you may be that way now, and maybe you were born that way too, but there is no doctrine under heaven that states you must stay that way.

What is the purpose of life if not to change?  The great missionary, Amulek, taught powerfully that "this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God" (Alma 34:32).  This preparation is not vacuuming the front room, or puffing up the pillows in preparation for company, nor is it the casual discipleship that many in today's world are prone to think it is.  "No unclean thing can dwell with God," and "all we like sheep have gone astray" and will continue to go that way unless we yield "to the enticing of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord" (1 Nephi 10:21, Isaiah 53:6, Mosiah 3:19). 

Change, also known as repentance is fundamental to our life on earth.  Through our faith we can change our desires and dispositions to be fully in line with the will of God.  We don't need to surrender control to natural appetites.  We are not unchangeable.  God is unchangeable.  We are not as God is, not yet.  That will come long after this life through our faith and diligence and through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ.  Only then will we have the capacity to fulfill the comission he gave to "be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). 

Greek synonyms for "perfect" as is used in that verse include "complete," or "fully developed" (see footnotes in LDS edition of the Kings James Version of the Bible).  It is my hope with all whom I teach that someday they will reach their full potential and return to live with God on high.  In the words of the Apostle, John, "now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2).

I love this gospel!  I am so happy to fill my life with its truth and to be here in Merced, California, sharing that joy with all who will listen!

With my love,

Elder Jared Cummings