Week #29 Five Loaves and 2 Fishes

January 30, 2018

Week #29 Five Loaves and 2 Fishes

Hallo Familie und Freunde! Alles gut bei mir und ich hoffe, dass alles bei euch gut ist.

I learned so much this week how the Lord is in charge of this work. It reminded me of a quote from Mother Teresa shared by Elder Pingree in Conference. We are like pencils in God's hand. He does the writing and the thinking. We have the great privilege of being used and I really saw that this week.

( A picture of me on the phone. Hansen sometimes takes random pictures during the day)

On last P-Day, I pulled up the Area Book and we got a referral from the California Anaheim mission. The girl's name was Helen. She moved from Germany and did some school in California and got to know the church through a friend. She then moved back and she lives in our area. She has been to church and she is really cool. To be honest, the members at first thought she was a visitor from another ward because she could sing so well. It sounded like she already knew the hymns. They were also suprised she could speak German, native German. I am really excited to see what happens. She wants to be baptized and hopefully we get her on date soon. It was really cool to see a miracle like that this week.

We have done a lot of finding this week and I have met some really cool people. Here are just some cool examples:

1. Christopher- Moved from America to Germany a few months ago. He works with dogs and he is trying to be a veternarian.

2. Alina- Moved from Russia to Germany a few months ago. She knows 5 languages- Russian, German, English, Spanish, and Italian. She was very friendly and ambitious.

3. George- He is actually a tourist but he moved to Italy from Ghana a few years ago. He has met the missionaries before and was touring the Stuttgart area for fun. He had a lot of questions about the Book of Mormon and it was a miracle that I had an English copy with me at the time.

I love the piano!!!!!!

Yeah, sometimes missionary work can be discouraging. It seems like no one wants to be interested in such an incredible message but I have come to learn (and am still learning) that rejection is a normal thing of good missionary work. Whiile that is true, there are also wonderful people out there who want the truth, who want to find peace. The Lord puts those kinds of people in our path but we have to put forth the effort to talk to them.

I want to share a cool lesson I learned from personal study. I have been studying the New Testament and have been using the institute manual to find more details. In the feeding of the five thousand, we see how the Lord provides tender mercies but still requires our efforts.

1. He provides a very difficult task- Feed the five thousand

2. We might say we may not have enough to accomplish the task- We only have 5 loaves and 2 fishes

3. The Lord then askes us to bring what we have

4. He uses what we have given him and then he does so much with it- He feeds the five thousand

It has something I have read so many times but it was so valuable for me this week. Looking back at the last 6 weeks, every bit of success came from the Lord, nothing from me. All I did is showed faith by working and giving my best effort and the Lord provided the miracles.

I hope you all have a great week. I love you all so much and I am so grateful for all the Lord has blessed me this week and in my whole life in general.

Love you guys!!!

Elder Evans