I Can Speak Spanish!

Brothers and Sister, family,

The Lord is so merciful to his servants and to all those who follow Him. I have seen those blessings more this week than at any other time of my life and we have truly witnessed miracles!

There has been a new attitude forming in our mission, a new feeling and my mission President likes to call it the "Feeling of Finding". As a mission, we dropped every single one of our Standards of Excellence and replaced it with just one: Find 2 new investigators every week.

Friday night, we had interviews with our President and had not one single new investigator to show him. It had been a week of experiments (using the public transportation, finding areas with hispanics) and we were not really finding a whole lot of people to teach. We found a lot of good, solid potential investigators, but nobody had time to listen to us. That interview changed the entire dynamic of our week.

During the interview, our President asked us about the finding effort in our area and when we told him that we hadn't yet found any new investigators he challenged us to find 4 in the next 2 days. You probably dont understand how crazy that is. In all of my mission, the average number of investigators we found in a week is like .5 and now we were supposed to find 4 in two days!!! We bolted out of the church building, cancelled all of our plans and went out finding.

That night (after not finding anyone) we were heading home when I felt a very strong impression to stop and talk to a man getting out of his car. So we pulled over and just started talking to him. We originally just asked him if he knew any hispanics in the area and so he invited us inside so that we could ask his family members too. They named off a few houses and then the man, Wallace, out of the blue asked us what was different about our church and if we could teach him something. We sat down, taught the Restoration and had one new investigator by the end of the night. Not only that...he wants to be baptized.

Saturday we worked our hearts out to find all day and found absolutely nobody. All of our appointments canceled and our service activity with some non-members canceled on us too. We were pretty down-trodden; but as we literally collapsed in our apartement at night exhausted we got a little bitty text from Church Headquarters saying that we had just received a new referral and to stop by as soon as possible. Completely unrelated to the work we did all day, the Lord still blessed us with someone to teach.

Sunday we woke up with a game plan to literally find all day. As soon as church was over we were pounding the pavement, looking for anyone to teach and can I just say, the Lord guided our footsteps. We just so happened to be in exactly the right places at exactly the right times in order to find two new people to teach and to become investigators. We stopped by the referral and she became a new investigator right away as she enthusiastically invited us to come back the following day after we had taught her about the Book of Mormon and Prophets.
The next man, Ganny (from Nigeria) was just walking by to go sit on some park benches when we stopped to talk to him and he quickly embraced the doctrine of the Great Apostasy asking if HE could have OUR information so the HE could call US!!! It was pretty weird to be on that end of a contact.

All in all, we ultimately fell short one person of our goal. We were supposed to have a lesson with a friend of one of our members but she didnt show up and so we were left not really knowing what to do. We tried to stop by as many people as we could but in the end, we had to return home with only 3 new investigators. But as we lay exhausted in bed last night, I realized that, even though we fell short of our goal, we still not only met our standard of excellence, we exceeded it, and in two days as well. I cant wait to see what this week brings as we now know what it feels like to pour all of your heart, soul, might and strength into missionary work; and we've seen the miracles that it brings.

One of those miracles (and I apologize that this email is getting a little lengthy) was Spanish. My companion and I are both really new and out of the two of us, we dont speak a whole ton of Spanish; but this last Sunday (yesterday) someone was going to speak in english and they needed a translator. Instead of asking one of the many members that speak both English and Spanish, they asked ME!!! I was terrified, but I DID IT!!! I translated the speakers talk from English to Spanish! Dont ask me where I got the words but I know that I got them. Later that night, as we were out tracting, we found a Hispanic family that really wanted to Bible bash with us, but we were able to--in spanish--deflect the contention and leave them with a Restoration pamphlet and the Spirit. That has never happened to me before and it just goes to show what the Spirit can do through imperfect people like us.

I love this Gospel with all of my heart and I love this work. I can't express in words how greatful I am to all of you for the love and kindess you've shown me and I hope you all know just how much I love you. May the Lord in all of his infinite miracles bless and protect you, because I know that miracles have not ceased and that the Lord helps us according to our faith. Keep that faith alive because there really is no other way.

Love Ya!!!

Elder Arkoudas

P.S. Sorry for the long email. I'm just really excited!!!