Splits are exciting

That is great news! I'm so glad that things are progressing better for you and I pray that it helps you feel closer to the Savior!

This week we had exchanges. It was great. I was with Sister Spencer again, and she's grown a lot in the last transfer. She's a missionary, and she goes out there to be a blessing to others. I'm grateful for her example. We visited with a lady who lives alone and is in a wheelchair. She has three cats and makes wonderful food. She actually gave me a bracelet because she'd missed my birthday. We get a lot of interesting gifts as missionaries. For Easter I got a cross, and now I have a bracelet. Last week Sister Thomas was given an old pink sweatshirt with a cat on the front and mystery spots all over. It's pretty gross, but when some of these people have nothing, a gift is a great sign of trust and how can you refuse?

We went to a less active family's house and I think we picked up two new investigators for the 3rd ward sisters. We went around the room sharing miracles we'd seen in our lives, and the Spirit was very strong. The investigators, who're friends of the less active family, were quick to pass over their numbers to hear more. That was amazing.

I spent some time on Wednesday at an assisted living facility by our apartment with a less active man and his friends. It was a very nice place and probably cost a fortune. They have a rat pack club, and we were honored to be with them for lunch. One is a former Baptist pastor who was as nice as could be and had a booming voice that was shocking to hear from such a small old man. We talked about history and learning ancient languages, since that's something I'm interested in, and they all shared stories. We ended up pulling out a guitar and singing. I loved it!

Yesterday we went out tracting and actually taught a new investigator. He's a young man going to school at LSU, and seems in search of something. We had a lesson wherein the Spirit was present, but was unfortunately chased off several times by his neighbor who was more interested in deeper doctrine and silly rumours than learning about what matters. He wasn't exactly bashing us, but it wasn't a great environment. Luckily the college guy got that what his neighbor was saying was pretty crazy. I'm glad I know what I know, and that my conviction is so strong. That's what's important. I hope we get to teach him again. Maybe even his crazy neighbor.

That's about all that went on this past week. Thank you for the card, Mom. I loved it! I miss the girls so much. On Saturday we had the opportunity to perform service for one of the members. They're living with their son and his girlfriend in a run down house. The kids aren't members (and how!), and they aren't super nice, but they're cordial. They (the son) have a cute puppy who was very nervous and barked at us until I yanked him out from his corner to show him who's boss. He LOVED me after that, and followed me all over the yard as we worked. Dogs like to be lead and loved, not beaten and despised. I could tell that they weren't treating him (or their parents, for that matter) right, and that all he needed was someone to love him. I wish I could have taken him home, I'm so dogsick! 

We had zone conference, and now I'm all ready for hurricane season which starts on the first of June. This is going to be a blast! We're getting 72 hour kits and emergency water, and we have to have clothes ready in a baggy to take with us in the case of emergency.

Is Lacey home? She hasn't emailed me. Tell everybody I'm thinking of them often and I hope they're having a good summer. And Dad, I need to know what units you were in when we were in Germany. Love you lots!

Prayer WORKS!

Prayer can work, apparently. I know that I should have a solid testimony of prayer already, especially as a missionary, but I most humbly admit that I don't. I don't see how blessing a dinner of starch and fat helps us stay any healthier or stronger. I don't see how praying to find a WalMart that carries Sister Thomas' prescription so we don't have to keep driving all over creation and using our miles helps any location suddenly have a bottle of her medication suddenly appear on their shelves. We didn't find any. As far as I've been concerned, prayer is either vain repitition that may as well go unuttered, or it is a meditation to find answers from within that may not be answered anyway because the world functions on coincidence and if you're not in the right place at the right time, you're not going to catch one.

Then Coincidence Becomes Miracle.

It can't be a secret anymore that I am not having an easy go of this whole missionary thing. Sometimes all I see it as is the most bizarre instance of employment of my life. Other times I percieve it as a conspiracy in which I find myself to be one of the conspirators, and I can see the wisdom in others as they give us a wide berth. Then there are the rare moments where I don't understand why people aren't flocking to us to be taught. Despite my lack of faith in the power of prayer, there are times I find myself kneeling anyway. My head hangs heavily as my elbows rest on the floor, my hands grasped tightly towards the heavens in a desparate plea to a mystery.

CS Lewis writes about how miracles work in his book so aptly named 'Miracles'. If I were so free as to bring a personal selection with me, that book would be found on my modest missionary shelf. In it he talks about how miracles are made possible in spite of the odds of our knowledge, and I would have a quote, but I don't. So I recommend it as a bit of light reading. I remember, however, that he mentions miracles as being things that don't defy the odds of science, but as coincidences found and regarded in the right perceptions. So, as it happens, this should be kept in mind as I continue.

The other morning I had planned to read Alma chapter seven. It was there, it was the next chapter in sequence, and it was absolutely a coincidence that I was going to be reading it that day. I'd already jumped into the first verse before I remembered to open my study with prayer. Little did I realize that it was what I needed to read, and that it would mean a great deal to me in my quest for spiritual edification. There's very little to be called miraculous about Alma chapter seven being the subject of my study.

The difference was the fact that this time, as i just mentioned, I began my study with a very fervent, totally sincere prayer because I'm at the end of my rope here about believing in anything. After the previous day, there could be a televised broadcast made live of the second coming of Christ playing on the TV at an investigator's house, and I wouldn't have cared. Miracle isn't miracle without faith. I've seemed to have forgotten that. Miracle is transubstantiated coincidence. It's when you look at the things that were going to happen anyway and instead of shrugging your shoulders nonchalantly, you realize just how rare this coincidence was. You rejoice in the fact that you found the opportune moment.You see the blessing in being at the right place at the right time without putting forth any effort, and you feel the Spirit testify to you that this is how God would have it. This was absolutely planned out. It's been planned out because God, in all his omnipotent wisdom knew that you would make this choice and that you would need this answer.

Sometimes we don't get the miracle and it's just a coincidence. Sometimes we don't get lucky at all. I've read Alma chapter seven before. I'll read it again. It hasn't meant anything to me in the past, and I will forget its current significance to me in the future. Without praying sincerely, I would have read it anyway and probably gotten nothing out of it. But in this case, that coincidence turned into miracle and I found that everything I prayed for, every question I asked, and every murmur I murmured, was addressed in a way wherein I found myself being taught in a way that had to have meant that my Father in Heaven was aware of me and my needs.

Prayer worked. I testify of this. I testify that Jesus is the Christ, so named because he is the Saviour of the World. I testify that the Book of Mormon came forth of divine means and speaks from the dust to witness that this is so. It is another testament of that Gospel of the Messiah, a promise to our day that He lives and is aware of us in our afflictions and that we are not alone. He is united with the Father and the Spirit in purpose and that that purpose is to bring about the immortality and eternal life of man. The knowledge of this truth can come to us through personal revelation if we will only ask. There is no coincidence about it. There is no expression adequate enough to explain or convince.

Fact is coincidence.

Truth is miracle.

I found Familysearch.org

I'm really glad that things are going well with the family. I've been thinking a lot about family and eternity and I've been learning how to use familysearch.org to help the people I teach get excited about family history. As it turns out there's a lot of work to be done for our family. I've already reserved the rights to do temple ordinances for an aunt who lived in the eighteenth century, and I'm going to go and reserve more so that the boys can have people to go through the temple for. I'll send that information along when it's all ready so that they can do that. I've also requested some patriarchal blessings from ancestors to read and think about. I think I've been bitten by that 'bug'. I've already discovered that on Mom's side I can trace back all the way to Augustus Caesar himself! This is amazing stuff, and I can't wait to really dedicate some time to it when I get home.

Tell everyone that I return their regards. I don't know how I've been able to stick it out some days, but it must be by their prayers and love. I pray every night that if anything comes from this, it's that my family is blessed and taken care of. This work is incredibly difficult and draining, and I don't know why I'm here sometimes, but I know that the Book of Mormon is true. Everything rides on that knowledge. Nothing else matters as much as that does. I feel as though I've lost who I was. I don't know what I knew, and there is nothing I have out here that reminds me of myself or the things I enjoy. It hurts a lot to face yourself and see that everything that makes you happy and makes life amazing is a facade. Except for history facts. Those are still handy. I just wish I could remember them as well as I used to, because it comes up a lot. Sister Thomas asks me all the time for explanations on Bible doctrine and historical context. As it turns out, I'm terrible at remembering dates and sometimes names!

We went out and bought a copy of 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolored Dreamcoat'. MoTab gets exhausting and we have the luck to be allowed almost anything as long as it isn't too distracting. Sister Thomas was most comfortable with that choice, and I can tolerate that musical to death. As matter of fact, that's what we've been listening to ever since we got it, and we still sing along with it. I don't know if it'll last for the rest of the mission though.

It rains cats and dogs here. I wish my dog were one of those, and that she'd fall from the sky one of these days.

Love you, miss you, talk to you Sunday!

-Magen