Elder Selwin Sees His Shadow

Elder Peter Pan and his shadow

Wow, we are already in week three of this transfer. It’s crazy. Last week the sun was my best friend, so I got up today expecting sunshine but the rain has decided to join in, so I guess I have a new best friend now.

We did a lot of tracting this week mainly because we have to find people to teach and mainly because I love it. Only while tracting do you come across the most fascinating things and where you receive some of the most interesting, yet epic, answers you will ever get at a door. Truly this is priceless. We had a few added companions travel the dusty trails with us as well this week including a really huge pit bull and a duck … yes, a duck. We decided to go on splits yesterday with the priest in our ward and it was awesome. Me and my companion for the time did some tracting and were confronted by a German shepherd who probably did the right thing by barking at us from a distance.

We have been trying to follow up on a lot of investigators who were just dropped for one reason or the other. We had a good conversation with one of them. I asked her to tell me all she believed and then I told her all I knew to be true. I then asked her what she thought our purpose as missionaries is and then asked if she believed all she had been taught by past missionaries to which she said yes. She then went on to say how she loved and respected everyone's belief so I asked her "what if God is trying to give you a higher calling than the one you already have?" She looked at me and said, "you know, I've never thought about that" so we invited her to pray about it to which she agreed. In life, there are so many things vying for our attention, we sometimes don't even recognize when the Lord is calling us to do greater things.

We had Stake Conference as well this week. During one of the talks the speaker was describing the life of President Boyd K. Packer when he was called to be a seminary teacher and how his senior companion, one who had been teaching seminary for a long time, would call out every time to him "Packer, listen to this" and he would read a scripture and then say "when did they put this in here" because every time he read the Book of Mormon it was a new book. I felt that way this past week as I read the following from Mosiah 28:4-5

4 And thus did the Spirit of the Lord work upon them, for they were the very vilest of sinners. And the Lord saw fit in his infinite mercy to spare them; nevertheless they suffered much anguish of soul because of their iniquities, suffering much and fearing that they should be cast off forever.

 5 And it came to pass that they did plead with their father many days that they might go up to the land of Nephi."

Never before had I noticed the sons of Mosiah were pretty much begging their father to let them go and serve their brethren and all because they had heard the Lord as He was calling out to them.  How great a call it was. We don't need to have on a name tag to be called by the Lord to reach out to His children.  All we need to do is to always keep our ears, hearts and mind open so when He does call we will hear Him so we might bring joy, peace and happiness to someone who is desperately in need of it, because the Savior gave His all and did it for us.