There is a Plan

           “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths,” (Proverbs 3:5-6).  Today I wanted to share an experience taught me to believe this scripture.

Me and Simeon (member) on Leninskaya Street.

            With three transfers (four and a half months) left in my mission I was transferred back to my favorite area as the zone leader, with a brand new missionary.  When my companion and I first arrived, there were no progressing investigators.  The previous missionaries had worked very hard and had baptized two brand new converts, so my companion and I needed to do some finding.  For the first three days in our area we hit the streets.  Our area had two major streets, Mirskaya and Leninskaya.  We tracted in the evenings, called potential investigators in any spare moment, and visited former investigators, but we spent several hours a day walking back and forth on those two main streets talking to people, because that’s where the people were.

            We fasted and prayed, but for days seemed to do nothing but finding.  One day, toward the end of the week, a man called out after us, “Hey, Elders!”  We were shocked because people who wanted to talk to us usually didn’t use the title “Elders.”  The man asked if we had the information of the church in that city.  We gave it to him and before we could find out more, he took off.

The first church building in our mission!

            Sometime in the second transfer of being there construction finished on the first “meeting house” in our mission, which was in our city, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.  As we moved all of the church things from our previous space in an office building into our own church building, the man who stopped us on the street several weeks prior showed up.  He explained that he was a member from another city, in another Russian mission, and he just needed a copy of the Book of Mormon before he head up to the northern part of Sakhalin Island to work.  So we gave him a Book of Mormon and he left. 

            The move was great, but our second transfer brought us some hard disappointments with the work and investigators.  I was trying my hardest to help this new missionary start his mission out on the right foot.  I wanted him to have experiences that would fill him with confidence that golden investigators actually exist and miracles do happen in missionary work, but things seemed grim.  Early in my last transfer, a pair of strangers showed up at sacrament meeting.  After talking to them we realized that it was the man from the street with a friend. 

            It turned out that the man was a less active member from another city, here on business.  During my companion’s first week and mine, the man had seen us go back and forth on Leninskaya Street, over and over again.  Every time he saw us he felt like he needed to stop us, but he kept chickening out.  Finally, we had passed him so many times every day that he couldn’t take it anymore and he stopped us.  He felt like he needed a Book of Mormon before he went to work up north.  While he was up north one of his coworkers noticed the Book of Mormon and wanted to know more.  He explained about it, and let her start reading it.  She was touched, and so they came back to our city so she could learn more.  She was a golden investigator whose heart had been prepared.  She took the lessons and in a few weeks was ready for baptism.  

            I wanted to share this story because you future missionaries will do a lot of work that will seem monotonous or repetitive at times, but I want to assure you that if you work with all your heart, and try your best to follow the Spirit, the Lord has a plan.  Just trust Him, and keep up the work.