Elder Spencer Romney : october 12, 2015 letter

Dear Family:

Where do i even start with this week?? It has been one of the most crazy weeks that I have had on my mission!

This week we had two of our big meetings, MLC and ZTM, MLC is the one with all of the zone leaders and ap's and then ZTM is the one that we run. So I was busy,running around doing all of that, but they were some awesome meetings!! We learned that right now the mission is faithful, but not full of faith. meaning we are doing everything that we are supposed to do, but we aren't doing it with charity and with faith. So we focused a lot on that in ZTM. I personally trained on using the Book of Mormon in finding people and teaching them. Just before it was my turn to train, I felt the impression that i needed to also talk about a talk in general conference called 'It works wonderfully". I loved that one because one of the points in it is, "start where you are". I felt the zone needed to know that it didn't matter where their testimony of the Book of Mormon was at right now, they could "start where they were this moment". I invited them to write their testimony in the Book of Mormon and then hand it out that day. And then my other invitation was to always, always have a Book of Mormon in their hands and expect to hand it out to someone in need. They all accepted it and are excited!

Earlier in the week I got a message from Elder X saying that Elder Y was having a really hard time. Elder Y was told that his scholarship to run at Ohio State would be taken away if he didn't go home and take the scholarship right now. On the way home from MLC I got permission to stop by their apartment at about 10:30to see how Elder Y was doing and he just kind of brushed it off like nothing had happened. Then he called me later that night, saying how grateful he was for being my companion and was grateful for my example, but that he was going to go home. I tried to talk to him on the phone, but he wouldn't talk very much. I made him promise that he would at least let me go on an exchange with him before he left and he said he wasn't sure. On Friday night, I got a text from him saying that he was going home and that if I want to go on an exchange with him, it would have to be that night. so I got permission from the mission president and the ap's to go to another zone and go on an exchange with him. I was thinking that i would only be with him for a day, but the president later called me and told me that I would stay with him for a little longer, even a couple of weeks if I had to. So when I got there I only had one shirt and a change of garments and one tie and no suit for Sunday. so I had to borrow Elder X's suit! This experience was one of the hardest things I've done! i don't know that I've ever relied so much on the spirit as to what I was supposed to say. I honestly did all that I could to persuade him and we stayed up until about 12:30 in the morning talking. I felt more of the Saviors love at that time than ever before. I felt the distinct impression that I was doing exactly what the Savior would do if he was here. That next day, we worked so hard. I've honestly never seen so many miracles in one day. I won't go into a bunch of detail with them, but we put someone on date for baptism in the morning at the church, and then we taught a lesson to a less active family that went super well and they said they would come to church on Sunday. Then we met a Hispanic guy outside of his house and ended up just asking him if we could walk in and we taught the entire family as they sat in the living room and they accepted to come to church and to read from the Book of Mormon. There were many other miracles that day, but the biggest one, and probably one of the biggest miracles that I've seen happen on my entire mission, was from a homeless lady. We were late to a dinner appointment and we were running as fast as we could to the car and we ran past this lady sitting on the sidewalk and a hispanic lady cutting down some branches. We yelled "hola" to the lady and kept running. We heard from behind us, "hey, are you mormons"?! and we stopped and turned around and it was the homeless lady on the sidewalk. She said, "I have to tell you a few things". In my mind I was thinking, "aww man, she is about to rail on us and the church, and we don't have time for this". But we went over and started talking to her. She just had lost her house a while ago because she had several heart surgeries that cost her 3 million dollars in the end with all of the bills and she had gotten robbed just weeks before in her home. So she has nothing now. She said that she hadn't showered in 45 days and that she just wanted to be done with everything. She told us that she used to be a member, but fell away and told us how sad she was because of it. My heart was broken and I felt so bad for her. Her son couldn't even help her. We told her we wanted to teach her and help her, but she said that she wouldn't be here in a couple days. We weren't sure what that meant exactly. But we tried as hard as we could to persuade her to not give up, and knelt behind her on the side of the road and gave her a blessing. She grabbed our hands and began to cry as we gave her the blessing. The biggest part of this miracle is what she said to Elder Y. I had been praying for a way to help Elder Y that whole day. This lady took his and said, "Don't ever give up, even if you save one soul like mine, it's worth it". Elder Y and I almost began to cry. I got the very distinct impression when she was talking to Elder Y that she was sent from God to be in that position at that time and that the Savior was talking through her directly to Elder Y to let him know that he can do it. I also got the impression that, that lady will be blessed for helping one of His disciples and that God would be merciful to her.

It was an amazing day, and it was so hard. Elder Y ended up deciding that he still wanted to go home. It broke my heart, but I hope the best for him. It taught me a lot about what it will be like when i have kids. I just need to be patient and long-suffering and do everything I can to help them.

One really fun thing was that I got to go to a baptism up in Woodburn because i was in Keizer on that exchange. it was so good to see everyone and everyone was so surprised to see me! It was a great boost, and I loved it (:

I love you all!

Love, Elder Romney (: