The Light of the World

Hey Folks!!

How are things? I hope you are enjoying the freezing weather:) And I hope you all had a great New Years and set some awesome resolutions :p Things here have been really good! And interesting. We had some awesome adventures this week!

First, I would like to tell you about our super duper awesomely fantastic investigator. She's ten! But you would think she was like thirteen. She is a referral from a twelve year old recent convert. She has a baptism date set for January 31 and she is so excited! We gave her a Book of Mormon this week and she started reading it as soon as we left. When we followed up the next day she said, "That book is awesome!" We asked her if she prayed about it and what her answer was and she told us that she felt a voice in her head telling her that the book was true and that she should keep reading so that she can get to know Jesus Christ better. It was so cute! We just love her! Now we just need to get her mom and grandma more involved!

We also have a fourteen year old kid that we are teaching. Also a referral from one of our youth. And he is so prepared! He is a really smart kid, so its fun being able to teach him in more detail and all that stuff. Hopefully we will be setting a baptism date with him this week!

Our youth here are on fire! They are so excited to share the gospel! We think that they really are the key to getting the work moving here in Sebring. Everyone else is pretty stuck in their ways, and honestly have no interest in missionary work. But if we can keep getting the youth inviting their friends, and all of their friends have families so we can take it from there!

Oh big news! Our mission is no longer going to be using Facebook:( We are a little bit bummed, but as our leaders have looked over the numbers for the past year there hasn't been too much success with Facebook, so our time would be better used elsewhere. I agree. It's a good seed planter. But as far as finding progressing investigators that will be baptized on Facebook, it doesn't happen.

There are going to be a lot of changes coming up. We have a lot fewer missionaries in our mission so they are getting rid of a lot of cars. We are praying they don't take ours... But its a possibility. We have also been doing a lot of hard core cleaning of the apartments. We are getting rid of EVERYTHING that we don't need. Sister Shaumkel and I threw away three garbage bags full of clutter items! And we still have two boxes full of other things that we need to get rid of. Use of ipads is becoming more strict. We are just to use them as area books. No pictures, videos, notes etc. In personal study we study Preach my Gospel for 60 minutes. We only go to other books as directed in PMG. So we aren't reading the Book of Mormon front to back, or studying Jesus the Christ or conference talks. It really focuses us in on our missionary purpose, directs us to the scriptures that we need in order to teach, and keeps us from getting caught up in the fluff of the Gospel. We exercise for 45 minutes, keeping our heart-rate at 80% for at least 30 minutes. (That is some intense cardio guys..) We work with members. Tracting is a no-no. Street contacting is a last resort. BUT we have seen some incredible miracles in our mission in 2014, and if we want to be warriors and keep improving we have to work harder.

In 2014 our mission had 553 baptisms. A 32% increase from the year before, and a record high in the history of our mission, by a long shot. That's a miracle! The Tampa Florida Mission pushes us WAY outside our comfort zone and has extremely high standards, and sometimes it feels a little miserable. But things are happening, good is happening. Its like working out. If you stay in your comfort zone, you can maintain your weight. But its just beyond your comfort zone that improvement comes. And as you are working out outside of your comfort zone, you are probably going to hate it. BUT when you look back at all that you have accomplished you'll be so grateful that you pushed yourself.

Some other fun things that we did this week: 

Went to a Catholic mass, and taught the Restoration to a priest-in-training. (He was asking questions, we didn't break any rules:))

Celebrated Three Kings Day, true Puerto Rican-style!.. and a few days early.

Decided to baptize the world.

So I was studying the Gospel today, in Preach my Gospel, of course. But it had sent me to 1 Nephi 11. And I was thinking about the process that Nephi had to go through in order to receive personal revelation. First he had to really want to know, then he believed that he could know, and last but not least he had to sit and think about it for awhile. So today I decided to spend some more time in my studies pondering.

As I was thus pondering, I was thinking about a picture that I had seen the night before in a Deseret Book catalog of Christ holding a light. So I started thinking about light...

Christ is the LIGHT and the life of the world- 3 Nephi 11

We are the light of the world... - Matthew 5

We are commanded to hold up our light so that the whole world can see.

Light... Then I remembered a talk in sacrament meeting years ago where the speaker shared a quote about how darkness is just the absence of light. And in the same way, evil is just the absence of good.

So then I started thinking about the good that we are able to do. A lot of the time, the good that we can do seems so small compared to what needs to be done. We talk to people all the time who are so concerned with all the evil in the world. So many people are absolutely convinced that there is more evil in the world than good...

Well I don't necessarily believe that's the case, but if it is. What can we do about it?

Well if evil is only the absence of good, wouldn't it make sense that every little bit of good we add to the world subtracts a little bit of bad?

Every bit of good we do takes away from the overall bad in the world, automatically.

Think of a candle. That flame is pretty tiny, yet its influence can light a whole room. And as its light fills the room, out goes all of the darkness!

What good can you do this week? Ponder on it :p

Love you all! Have an amazing week!

Sister Rowland :)