Goal Setting

Hello everybody,

This week was a really good week. I don't know why that I have never done this before, but this last week we decided to pray about our goals and what we should set as out goals. With goals that were backed by the Lord we were ready and prepared to reach our goals this week. We started out the week a little bit slow, but we were able to pick up one investigator and set one baptismal date with one of our investigators. Then, as the week went on and it came to Sunday we were at 2 baptismal dates and 2 investigators. We did not know how were going to get the one more baptismal date and the 2 new investigators, but we were still confident that the Lord would pull through for us. In the end we were able to only pick up one more investigator on Sunday, his name is Suren and works at a bank and for an insurance company. He has a wife and a kid (oh and he does not smoke!) He is a great guy.  We are super stoked for him and are happy to see where his journey will go and we are hoping to be able to give him a baptismal date this week and meet his wife. On Sunday we were just able to get to know him a little and we talked about how The Book of Mormon changed our lives and how much it means to us. We explained how it came about and you could tell that he was feeling the Spirit. We asked him if he would read and try and find out if it was true. He accepted and it was definitely one of those meetings that I did not want to be anywhere else. 

Although our goals were 3 baptismal dates 2 people at church and 4 investigators and we were one short on each of them I think that the Lord had us set those goals for a reason. We were able to reach 2 baptismal dates on Friday and so I think that if we set it as 2 we would have gotten lazy and not tried as hard. Then on Sunday night we were able to reach 2 investigators at about 8:00 at night and we had an hour to go before we going to go home. We did not have any plans, but we wanted to try and reach our goal of 4 investigators so we just went to walk in one part of the city that was about 15 minutes away and then just make a big giant loop while talking to everyone on the way. On the way we were able to meet a really nice lady and she invited us over to come to her house on Tuesday so we are super excited about that. Although we were not able to reach the 4 investigators I still think that it was because the Lord wanted us to work hard for that last hour. If we would have hit the 4th investigator before that we would have said to ourselves,  "well that is it, we did it" and we probably would have tried to meet with some member that did not really need to be meet with, but instead we were able to find this lady and hopefully can help her to come closer to Christ. In other words, we just need to counsel with the Lord in our goals. In the past I would just talk with my companion and see what we thought was best, but we really should get on our knees and see what Heavenly Father thinks is best. After all, He is the one leading the work not us. This is why I have been super stoked lately and it really does help when you know that the Lord is backing us on your goals. Just helps you to get excited about them. 

I love you and God does really care about everything that we care about. We can ask Him for anything as it says in Alma 37:37. Have a great week and I will talk to you all next week. I know that this is His work, I am grateful to be a part of it and nothing would get done without Him. 

Elder Sproul