Dear Family and Friends,
My heart is so full today for the help of the Lord in assisting us in His work! We accomplished our miracle of 100 baptisms as a mission before the month even ended! We are seeing miracle after miracle here in Southern Florida. The work is going forth! As a mission we are pushing to keep doing things that have not been done before and we are! This is all possible because of Our Father in Heaven and Jesus Christs assistance in the work! I love "standing still to see Hise arm to be revealed," D&C 123:17. I know that the Lord will continue to help us accomplish even more things that have not been done. This work we are doing is absolutely amazing! I just want to express my feelings and passion on how everyone NEEDS to serve a mission! You recieve so many blessings that our Father in Heaven WANTS to give you, and He will! As the Prophet Joseph Smith said, "Sacrafice brings forth the blessings of heaven." I know that a mission is the greatest sacrafice that anyone could ever make and it will effect their life for time and all eternity! I love this work!
This week I was reading from a Church talk by Elder M. Russell Ballard and this quote hit me hard about missionaries! "We don't need you to just fill a positon; we need your whole heart and soul. We need vibrant, thinking, passionate missionaries who know how to listen to and respond to the whisperings of the Holy Spirit. This isn't a time for spiritual waklings. We cannot send you on a mission to be reactivated, reformed, opr to recieve a testimony. We just don't have time for that. We need you to be filled with faith, hope charity and love, wuith an eye single to the glory of God!" That is exactly what our mission is right there, vibrant, thinking and passionate missionaries! I love this work!We saw a lot of miracles here in Wellington this week! Early in the week we faced some pretty hard opposition but we knew amazing things were to come, and in the last two days of the week they most surely did! Saturday we had an amazing baptism of a family that we had been teaching for three months! Definetly one of the most spiritual experiences on my mission thus far. An amazing family of five followed our Savior down into the waters of baptism. I love them with all of my heart! But Elder Chamberlain and I knew that meant we need to go out and work even harder to get more people prepared for baptism! So we hit the pavement Saturday and Sunday and saw a huge miracle. We have been teaching this lady for eight months now and she loves to come to Church, read the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, Gospel Principles, and Teachings from the Life of George Albert Smith! She absolutely knows that the Church is true without a doubt, but would never quite commit to a date! So Sunday after Church we went in full force with complete love and boldness and testified that our Father in Heaven wants this for her now! She accepted a date and will be baptized this Sunday!
We also had a part-member family come to Church on Sunday and we asked them if we could teach them a lesson immediately following Church in the Chapel. They accepted and we began testifying to them. Eventually the mother almost broke down in tears when we invited her son to follow Jesus Christ by being baptized. He accepted and his mom was filled with joy! He will also be baptized on Sunday!
My heart is just filled with complete joy right now! I love my Father in Heaven! I love His work! I love our investigators in Wellington! And cannot wait to accomplish even more things that have not been done! I love ya'll at home too!
But I play the piano occasionally here in Wellington. I play at District Trainings and sometimes during Preisthood but we have a lot of people that play the piano here so it really isn't much needed. But I'm sure eventually I'll play more. The work is going forth and transfers are up again in a couple of weeks. August 8th.. I'm scared and don't want it to come cause I really don't wanna leave Wellington. But I defientely do trust in where our Father in Heaven wants me to be. And I know where ever He does put me that I will make that the best area in the mission, with His help of course!
I thank everyone for their letters and can't wait to hear from ya'll again this week!
With Love,
Elder Pond
