Tuesday, September 28, 2010

The Hidden Hand of the Lord

Latter Day Saints are very aware that everyone has a loving Heavenly Father, and he wants to lead and guide us in all of our lives. I have come to realize more and more that because of this fact, God works miracles around us whether we realize it at that time or not. This last Sunday was one of those experiences for me.
LDS churches are usually pretty full of happy people conversing one with another. Because I am new to the area, I really don't know very many of the people that attend at my chapel. I have gotten to know some great Latter Day Saints, but with so little time available compared to how many people attend I really haven't come to know most. The great thing about my experience is it is due mostly to my missionary companion, Elder Riley. He has been here in the area for less time than I have.
Elder Riley and I were waiting for the meeting to start, we had about five minutes left until it did. I was quite ready to just sit and wait for the time to pass, but Elder Riley had something else in mind. "Do they have greeters at the doors?", he asked. I said, "No, they don't." He responded with, "I want to go do that right now before the meeting begins." My response to that resulted as "Why?". In my head I was thinking that it wouldn't accomplish that much, there was very little time that we could actually use, and we might as well just grab a seat and wait. We had a brief discussion about it and he simply decided that it was what should be done. I decided to go along with the idea and followed him to the doors to join him. I very soon came to realized that Elder Riley was being guided by the hand of the Lord.
We walked over to the door and in the instant that we reached it a young lady walked in. Elder Riley greeted her with a hand shake and a smile and simply said, "Hi." She turned to him and responded, "Hi, I'm new." In the discussion that then followed we came to know that she had never been to an LDS church before and she was wanting to learn more about it; other than the little information from online sources and missionaries from our church working online, she had never really been able to come to experience what a "Mormon Church" was like. We were grateful for the opportunity to be right there for her and assist in helping her have a good experience. She has really felt the Spirit of the Lord move within her and teach her. Since that experience, she has decided for herself that she knew that she wanted to be Baptized into the Church.
Heavenly Father knows what is going on in our lives. He wants to help us have joy in this life, and in the life to come. A scripture that has always illustrated that for me would be, "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) As we strive to live our lives the way that God wants us to, it allows him to have greater influence in our lives. I know that my experience with Elder Riley wanting to go greet at the door was pretty small and insignificant, but it was a miracle for me, and it opened up the door for great experiences to follow. I love realizing little things like that, because they are all just one more testament to me that God lives, and he knows what is happening in out lives.

2 comments:

  1. Great story. Thanks for sharing this; it was inspiring.

    P.S. I hope you add an archive to your blog sidebar so your readers can look at past posts.

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  2. (slaps forehead) Duh, never mind.. I'm an idiot.. Sorry about that. You already have one

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