Date: Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 9:56 PM
Subject: Open your mouths, and they shall be filled
A busy week this week! 2 of our 3 scheduled baptisms this week went through, and one is postponed for this coming week because her employer didn't let her out. Lea Galima and Zeny Bacolbas are washed clean successfully, and they are each so happy how much the Lord has blessed them and guided them in finding the true restored church.
This morning I conducted my first baptismal interview to a chinese man from Tseung Kwan O. He's 25 and has a lot of faith, he's read the Book of Mormon all the way through and is in 2 Nephi for the second time already. That's about as much as he really had to say in my book to know that he was ready to be baptized. I found it interesting that he said at first he didn't really understand what he was reading, but as he kept reading and thinking about life's questions in context of what he read, he began to find answers throughout the stories and examples of the faithful throughout the Book of Mormon. He said that as he found personal answers to his own questions about life, his relationship with his family began to improve and he began to be happier. I told him that the Book of Mormon was the key to retaining his testimony of the Gospel for the rest of his life, and to never stop reading it. The world will throw anything and everything at us to try and convince us that Joseph Smith wasn't a prophet or that God doesn't exist or care about us, but I testify with Elder Holland that they cannot do so without climbing over, under or around the Book of Mormon. That book is from God and there is nowhere else it could have been conceived or written except by His power.
Mom, sorry, I didn't get a computer that has a USB, so I can't send any photos this week.
There's always so many things I could say to all of you, and discerning the best thing to share from the week for me is always a relatively tedious experience. Sometimes I just want to extract something deeply profound out of all my experiences and bear down in pure testimony and cause the earth to shake or something cool, but any time I consider that my mind goes blank. And that for good reason. The Lord expects us to open our mouths before they become filled. This week Elder Ford and I taught several lessons where I felt that the Lord enabled us to teach with great power and authority, especially to a certain investigator who was having issues in being faithful to a spouse. This work has to be done by faith and by the Spirit, because there's no way in any other work that a couple of 20 year olds with little life experience can face a woman, broken down in pitiful agony because of the guilt she feels from sin and wrong choices, and speak with such power that she can leave with a greater determination to change and to repent. We just opened the Book of Mormon and answered the questions of the soul to our Investigators, and the Lord has been with us and has filled our mouths and our hearts.
I was also blessed to confirm 3 members of the church this week, including Myla who was baptized two weeks ago (confirmation postponed a week because of the typhoon). It's very humbling to be a medium through which the Lord blesses His children, uniquely and differently according to their own needs and concerns.
I testify that this is God's work, and I am so blessed to be a part of it.
Elder Hazen
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