A letter to my friend whose in the mission field

(I haven't asked my friend about posting the letter out, therefore, I put down all the names, except mine, to anonymous.)

Dear Elder XXX,

Hello, how are you doing in your mission? Sorry that I have not sent you any words after you have gone for your mission. Actually, I have been going through some tough times since this spring. Luckily, I am going out of the tough loop and getting way much better now.

Anyway, Brother YYY told us that you were having a hard time and depressed in the mission. I hope everything is better right now.

In the issue of Aug 2011, the Church magazine "Ensign" has a wonderful article named "Taking His Name Upon Me". Here is the quote from the article: "A few weeks into my mission, I began to feel lonely and a bit homesick. I loved being a missionary, but the work was much harder than I had anticipated. I missed my friends, my family, and all the familiar things I'd left back home. During my personal study one morning........As I looked at my name tag, I noticed that although my first name was absent from the tag, I saw my family name, the name of the Church, and the name of the Savior printed on it. Suddenly I recognized something that changed both my outlook and my attitude. I realized that as a missionary I wasn't there to represent myself. Instead I was serving to represent my family back home and, most important, I was representing my Savior and His Church." When I have read this part of the article, I thought about you, and my own mission experience.

On my first several months of the mission, before my mission trainer went home, we had a great man from Mainland China which was in our investigator list. He was a doctor and an atheist back in the Mainland. It was his first time that hearing about Jesus Christ.  I could tell during our lessons that he really wanted to believe and be converted. However, since the Gospel and the message about prayer were way too different from what he has learned, he could not just take it and claim he believed. My trainer and I were very frustrated on doing so, we could only prayed for his acceptance to the Gospel. Although he did not believe completely, he still let us went to his place and took the lesson. Finally, we got through until the last session. We planned to commit him again to get baptized and shared the last session. His friend was supposed to drive us there as he had been doing it ever since we started the lesson.  However, a couple hours before our lesson started, he friend suddenly called and told us that his car was broken while on the way to our apartment. So, now was the time for us to figure out how to get there by taking bus, subway or even ferry. (BTW, he was living in an island.) We never took any public transportation to get to his house. Plus, we did not know the exact address of it. According to some unclear memories, we tried everything we could to ask the people on the street and even the bus driver about that investigator's neighborhood. Finally, we used almost 3 hours to get to the house, for which it took us triple times more than usual. My trainer told me that accidents always happened when the investigators were going to accept the baptism. He told me that satan would try everything he could to prohibit anyone to get into the Kingdom of God. After we had arrived, we had a wonderful and spiritual lesson with the investigator. He was committed to get baptized at last. I have learned so much through this experience. I am so glad that I learned it when I was still a junior missionary. This experience has strengthened my faith and testimony.  If we gave up, or set up the other time to go, we might miss the time to commit the investigator. Moreover, we might not learn to rely on our God in Heaven.

I know that you have gained so much spiritual experience while you are out there. Remember, ".....with an eye single to the glory to the God.......", then you would understand more why you are out there. You are not doing anything for yourself, but our Father in Heaven and our Lord who is the only Begotten.

You have gone to the path so far and don't give up!!! Stay closed to the Lord. Stay focused to your work. Stay patient to your investigators, members and companions. You can do it, I know that!!!!

Take good care!!!!!!

With love,
Thomas