Our mission president calls December
the month of miracles. One thing is for certain, there is a very special
feeling when you are doing the Lord’s work in December. People are more
receptive to our message and more willing to change.
One small miracle happened to Chrise and I, today. For more
than a month we have been working with a young man. He has been coming to
Church for nearly seven months and said that he was living the commandments,
but was reluctant to commit to be baptized. He’s had a lot of opposition. I
have tried a lot of different things from giving him blessings, to fasting with
him to challenging him, yet always there has been something holding him back.
This week I pushed him to set a date and have a baptism interview. He agreed
with all kinds of escape clauses. Today at Church he backed out and the agreed
again and then backed out and then agreed again. All the while he has been
saying that he needed a stronger confirmation from the Lord, and I focused a
lot of that. Finally, at the end of church, he said he wanted to through with
the baptismal interview.
The interview went on for a long time
and then the Zone Leader came out and said that we need to talk to him together
and that our young man had admitted to him that he had a smoking problem.
Lights and bells went off in my head as I said to myself, “Yeah, that is what
the problem is. Finally, an answer to my many prayers.” When I went into the
class room where he was being interviewed, I could sense and feel a real change
in him. He was finally ready to commit and make the changes necessary to be
baptized. He will be baptized on the 31st. Now as I look back I can see clearly how everything
fits together in his actions. He had not yet repented or come to the point of
repentance. We talked about the Word of Wisdom more than once, mentioning smoking
each time by name, but he never admitted until
today that he had a problem.
This young man is a very special young
man, and I will be doing everything in my power to help him keep his commitment
to stop smoking.
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