I Will Go and Do : Week 73: Expect Miracles!

This week has been one of the BEST weeks of my entire mission. Honestly the best way I could describe this week is with this scripture. "Yea, I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things; yea, behold, many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land, for which we will praise his name forever." Alma 26:12. Last Sunday, Elder Warner and I set a very large and stretching goal with our zone of picking up 54 new investigators this week. After much prayer, hard work, and faith we saw endless miracles from God in our zone. I know without a doubt that God exists and that this is His work!

Each companionship in our zone set a prayerful goal with the Lord asking him how many new investigators the Lord thought they could pick up this week. Some of the companionships set some huge goals, which I'm not going to lie scared Elder Warner and I a little. We were not sure if we could reach our goal, but we were determined to. Weekly we average around 28 new investigators in the New Haven Zone. We started off the week on Monday fairly slow only picking up 1/54, by Tuesday night we were at 8/54, Wednesday 18/54, and Thursday 22/54. After having a zone wide fast on Friday we had 33/54, Saturday 40/54, and Sunday night the zone saw miracle after miracle and finished the week with 61/54 new investigators in the zone! I'm not sure if I have ever prayed as hard as I did this week for our zone. I cannot thank God enough for hearing my cries and for allowing my zone and I to be part of so many miracles. Here are just a few of the miracles we saw this week:

1. Elder Warner and I started off the week great by teaching an awesome lady named Andrea. She was a media referral for a Bible. The first thing we noticed when we got the referral was that she had a 801 phone number, which is the area code for Utah! When we called her to set up our appointment, I immediately could recognize her accent. She had to be Jamaican. A Jamaican from Utah? We were pretty confused. After we had a fantastic lesson with her, we knew that she was a miracle and that God led us to her. She told us that she was from Jamaica and likes to move around the country getting new jobs. She had lived in Sandy, UT for 2 years from 2012-2013 and worked at Snowbird Resort! Small world. She had been to the LDS church in Utah and had even read the Book of Mormon before. She accepted our invitation to be baptized and is very excited to learn more!

2. Thursday night we were getting behind on our own goal and we really needed to pick up some new investigators. We stopped by an old referral that we had and the lady at the home stuck her head out the two story window and asked what we wanted. It was getting later in the night so we weren't sure if she would be interested in talking to us. We told her that we were missionaries and that her sister who we tracted into had sent us. She said that her husband had just gotten home and she would ask him if he wanted to listen to us. Right there and then Elder Warner and I both started praying so hard that his heart would be softened and that he would be open to hearing our message that night. She came back to the window and said that they would come down! We were able to teach them both and pick them up as new investigators.

3. Friday night we arrived at our dinner appointment about 15 minutes early and I felt that we should get out and see if we could find anybody to teach. We started walking down Barnum Ave and it was dead, absolutely nobody was on the street. Elder Warner suggested that we should say a prayer. We bowed our heads and prayed that we would come into contact with somebody that was open to hear our message. As soon as we looked up, there were all of a sudden lots of people walking on the street! The second lady we talked to had just barely walked out of a restaurant we were about to pass and said that she would be interested in hearing our message! Her name is Mille. We set up a return appointment with her for Sunday and she was very excited that we had talked to her. We went by on Sunday and picked her up as a new investigator. #MiracleMillie

4. We were not able to be in our area all day on Saturday because we went on an exchange with the AP's. Due to this, we were nervous that we were not going to reach our goal of 8 new investigators in the week. We prayed, and prayed, and prayed that the Zone would reach the goal and by the end of the night we had 14/8 new investigators in our area alone and 61/54 as a zone! Every single companionship experienced miracles this week and we have had our vision raised by the Lord of what is possible. I cannot thank Him enough for all the amazing people he prepared for us and all the experiences we had. We celebrated by eating my mom's banana cream pie made by Sister Mitchell with our district.

No greater joy can be had in this life than by serving in God's work! I love you. All of our investigators are doing well and it would be great if everybody could pray for our investigator Jackie! Thank you, love you all!!

Love,
Elder Gutierrez