“We Looked for More of His Children,” Ensign, July 1993, 51–52
We Looked for More of His Children
A short time after I returned from my full-time mission, I was called to be a stake missionary. I had a strong desire to be an instrument in the Lord’s hands in bringing more of his children into his church.
I fasted and prayed sincerely to know what my companion, Phyllis Heaps, and I should do to best serve Heavenly Father. The thought came to me to set our sights high. So we followed the prompting and set our goal for twelve baptisms in the year 1986—one for each month.
We prayed together for success in our work and for the Spirit of the Lord to be with us, and then we started our missionary effort with great faith in the Lord. Never did we begin our day’s work without a prayer together, asking the Lord for his Spirit to guide us in all we would do and direct us in all we would say.
Each time we worked together, our love grew stronger for the people we were working with, some of whom had been referred to us by members of the ward and others by the stake president.
By the middle of November, we had seen nine wonderful people baptized. We hoped for three more before the end of the year, and we worked hard to find them. Finally, we went to the Lord and told him we needed three more baptisms to reach the goal we had set for the year. We told him we relied on him to send them to us. No immediate answer came to mind, and by the end of November, we began to think we would have to be content with working with nine people who accepted the gospel that year.
In prayer one day, we expressed our gratitude for being allowed to take part in missionary work. The next day, a member of the stake presidency called and said, “I know of a woman I would like you to go and see.” The woman had been overheard telling another person that she wanted to get into a good church. So the other person called a bishop, who then called the stake presidency. Delightedly, we went to find her.
When we found her, she was busy and asked us to come back. Realizing the holiday season was a very hectic time in peoples’ lives, we told her we would come back after Christmas.
“No!” she told us. “Oh, don’t wait that long! Just give me two days to finish what I’m doing.”
When we returned to visit the woman, we spent three hours searching the scriptures together as she asked questions. She told us about her two teenage daughters who had met some Latter-day Saint girls at school whose standard of living they admired. She wondered if we could talk again the next evening when they would be home.
The next evening when we met with the woman and her daughters, we felt the Spirit as we talked.
I called the Relief Society and Young Women presidents in the ward in which they lived, and the next day the leaders visited and brought a few girls their ages. They attended Church activities, meetings, and the Christmas party, feeling very welcome.
How pleased I was when their baptismal date was set for 30 December. We were blessed to reach our goal; but more important, the Lord allowed us to share the joy this mother and her daughters found in the gospel of Jesus Christ. As a full-time and stake missionary, I have learned that the Lord does not want us to fail. If we do our best and are prayerful and humble, the Lord will share with us the opportunities to bless others.