We attended a special Europe West Conference while in Bari. After the conference, one of the sister's in the audience came up to me and introduced herself as the aunt of one of our sister missionaries who had just returned home. The miraculous part of the conversation was that she wanted me to know she was getting baptized the end of the month. Her niece had never served in Bari, but she had had been introduced to to some of the other missionaries who were serving in Bari. She had been inspired to read the Book of Mormon and had gained a testimony and now wants to be baptized. It's a miracle.
Sunday, September 28, 2014
You aren’t just surrounded by miracles, you are one
FILE -- Aug. 20, 2014: A horse grazes on a pasture near Sehnde, northern Germany, at sunrise. (AP Photo/dpa,Julian Stratenschulte)
I know people who say they have never experienced a miracle. Maybe you’re one of them. But I would argue that you have never not experienced one.
It may seem like you’re sitting still right now, but it’s an illusion
of miraculous proportions. Planet Earth is spinning around its axis at
an equatorial speed of 1,040 miles per hour.
Simultaneously, we’re also speeding through space at an average
velocity of 67,108 miles per hour. That’s not just faster than a
speeding bullet. It’s 87 times faster than the speed of sound. So even on a day when you feel like you didn’t get much done, you did
travel 1,599,793 miles through space! And to top things off, the Milky
Way Galaxy is spinning like a top at the mind-boggling rate of 483,000
mph.
Even on a day when you feel like you didn’t get much done, you did travel 1,599,793 miles through space!
If that isn’t miraculous, I don’t know what is.
Yet when was the last time you thanked God for keeping us in orbit?
I’m guessing never! “Lord, I wasn’t sure we’d make the full rotation
today, but You did it again!” We just don’t pray that way. Why? Because God is so good at what God
does that we take it for granted. Now here’s my point. You already
believe God for the big miracles like they’re no big deal. The trick is
learning to trust Him for the little ones.
Albert Einstein said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One
is as if nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything.”
I unapologetically believe that everything is.
Trillions of chemical reactions are taking place in your body every
second of every day—you are inhaling oxygen, metabolizing energy,
managing equilibrium, manufacturing hormones, fighting antigens,
filtering stimuli, purifying toxins, and circulating six quarts of blood
through 60,000 miles of arteries, veins, and capillaries. If the blood
vessels in your body were laid end to end, they’d circle the earth two
and a half times!
Your brain has the ability to perform ten quadrillion calculations
per second using only twenty watts of power. And its storage capacity is
2.5 petabytes. The entire print collection of the Library of Congress
is estimated to be 10 terabytes. So your brain has the capacity to
store 250 libraries of congress.
If your personal genome sequence were written out longhand, it would be a
three-billion-word book. The King James Version has 783,137 words, so
your genetic code is the equivalent of approximately four thousand
Bibles. If your personal genome sequence were an audio book, and you
were read at a rate of one double helix per second, it would take nearly
a century to put you into words!
My point? You aren’t just surrounded by miracles. You are one.
What if we started living like it? How would it change our daily
lives? How would it change the way we treat the walking, talking
miracles we live with and work with each day?
One last miracle.
You will take approximately 23,000 breaths today. As a lifelong
asthmatic, I don’t take them for granted. Each one is the miracle of
life. We’d be a lot happier, healthier, and holier if we thanked God
for each one.
I wore a white blouse with a black belt to church. It's a belt I have had for several years. Maybe it was the heat or the humidity or a combination of both, but the belt stuck to my blouse and left black marks all over it. I thought it was ruined. Miraculously, every drop of black came out of the blouse.
A couple of weeks ago, Michael met a gentleman he had helped teach 45 years ago. He's been inactive in the church for years, but he's searching for something now. They talked and said they would get together next time we are in Sicily. His wife is currently in Rome helping their daughter. She isn't active either, but she came to church in our Rome ward last week. Unfortunately, we were attending another ward. Michael called and invited her to attend again this week. She did. We are praying we can provide the answers and support they need to feel the truthfulness of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's a miracle that they have found each other after 45 years.
June is the Europe area Month of Invite. Stakes, wards, branches, and missionaries are focusing on inviting investigators and less active members to attend church. Most wards have detailed plans regarding how they will accomplish the goal. The missionaries have spent many hours visiting less active members and inviting them to return to church.
The sister missionaries in Catania visited with a man who had been inactive for nearly forty years. He told them they were too young and inexperienced to talk to him and that he wanted to talk to someone who had been in the church for a long time and lived somewhere where the church was established, someplace like America. They called President and asked if he would speak to him since we were in Catania for zone conference. He was booked with interviews until 7:30 pm but said he could do it after that. President said he thought he could remember that name from his mission 45 years ago.
The sisters called the man back and he said he was busy and didn't have time to meet with them. They told him their mission president was in town and that President Waddoups had agreed to meet him. He hesitated for a moment and said "Anziano Michael Waddoups"? They told him that was the one and he told them he remembered him because he was one of them that taught him the gospel. He made arrangements to change his plans and agreed to meet that night.
When he showed up for the meeting, he was carrying a picture album and a Doctrine and Covenants. Inside the binder was an old mission card with a picture of the Swiss Temple on the front and the Articles of Faith on the back. Printed on top of the card was "Anziano Michael Waddoups". He had kept the card all these years. Inside the book was President Waddoups signature from when they had autographed the book 45 years ago.
Turns out President Waddoups hadn't baptized the man, but he helped give him the followup lessons afterwards. He only served in Catania for a short time before completing his mission and returning home.
Unfortunately, the man nor his wife had stayed active in the church. He's totally lost his testimony and has been investigating many other churches since then. The fact that President Waddoups is now serving as a Mission President in Italy and was in Catania at the exact same time that the sisters knocked on his door is a testament that Heavenly Father is very aware of his children.
Plans are already underway to meet again and have another gospel discussion.
Our eleven year old granddaughter has leukemia. She was diagnosed a year and a half ago. It was a tough decision to leave her and come to Italy, but President Eyring told us our family would experience miracles as we served. We believed him.
Last week our daughter called and said the doctors were concerned because Emily's ANC counts (the ability to fight off infection) were extremely low and continued to drop. That could be an indication that the cancer was coming back and she might need a bone marrow transplant if it didn't improve.
We made a decision to call family members and ask them to fast for Emily on Sunday. We sent word to all the missionaries in the Italy Rome Mission and asked them to join in the fast. We found out later that Stake Presidents and High Councilmen, home teachers and ward members in Italy found out and joined in the fast.
Three days later Emily went to the hospital for the determining blood test. For this stage of her cancer, the doctors try to keep the ANC minimum between 500 and 1500. The test results were astounding. Her ANC count had gone from 100 the week before to 4,800--AN ABSOLUTE MIRACLE.
The next day, instead of going to the hospital for a possible bone marrow transplant, Emily got on a bus and went with a group of children her age on a choir tour. She still has about a year of chemotherapy left, but we have faith she will be cured.
Thank you for your prayers. We have a testimony that God hears and answers prayers.
We didn't go to the zone conference in Taranto because Michael was finally able to get an appointment with a neurologist to look at his eye. That was a priority for us. We never knew six weeks ago when we made the decision to invite Elder and Sister Steurer to travel to all the zones with us and do a presentation on English and budgeting that we would need Elder Steurer to take over and conduct the entire zone conference in Taranto for us. We didn't know it, but the Lord was watching over us, and His missionaries, and everything was in place for us to return to Rome and Elder Steurer to teach the missionaries. It's another confirmation of how much our Heavenly Father loves us and is watching over us. It's another miracle and the mission is full of them.
I've been gone for a week doing zone conferences. We got home late last night and when I tried to update my blog, something was wrong with my computer and all the programs worked--except my blog. I'm not very computer savvy, but I tried everything I knew to do and nothing worked. This afternoon I asked Heavenly Father to please help me fix it or to send someone who knew what to do. This evening we had a couple of missionaries come over for interviews and one of the missionaries said he'd look at my computer while his companion was being interviewed. Voila! (Missionaries are so smart!) Heavenly Father knew that a lot of missionary parents were waiting to see pictures of their sons and daughters. I'm feeling pretty good because I received an answer to my prayer!
The missionaries never seem to amaze me. We have been working with Jerome who is a less active. He actually came to an activity at the beginning of the transfer, and he asked to speak to me. He said he didn't have faith anymore, that God abandoned him and his family hates him because he is a mormon. I prayed for the spirit to help me help him and comfort him and we will now be working with him more often. So, this past time we went over we thought and talked a lot about what we could share with him. So, we shared about Joseph smith and his trials in liberty jail, and then the talk by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland "None were with him." It went really really well. He really felt the spirit and it helped him realize that the savior is with us. The savior was alone during the atonement so that we don't have to be when we have trials. We then gave him a blessing,and it was probably one of the most powerful blessings I have ever given. President, it really strenghtened my testimony of the priesthood,and how it can bless others. I truly felt like I was blessing him with the comfort and words that Heavenly Father wanted him to know. It was really great. I love being able to serve others with the priesthood, and have definitely learned more about its purpose and importance for us.
We usually travel to zone conferences in the mission van so we can take supplies with us. We had to stop and get gas on the way home from Taranto.
I walked around and stretched my legs out. When I looked back to see where the others were, they were standing in a circle teaching about the gospel of Jesus Christ. A group of people, including a couple of policemen, were in the parking lot when we pulled in. The policemen left and the missionaries started talking to the remaining gentleman. It turns out they had been discussing other churches. The missionaries explained how our church was unique and exchanged phone numbers with him. It's just another example of how the Lord is preparing his people to receive the gospel.
The gas attendant wasn't too pleased when I accidentally opened the wrong door to the restroom, but he smiled when I asked if I could take his picture.
This week we had a miracle: we were on the bus when this guy came, saw our my name tag and said "Ah the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints!" (which is kind of odd because my name tag is in Italian). Then he told us how he was the first Italian baptized. We don't believe that is true...but turns out he was baptized a long time ago and is now one of our in actives! On Monday we visited him and he told us about how special his baptism was, how he has noticed a void in his life, and wants to start reading and praying again. He and his wife (who is not a member) promised to come to church this Sunday and we're going over for dinner and a lesson next week! He totally wants to come back to church, but all he needed was the invite. It was definitely a miracle that we happened to take that bus to meet him!
Michael had to fly to Catanzaro to set apart a sister who is leaving for a mission to England. As District President, that is one of his responsibilities. I usually carry both of our passports in my purse because I have a pocket they just fit in. I left about the same time he did to go get supplies for the incoming new missionaries. Michael drove himself to the airport. The Assistants have always driven us in the past. (I really miss the grid driving system we have in Utah. I have no idea where we are here because the roads are mainly one way and they wind and twist and confuse me.) Luckily, Michael only got lost a few times on the way to the airport and made it in time for the flight.
When I got home from shopping, I went to put something in my purse and saw his passport in there. Oops!
When Michael went to get on the airplane, they asked for his ID. They usually require a passport. He showed them his driver's license and was told that's not an ID and they wanted a passport. He told them where he came from that was ID. Miraculously, they let him on the plane.
We prayed really hard that he would have the same kind of success when he returned because it's a very long drive for someone to have to go pick him up. As it turns out, basically the same thing happened when he went to get back on the plane to go home. This time he got the same hassle about not having a passport, only this time the flight attendant just turned around and walked off and Michael hurried on the plane.
Occasionally President Waddoups shares part of a letter he receives from a missionary. I got permission from the missionary who wrote this letter to share part of it. This is just one of the daily miracles we are experiencing during "the hastening". "We were trying to go home yesterday, but our bus wasn't coming. It's usually really timely, so we weren't sure what to do. We tried to catch other buses, but it didn't work out. After an hour of waiting for the bus, my companion and I turn towards each other at the same time and say "there's someone here we need to talk to." But who? We stood there for another 30 minutes, waiting and watching. Finally, this couple walks up and stands right next to us. His phone rings, and he answers it IN SPANISH. (My companion and I are both native Spanish speakers). He gets off the phone, looks at us, and says, "hermanas?" We explained who we are and what we do. He told us that he believes in miracles because he was in a car accident that should have killed him. He talked to us for like 15 minutes, then said, my bus is leaving, but can I give you my number so that you can come over and share me your story? Um, yeah. Of course! As soon as he left, our bus came. You may call that coincidence. I call that the Spirit helping us with the work. It was so cool! "
July 1, 2013
Today was hectic! Michael had interviews at the mission office. I stayed at the villa because they were supposed to deliver our belongings that had been shipped six weeks ago. Michael said he would be back before they came. The scheduled delivery time was between 10:00 am and noon. At 9:00 am the doorbell rang. It wasn't the movers; it was a group of workers who were coming to make some repairs on the villa. Nobody told me they were coming. They didn't speak English and I didn't speak Italian. That was fun. They needed a key to one of the doors and I didn't have a clue where it would be. In the middle of all that confusion, the movers showed up at 9:15 am. Again, they didn't speak English and I didn't speak Italian. I have a new cell phone, but for some reason it wasn't working and I was unable to call anyone for assistance. As if in answer to my prayers, Elder and Sister Steurer dropped by the villa. He speaks fluent Italian and was able to find what the workers needed and gave directions to the movers. Everything was under control by the time Michael showed up. I told Elder Steurer he was my miracle for the day!
Now we just have a really big mess at the villa with boxes everywhere. (At least we have them, and that is another miracle because Italians are notorious for going on strike. I've heard of former mission presidents who didn't get their shipment until months later. We are blessed.)
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