Insights from the Islands: the Musings of Elder Massey: God Put a Smile Upon Your Face

As Chris Martin once sang, 'God give me style, and give me grace, God put a smile upon my face'.

I'm pretty sure he's given me style, and I get his grace every day cuz I'm pretty darn imperfect, but this week, he really managed to put a smile on my face, and the face of a lot of others.

This week seemed to fly by, and we're not too sure why; maybe it's because Elder Mason was sick one day and we had to stay in, maybe it was because we were working all over the place, or maybe it's cuz we just got way too much work TO do. I don't really know why, but it sure flew.

This week brought about a lot of small successes for us. Just about every day that we worked this week, the Lord managed to give us a really good days, which is kinda rare. In all honesty, not a whole lot of specific, wonderful things happened this week, but just a lot of small tender mercies along the way that made this week overall a pretty darn happy one. Hence why 'God put a smile upon (my) face' hahaha

Something that I've come to notice in working with less active members more and more is a general feeling of happiness in our smaller area of Lapinha. Something we've been doing has been teaching less active people with their respective quorum leaders, like young women with the young women's leader, young men with the young men's leader, etc. , and it's caused for everyone just to be happier! Like, that sounds so hippy-dippy / happiness-all-around and crap, but it really is! If I could count the number of times we had members we taught stop us on the street in the following days just trying to chat and talk with us, it would be a lot of time counting! We even had one time this week, where we taught this one sister who I had no clue was a member (apparently she shows up every Sunday but I could not remember her for the life of me) and teaching her caused her to bring with her 'quinhada' to church with her, basically like her sister-in-law, who isn't a member. It was boss.

I guess the best part of the week was the end of the week, both Saturday and Sunday combined. I had decided to fast personally, just for something to happen in our area, because I've been pulled down so many times by not having investigators show up to church, or not feeling like I've done enough, etc. , but this week at church, we had the most amount of people we've had there since I've come to Cova Figueira, with a decent amount of less active people coming to church. Walking to church, we ran into one family from our lower zone, Maria de Cruz, walking together as a family to church, for the third week in a row, when in the past, their attendance was spotty at best. I watched in Elders Quorum as we had an investigator there even before we showed up, and another less active member who hasn't come to church in gosh-knows-how-long come in and sit down, and then have a bunch of members welcome him right in. I kept saying to Elder Mason, 'everyone is just so HAPPY today and church!! How did this happen???'. In Sunday school class, I'm pretty sure there were 5 vacant chairs TOPS in the room of 30+ people. It was a straight up miracle.

I guess a small lesson I learned this week was finding success in my complete service to the Lord. Something that's always bothered me on the mission is not having baptisms all the time, or having investigators at church, but this week, as we watch as one of our strong investigators fail to show up to church yet again, instead of being frustrated and disappointed, I felt the Lord tell me that I really had done my absolute best. There's a really good phrase the old mission president here said, in that 'no number impresses the Lord', and as much as I would've liked to had a baptism this coming week, even though it won't happen, I know that the Lord truly is happy with me, and with the work I put in. Just another reason why I've got a smile on my face :)

As for a funny story this week, we went to teach this girl who's mom is of another faith, and so we decided to teach this girl in the members house right next to hers. When we got there, this girl was sitting with a bunch of members, with a guitar, trying to figure out how to play this one REALLY good Cape Verdean song (that I will likely play for all back home), but none of them knew how to really play guitar, so Elder Mason and I came in, and we were sitting on this bed with 2 other members, and I had figured out the literal 2 chord progression for this song, and while I was playing it and they sang, the corner of the bed my comp and I were sitting on gave out and we fell :P it was really really funny!! Everyone was like freaking out and stuff, but there were no injuries sustained.