President Anderson’s letter to the missionaries this week was full of inspired teaching about obedience and also shared just a few missionary experiences that are sent to him each week – 140 letters are sent to him each week. As I read this story about a less active family that the missionaries visited I was impressed by the way the ward reacted but wondered about the home teacher who lived next door and did not know there was a problem…

““We decided to see if there were any less actives that lived nearby. We got the map out and found the one. Didn’t know anything about them and with less actives you never know if they are going to be mean or nice. So we knocked on the door and the 14 year old daughter let us right in. Come to find out they got baptized about 3 years ago. But the mom is deathly sick. On bed rest with an auto-immune disease and has 6 months to live kind of thing; so heartbreaking. So we visited them for a while and when we left we called their neighbor (who we had just eaten with) and turns out he’s their home teacher and had NO idea she was sick. He said he’d get someone and they’d go give her a blessing. Then a few days later we called him again to see how the family is and he told us that he called Bishop and RS pres to let them know about the family’s situation and that meals are now being brought to the family and people are doing what they can to visit her or to take the kids out for the day or whatever. It was a very tender experience for me because if we hadn’t gone to visit them, no one in the ward would know they were in need… It was a testimony to me that the Lord uses us even when we don’t know he is. And the dad and son even came to church on Sunday. It was a powerful experience for me!”

The power of ‘opening your mouth’ continue to bring people into the gospel light as this missionary found out.

“We decided to see if there were any less actives that lived nearby. We got the map out and found the one. Didn’t know anything about them and with less actives you never know if they are going to be mean or nice. So we knocked on the door and the 14 year old daughter let us right in. Come to find out they got baptized about 3 years ago. But the mom is deathly sick. On bed rest with an auto-immune disease and has 6 months to live kind of thing; so heartbreaking. So we visited them for a while and when we left we called their neighbor (who we had just eaten with) and turns out he’s their home teacher and had NO idea she was sick. He said he’d get someone and they’d go give her a blessing. Then a few days later we called him again to see how the family is and he told us that he called Bishop and RS pres to let them know about the family’s situation and that meals are now being brought to the family and people are doing what they can to visit her or to take the kids out for the day or whatever. It was a very tender experience for me because if we hadn’t gone to visit them, no one in the ward would know they were in need… It was a testimony to me that the Lord uses us even when we don’t know he is. And the dad and son even came to church on Sunday. It was a powerful experience for me.”

It is a wonderful experience to serve in a mission with such obedient and hard working missionaries.