Elder Ryland Earl Rash: Week 18:Prayer is POWERFUL!!!!!

This week has been crazy awesome! The weeks are flying by and I'm almost done with my training! Whoo Hoo! But I really want to tell you guys about a super spiritual experience that we had Sunday night.

All of our lessons had fallen, and all of our backup plans had fallen, so we decided to pray. We asked Heavenly Father to help us find a lesson, and to help us find someone to teach. As we said "Amen", another man said "Amen" with us! We looked up to find a man named Jerson standing in front of us. He is the son of one of our investigators and he was on his way home from work. He asked us if we were doing anything, and we said that we were just working. He invited us to come to his house and have a lesson with him and his Mom, Vittoria. His house was super nearby, and we hadn't even thought about stopping by his house because it was so late at night. But we went to his house and had one of the most powerfully spiritual lessons that I have experienced thus far. We taught about the Plan of Salvation, and when we testified that Vittoria would see her Husband again (her husband passed away 10 years ago), she started weeping. The Spirit was definitely present, and I saw it working in her heart. She said that she missed her husband a lot, and we offered to give her a blessing of comfort. She graciously accepted, and we laid our hands on her head and Elder Badger gave her a beautiful blessing. She wept through the entire blessing, then afterwards we had a kneeling prayer that we asked her son, Jerson, to offer. Jerson walked us to the gate, and we promised him that he would see his Father again, and he started weeping as well. He said that it brought comfort to his heart, because he's been really missing his Father, lately. This experience really strengthened my testimony of the power of prayer. Heavenly Father answered our prayer of faith, and placed someone in our path before we had even said Amen. I refuse to believe in coincidences. God definitely had prepared that family to receive that lesson at that time.

As far as other events that happened this past week, we had our Ward Activity! We were super stoked for it! We had been planning it for about a month, and the day finally arrived! We woke up Saturday morning and were at the chapel at 12 to start setting everything up! We were expecting to have all of the leaders there at 13 to help us set up. But 13 rolled around... Nobody... The activity was supposed to start at 14! And it was just us four Missionaries sitting in an empty chapel! 13:30 rolls around and still nobody. Finally, someone made the comment, "There is literally NOTHING we can do!" To which I responded, "Well Brethren, I believe there is something we can do." I gathered everyone together, knelt down, and Elder Stewart asked me to offer the prayer. I literally prayed for a miracle. I prayed that we would have a full plane. It was a short and sweet, and we got up from our knees with a newfound hope. So we wait, and we wait, and we wait, and eventually, One Person Came!!!!! It was Now 15 and we literally only had 3 people other than us at the chapel! 2 of those 3 were only there to clean the chapel! Not even to participate in the activity! I was so disappointed! We prayed, we hoped, we had faith, we acted, we did literally everything we could! Nobody was answering their phones, nobody was coming and it was already an Hour after when we were supposed to start! Then; the miracle! As if all at once, people started coming through the gate to the church! In 30 minutes we had 60 people come! They were an hour and a half late, but hey, they came! And they came with snacks, and soda, and activities planned, and food!!!!! And better yet, EVERY SINGLE SEAT of the plane! Our prayer was answered with exactness! But the activity was this; we were all on a plane and the plane crashed. We all "died" and then we took them on a tour of the 3 Degrees of Glory! It was a huge success and everyone loved it! Afterward, and had food, games, skits, activities, and it was so much fun!

This Saturday we will be having a baptism!!!!! We will definitely be baptizing Joanna. And we hope that we will be able to baptize Lidia, and Lima! But we'll see with them.

We've been trying to work a lot with Inactives, and this week we were able to locate the houses of 5 Inactive/ Part Member families! Which is a miracle in and of itself, because there are no addresses, and our area is MASSIVE! So that is a miracle as well!

Well, I'm out of time, but this week was awesome! I'll let you know how transfers go next week!