Third Week of Mission

Third Week of Mission -- I can honestly say that I have never had a better church calling. Kathy and I have enjoyed this time so much, and the people are wonderful. As I have said before... we are not going door to door trying to share the gospel. The Stake President for the Crestview Stake we are serving in asked us to visit the "Less Active" members of his Stake. Some just go seldom, and some haven't gone for years. We were told they had home teachers, but several couples don't know who their home teachers are, and one lady said that no one other than the Relief Society has ever attempted to contact them. We have visited them three times in three weeks, so there is some consistancy to our visits.
We have a very large area to cover, and a lot of members live in it. Their numbers lean heavily towards less active, and completely inactive. We have found several couples who were either married in the temple, or sealed in the temple, who are now less active to inactive.
The Lord is going to start a "Temple Preparation Class" next week, but the people attending have to be temple ready, and living the gospel. We spoke with the Bishop, and he has agreed to start another class in two months for the people we have who are "Less Active!" Our goal is to fill that class with our people. I know the Lord loves these people because I have seen evidence of it. One of our people has a word of wisdom problem, and the same night she asked for help with it, the Ward Mission Leader announced he was considering starting a "St0p Smoking Class". We now have two people who want to participate in it.
We have a long ways to drive to cover everyone, but we will get them all. We just cannot become discouraged because so many aren't home. I keep remembering my mother and how she used to hide behind the curtains and let people knock who came to the door. It just might be that these people are more like that than we would like. We are going to seek the Lord's guidence in what we should do to reach his people. We are certainly not going to succeed on our own, and we haven't even attempted to, and we will not.
The church is going to be using a new Google based membership locating program for stakes, and we have a member in one of our Wards who has the same program he wrote a couple of years ago. He put in the membership of one Ward and the members were flagged on a map that came up on the screen. When you touched a flag a sub-screen would come up that showed the name address and other information on the member. It even shows their current status after you once code it in. That should help us a lot and save us miles of driving. It takes a laptop and I am having Mike do a little leg work, or the best buys, etc.