Lessons on Love and The Fruits of Our Labors

In a letter dated September 28, 2008, Justin wrote, "My companion and I are getting along a lot better. I was talking with another missionary one day in Combros and he was talking about how their mission president said people will listen to you much better if you love them. It's like what Christ said in Matthew 22:36-39. We need to love our neighbor as ourselves. So I decided to try that out for myself, apply it in my life. It took some help from the Lord, but I was able to love my companion a little more each day. I tried to support him, look for the best. And in turn he started to take my ideas and counsels to heart in how we needed to be more obedient. It has been working really well. I listen to him and he listens to me. We come to an agreement.
It has been tough though because when I got here he had absolutely no investigators. It was like opening a new area. I couldn't figure it out why at first. My companion is doing much better now and keeping most of the rules as far as I know. And we have been seeing the fruits of our labors too. We now have investigators, people coming to church, and today set a baptismal date for a dad (the rest of the family are members) who has been listening to the missionaries for years but never wanted to get baptized. It was really an answer to our prayers. I had been praying to know what more we needed to do to baptize the people here. And then the Lord just hands us a baptism. I asked him what we could do to help him prepare for baptism, and he told us nothing, he was ready and just needed to set a date. It doesn't get any easier than that. Michael (Elder Nelson) told me it's a miracle we have a person with a baptismal date, because no one in our area has been baptized for at least 6 months. It shows how much better everything goes when you are doing all you are supposed to. Elder Nelson thinks the reason we (the North American missionaries from Bolivia) are here is to help there mission learn to be more obedient. Who knows, we will all see the purpose in this eventually, though I just keep praying that things get better in Bolivia by the end of this change (end of August)."
What a great lesson for all of us!