Power of Prayer

Each week the senior missionaries gather together to discuss a few chapters in the Book of Mormon.  There are typically 16 to 24 missionaries, many of them having been bishops, stake presidents, mission presidents, Relief Society presidents and other important positions in church.  It makes the discussion very interesting to listen to.  With such spiritual giants we feel a little intimidated being among them.

This past week, at the end of our discussion, we were informed about an incident involving one of the new couples.  They had just arrived a few weeks ago and had an assignment to travel to another country.  At one point, the sister left her husband sitting on a bench to look at something nearby.  She left her purse with him.  She hadn’t been gone more than a few minutes and upon returning her purse had been stolen.  All her important papers were in there: driver’s license, credit cards, insurance card, and both their passports.  Most of those can be replaced without a whole lot of trouble except the passports.  Upon reporting the missing passport, they were told that they had to provide their original birth certificates, marriage license and some other documentation they didn’t have.  They weren’t even sure they had some of those things and, if they did, they didn’t know where in their storage unit back in Australia they could be found.

At our Zone Leaders’ request, all the senior couples knelt down and, one sister being the spokesperson, said a prayer asking for Heavenly Father’s help.  Oh my!  The strength of the Spirit that was in that room was incredibly overwhelming.  Long after the prayer other senior couples were still talking about what the Spirit felt like in that room.

That next morning we heard from the sister whose purse was taken.  The government officials had emailed her.  According to the time stamp it was emailed only a few minutes after our prayer.  She didn’t actually read the email until the next morning.  They told her that they decided to make an exception with her case and not require her to provide all that other information.

What a wonderful thing to be a part of that amazing experience.  Another testimony that the Lord watches over his missionaries.

We heard the other day that when a senior missionary returns home, they will feel a large empty hole in themselves. One that needs to be filled.  Many will choose to go on another mission, but if that is not possible or not practical, service of some kind is the best way to fill that gap.

We are loving our experience here, but miss you all.  Feel free to Messenger us any time.  We are usually up no later that 6:00 AM Central European Time during the week and 8:00 on the weekends.  We typically go to bed at 8:30 PM because many mornings we are up at 5 for seminary.  (Those times are our times in Frankfurt.)