Thousands of Doors/Rejection/Miracles

This week Jake wrote us quick individual e-mails instead of a family letter.  Here is the e-mail he sent to his Dad.

Hey Dad how's it going? I've been hearing some good stories about what is going on back home, and I've had some good laughs. This week has been a pretty awesome week. The other night we were walking around at night just trying to find people to talk to and not really wanting to knock doors because it was late. We were walking down the street and me and my companion felt like we needed to turn around, so we did and we started walking the other way. There were a couple members that lived in the direction we were headed, so we thought we would end up there. Then as we were walking there was a street to our left that looked really dark and there was a dead end sign, so we didn't see a big reason to take that road, but we felt like we needed to. We turned and started walking down the road and saw one small house at the end with a lot of Christmas lights. We knew that was the one, so we pulled out a Book of Mormon and headed up to the front door. We knocked and saw that it was a pretty busy house, but they let us right in. We had just walked into a gold mine because the 2 parents were extremely nice and willing to listen and they have 4 boys, 3 of which are old enough to be baptized. We quickly went through a watered down version of the Restoration because we didn't think they'd let us stay for very long. After that they were still listening though and were ready to hear more, so we started going over some of those points again. It was a pretty amazing experience to knock one door that night and find a family of 6 ready to be taught the gospel.

Why do we knock doors? We have knocked thousands of doors over the months and have been rejected so many times. Just like in that case, the Holy Ghost could easily lead us to the right people and we could find hundreds of people to teach. Why do we have to knock on so many to find that one when it could easily be given to us? Elder Holland expounded on Christ's teachings to Peter, and said, acting as if he were Christ, "If I want fish, I can get fish, what I need is disciples." I look at the little trials we face every day and little by little they build us. The call for us to be better disciples has always been there and I want to say thanks because you have been a great example to me of what kind of disciple I want to be. In many of my little trials I have decided not to become offended or let them bring me down because I want to become better. I want to become like my dad.

This Christmas season is an exciting time and we have seen some amazing miracles. I hope our family gets to see many Christmas miracles as well. HFF

Love,
Elder Hoddy