Self Reliance

March 24, 2015

Our Mexico Area Presidency has established goals of Self-Reliance for this year.  In order to slowly lift Mexico, each member has to lift themselves.  There are wards where the bishop has served for many years only because he is the only tithe payer in the ward.  Members are missing great blessings because they don’t understand some of the principles.  With the area focus on Self-Reliance, our mission focus is on bringing people to Christ, whether they are already members of the Church or not.

From one of our zone leaders this week:

President Stutznegger,

        I just wanted to share with you a “success” story that we experienced with the new program of “self-reliance.”  We have an investigator named Angels.  She committed to us that she would listen to the missionary lessons if her husband (a less active member), would quit drinking. 

        He, therefore, quit drinking, and she started listening to us, mostly because of her promise to listen if he quit drinking, and not out of interest.  She fought hard to keep the commitments in the lessons, but she really wasn´t real warm with us. 

     In time, the things we were teaching her began to touch her heart, and she began to open up more. However, she still wasn´t making much progress.  She could not come to church much because of her job that required her to work on Sundays. 

       We had heard about a new self-reliance program that was starting in the Stake.   We did not know much about it, but both of us felt that she needed it.  We talked to her about it and she accepted the invitation to attend. 

      We went with her to the first training, and she was very excited about it.  From that day on, she has attended the trainings twice a week.  My companion and I were hoping that the program would help her get a better job, and it has.  But, the program has done much more than that.  It has taught her the principles of the Gospel with the end of helping her to become more spiritually self-reliant. 

      Now she reads the scriptures and prays every day.  The Spirit is working very strongly with her, and she now has complete confidence in us, and is accepting all we are teaching her.  Her husband and children have not attended the self-reliance classes, but they are progressing jointly with her.

     Now on Sundays, she attends the Ward in the building next to us, so she can go to church early, then leave for her job, then return to the Stake Center for more classes in self-reliance.  She has been able to build a unity with other members taking the classes, and with the teacher; they have fellowshipped her in a manner that I have never seen before. She tells us of previous doubts she has had, but her new friends at Church in these classes help her resolve them.

     It looks like she will soon have a new job that will let her keep the Sabbath day holy.  She loves the Church now!  It has been a miracle.  She will be baptized on April 11^th!!!

    I want to send all of my investigators to the Self-reliance Center. 

              Elder M.