2 Nephi 27:23 "For Behold, I am God; and I am a God of miracles; and I will show unto the world that I am the same, yesterday, today, and forever; and I work not among the children of men save it be according to their faith."
I can testify after this week that miracles are real. There is no way that the experiences I have had this week could be classified as anything short of miracles. These miracles were a VERY humbling experience for me, and I would like to share this story.
On Friday after a rather long day of appointments and running around we were doing some studies at the apartment and we still had some time left in the day. We thought lets go get some dinner at Fritz Mitte (this dope fries place) and just talk to people and do some "finding" along the way. Elder Palmer goes to the book shelf of Book of Mormons in various languages, and he thinks for a moment and says "I think I'm going to take a Russian Book of Mormon today". I literally laugh out loud, thinking that he was joking and so I start poking a little fun at him. I grab my English and German Books of Mormon and we start to head out.
We always say a prayer before we leave the apartment and so Elder Palmer offers a prayer. In his prayer he says (translated to English) -- "Heavenly Father, please help us to be guided by your spirit and be able to find a Russian man so that we can give him this Book of Mormon." After his prayer I continue to make fun of him a little and I say "Good luck finding a Russian guy" -- then we walk out the door. As we go down the elevator, it stops on floor 6 and a man walks in. Elder Palmer asks "Wie geht es Ihnen?" (How are you?) and he ignores us. Elder Palmer asks again, and this time he turns to him and says "Kein Deutsch" -- we asked him "Was ist ihre Muttersprache?", he got the idea and said Russian.
I was blown away. Do you want to the know the odds of this happening? In Jena there are about 110,000 people. Do you know how many are Russian? According to Wikipedia 580 of these are Russian. Now, think of the odds that Elder Palmer would select a random language from the Book shelf. We have around 80 or so languages. Then the odds that a Russian guy just happens to walk into our path after Elder Palmers fervent and faithful prayer. The odds are insane. This experience is a testimony of God -- that he hears each and every one of his children's prayers. When we trust in him and listen to his guidance through the holy spirit; Miracles WILL happen.
Now as for me, this entire time I was poking fun and just imagine how I felt when the Lord placed this man in our path. Not only was I blown away, but I was extremely humbled. Earlier that morning I was reading in Alma 5. It is a pretty roasty chapter. Here are some nice quotes "Could ye say, if ye were called to die at this moment, within yourselves, that you have been sufficiently humble?" and "Behold, are ye stripped of pride?" -- I had literally read those verses that very morning.... I can tell you, my pride was stripped right away from me that day.... When we returned home, I kneeled down and said a prayer of gratitude and one of a humbled heart. I apologized for my lack of faith and promised that I would always strive to follow the guidance and impressions of the spirit.
Lots of other cool stories from this week, but this is already long soooo I love you all! Have a great week.
- Elder Johnson
Hurrah for Israel!
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