Exact Obedience

Dear Family and Loved Ones,

     The month of October is going by so quickly! It has been a busy and productive month and we still have several important events coming up including our mission president’s seminar in San Diego this week.

     Tuesday we had a “tune up” with our newest missionaries. They are really great missionaries and are adjusting so quickly to mission life. We have started thinking a lot about how important it is that these missionaries are well trained, they will be the leaders when the new mission president arrives in July 2013. That day is getting closer all the time and we feel the urgency to start preparing now so our mission is strong and able to keep pressing forward when the inevitable changes happen.

     Ted began interviewing the entire mission again this week. With over 150 missionaries it takes nearly three solid weeks to interview each missionary. Each interview is about ten minutes long. Ted is asking each missionary to recommit to being exactly obedient, after sharing some scriptures with them he has them sign his study journal (sort of like the title of liberty). The majority of our missionaries are obedient and hard working but it only takes a handful of disobedient, lazy missionaries to change a mission culture and to bring a zone or district down.

     Saturday Ted spoke at the Priesthood leadership session for the Huntington Beach North Stake. He has been called on a lot recently by the stake presidents in our mission to meet with their Bishops and Priesthood leaders. It’s a great opportunity to encourage them to work with our missionaries so together we will have more success sharing the Gospel.

     Ted also attended several baptisms this weekend. Our missionaries have been working hard and have been blessed to bring many to the waters of baptism. It’s wonderful to see the excitement in each ward when new members are added to the fold.

     Ben and Mari had another good week at school and were thrilled that they had a school break on Friday. We celebrated by doing a little shopping at a nearby mall and having lunch at California Pizza Kitchen. They were especially happy to sleep in and to have a nap following our shopping trip. They wake up so early that a day to sleep in is a real treat.

     Shelly returned to California after spending a week with family and friends in Utah. She made the long drive alone and did great. We were so happy to see her. Mari said the mission home is boring without Shelly! We’re glad she’s back so we can have a little more excitement around here.

     One of our sisters shared an example of the importance of being exactly obedient in her recent letter to Ted:

      “We were out knocking a little street named Tevis in our area. We had knocked the row of houses with very little luck or prospects. Anyway we were coming around back down the other side of the streets when we see a man in a car pull up to one of the houses we knocked on. He went up to the door looked at the card we had left, turned it over again, and paused for a little while, then went into his house. As we continued knocking the street we saw him come out again to go walk his dog, and we thought, well, ok he's gone.”

     “We had finished knocking Tevis street, which is what we had planned to do for an hour, but we had 15 minutes left. So we decided to be EXACTLY obedient and keep knocking one of the other side streets. As we were knocking I felt we needed to turn around and head back towards the man’s house.”

     “It turns out he had been walking his dog on the same sidewalk we were on and our paths met as we kept knocking along one of the side streets near his home. We played dumb and said, ‘hey, can we give you a card?’ and he said, "You already did, you left one on my door." We said, oh ok, great! Have you heard of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints before? He said his name was Gary and that he had heard of the church and that he was blessed as a baby but never baptized. He said it was interesting because he just found his baby blessing certificate the other week and was thinking about it and the Church. He said that his dad was a member as well as many of his relatives who live in Provo. So we gave him the Book of Mormon and we are going to follow up with him this week.”

     “Isn’t that amazing!  The Lord has everything under control- to have Gary find his baby blessing certificate the week before, and then the next week have us run into him on the street. This experience strengthened my testimony that Heavenly Father truly knows each of us individually and that His hand is in His work. Without a doubt I know that missionary work would not be possible without Heavenly Father and His Spirit prompting and guiding His missionaries. Everything is just so perfectly orchestrated because He knows the beginning from the end and everything will fall into place and everything will work out.”

     “I also gained a testimony of the importance of exact obedience. We had planned and told the Lord that we were going to knock for one hour on Tevis street. If we had left 15 minutes early, we wouldn’t have run into Gary. We were able to see that because we were obedient and stayed where we told the Lord we would be we were blessed with meeting Gary.”

     “I love missionary work!”

     President Eyring said that it always seems like it’s the last house, on the last street, on a cold, dark, rainy night where you will find someone who is willing to listen. Luckily our sisters were out in the beautiful Southern California sunshine, nonetheless they learned a valuable lesson about the importance of being exactly obedient so the Lord could put someone He had prepared in their path!



We love each of you!

The Long Beach Buberts