Have you done any good....? YES!

I learned an important lesson recently: you never know how much of an impact you can have on the lives of others. For years I've lived in self-doubt about my mission experience. Most of you have heard the story about how I struggled to even make it into the mission field, and how that experience itself helped me gain a testimony of prayer, fasting and the Book of Mormon. Even so, the mission itself was difficult, with hours of tracting and street contacting, a lot of rejection and little success... or so I thought.

At the end of my mission, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to teach and help baptize a single-mother family from Peru -- Blanca Luz Vasquez and her three sons, Carlos, Norman and Manuel. We taught them by reading the discussions in Spanish (as best I could) and then discussing the principles in Norwegian. We baptized them just a few weeks before I left the mission, and in spite of good intentions to stay in contact, I lost contact with them shortly after coming home. This was mostly my fault for not writing more frequently and allowing school and social life to dominate my thoughts. Over the years I thought about the Vasquez family often, and occasionally prayed for them and felt guilty for losing touch, but guilt was as far as I got.

When a young man from our ward was called to Norway on his mission last year, I was mildly interested but soon forgot about him. As it happens, however, his dad, Mike Leatham, owns a local company that United Way frequently does business with, and during a meeting with him recently he talked about his son Tanner and what a good experience he's having. I asked where he was serving, and Mike said, "He's in Oslo right now." When I got back to work later, Mike had forwarded his son's latest email and I took the opportunity to send Elder Leatham a letter of encouragement, a few words in Norwegian, and a request that he look up "Blanca Vasquez." To be perfectly honest, I was not confident he would even be able to find her, much less report on her activity in the church. A week later I received a letter from "Eldste Leatham." He didn't have to look -- he knew Blanca very well because not only was she active in the church but she often helped the missionaries when they had Spanish-speaking investigators. Shortly afterward he called Blanca on the telephone to report that he had received a letter from the returned missionary who had taught her the gospel, and the next thing I knew my mobile phone was ringing with an "unknown caller" as we shopped at a Ross store in Albuquerque. I'm not sure what the other shoppers thought about the weird guy speaking excitedly in some strange language and trying to choke back tears in the middle of the store, but it was an incredibly happy moment in my life.

I've already traded several emails with Blanca and even added her as a friend on Facebook! Her spoken Norwegian is excellent, she has a full-time job as a "health secretary" at a local hospital, she has been to the temple and she is faithful in the church. Sadly, her sons are not active, but she maintains good relationships with them and their girlfriends, and it sounds like they are not unfriendly toward the church. Tonight I invited each of them to be my Facebook friends as well, and hopefully they'll add me. Of course, Blanca is not without trials -- she worries about her boys and about her sick father, and sometimes she has problems at work. But she told me how good Heavenly Father has been to her and that she has felt His love for her in life. She immediately forgave me for my lack of contact and made it sound like talking to me again was an answer to prayer... which I found extraordinarily humbling. (Let's be frank - a conversation with me has rarely, if ever, been an answer to anyone's prayer!)

I'm just so grateful to know I've made a small difference in someone's life, and that my mission was worth every minute of difficulty and frustration. The Lord said, "from small things proceedeth that which is great" and "the weak and simple" would proclaim His message. I feel like the "weak and simple" part definitely applies to me, and I'm grateful and happy I was allowed to play a small role for good. So don't listen to the voice that tries to tell you that nothing you do makes any difference, or that your feeble efforts don't matter to anyone. They matter. You matter. You make a positive impact in the world every time you try.

Sorry -- I know this probably comes across as preachy, but it's how I feel right now.