How do you find someone with only half an address?

 

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When I served my mission in a small town in Nevada, my companion, Sister Rich*, and I received a referral from someone saying that a man named Joe* really wanted to learn more about the Book of Mormon. Joe had kids and lived in our area. He sounded like the perfect person for us to teach, but we didn’t have a full address or even a phone number.

 

The person who referred us to Joe only stated that Joe’s house number had a 20 in it and that he lived on a cul de sac. Sister Rich and I prayed that we would find Joe so we could teach him the gospel. Then we drove off to search for him.

 

We looked for houses with the number 20 on every street that ended in a cul de sac. We knocked on the doors and asked the people we met if they were Joe or if they knew a Joe. If they didn’t, we moved on. We were surprised how many cul de sacs exist in that rural part of Nevada!

 

Before each door we knocked Sister Rich and I bowed our heads and prayed with all our hearts, “Heavenly Father, please help us to find Joe. Please help him to be ready for us to teach him.” After hours of driving around and knocking on doors, I had a sudden inspiration to drive up into the mountains, in a very far off part of our area. We didn’t go there very often and hadn’t tried it yet that day.

 

Sister Rich and I listened to my prompting and drove out there. We found a house with the number 20 on it and knocked, holding our breath. A man answered with four little kids. “Hi, we’re the sister missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” I said. “Are you by any chance Joe?”

 

“Yes,” Joe smiled. 

 

We found him! We could hardly believe it. That night we prayed with gratitude to Heavenly Father for helping us to find Joe so we could teach him about the Book of Mormon. We know that we wouldn’t have been able to do it without Heavenly Father’s help and without our faith to find him. In Alma 32:21, we read that “faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore, if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.” 

 

Sister Rich and I did not know where Joe lived but we knew that Heavenly Father did. And we knew that if we put in the hard work first, Heavenly Father would guide us by the Holy Ghost. We had faith that we would find him, and we did. 

 

*names have been changed