Editor's note: This story was submitted by Mike and Julie Thornock. If you have any inspirational missionary stories you would like to contribute to Meridian Magazine, please write to Laurie Williams Sowby by clicking here.

My husband and I returned five months ago from serving a CES (Church Education System) mission in Santiago, Dominican Republic. We went not really knowing a lick of Spanish other than what we had learned from a tutor over the phone from the MTC. What we did go with was enthusiasm and a desire to serve. It didn't take us long before we realized that what our mission's day-to-day efforts consisted of was largely left up to us.

Santiago is a city of around a million people. The gospel has been taught and accepted by many people, especially young adults. They are busy, hard-working young people, for the most part, and the Institute is a place of refuge during their long days of studying at the local universities. But there are also many who don't take advantage of the blessings of Institute. Our goal was to reach as many of these member-students as we could and invite them to see what Institute was all about.

Early on we learned that there is not an effective mail system in the Dominican Republic, and that addresses largely don't exist in a useable way. Finding the young people was going to be tough.

At first, we thought we could find them by taking another young adult with us to visit their friends and acquaintances. But this meant late nights, often on roads that were impassable, and then there was no guarantee of finding the right house or finding anyone home. It was, in short, quite inefficient.

After some brainstorming, we determined that meeting with the bishops of the wards would be the most effective way to grow the Institute program in Santiago. With our very limited Spanish, we invited a few of them to come to the Institute building so we could cheer them on in their efforts as bishop and give an Institute pep talk with the help of a few bilingual students. This too was difficult because the travel for the bishops was inconvenient and difficult.

Our next plan was to visit the bishops in their own offices at the meetinghouses. We spent our Sundays zooming from meetinghouse to meetinghouse, making appointments to visit with these overworked and understaffed but faithful men. Knowing that we wouldn't have the language skills to really communicate, we typed up an agenda of items we wanted to cover. With a prayer and a handshake, those wonderfully patient bishops listened to us and accepted the challenge of inviting their young people to go to Institute.

They worked with their Young Adult reps and set goals, some of them quite lofty.

And that is when we started seeing the Lord's hand in the work.

Although communication was nearly impossible, they understood, and they felt the Spirit move them to action. Every semester we reported back to the bishops and gave the same pep talk and extended the same challenge. Every semester they came through. Every semester we saw growth in the enrollment at Institute.

Just a few months before we were to leave the mission and after our local, country and area directors laid the groundwork, Bishop Edgley from the Presiding Bishopric made a visit to the Dominican Republic and reviewed our situation. He agreed that our few rented rooms in a busy, noisy building were woefully inadequate for our growth from 84enrolled students to more than 200.

Bishop Edgley basically gave verbal approval for a new building, but we knew there was a process of decision-making and cooperation between Church entities that had to be completed before final approval could be given. We left for home after completing our mission, hopeful that that process would prove fruitful.

Almost five months after our return home, we received word from the local director that construction on a new Institute building would begin in 2008. How we rejoiced for those wonderful, faithful young people who are the future of the Church in the Dominican Republic! How grateful we are that the Lord worked His miracles, even through the puny efforts of an enthusiastic but language-challenged senior missionary couple. We feel blessed to have been a part of that miracle.