I just want to begin by letting you all know that I love you. I feel your prayers, I feel your support. And more important than that, your Heavenly Father loves you. He's spent years and years and year creating you, teaching you, and getting to know you before you even came to this earth. And he wants nothing more than to see you succeed, and to see you return to him. His love is infinite, his knowledge is infinite, and his gospel is infinite.
Now as for the week: The work is picking up! I don't know if I mentioned this before, but Elder Russell and I are both new to the area. (It's called whitewashing) and the Elder's before us (Awesome Elders) were also over the Young Adult ward AND they were zone leaders, so their efforts were a little spread out. But after 3 weeks of exact obedience to the best of our abilities, we are seeing really incredible blessings! This last sunday was such a pick me up, because we had tons of Less Actives come that we were working with, some investigators, and even a woman who just showed up, lives in our area, and wants to learn more and be baptized! Exact obedience brings miracles brothers and sisters!
By exact obedience I suppose I should expound. One: That would not have been my first instinct, and I owe so much of what I've learned from my incredible trainer, Elder Russell. But he talks about getting up 5 minutes early so that you can be legitimately awake by 6:30, literally eating up the white handbook, every day getting rid of the smallest pieces of disobedience and other things like that. We'll end up at our apartment complex after a very long day at around 8:50. We need to be in at 9:00. So what do we do? We go bike around and meet people for 10 minutes before returning as we are prompted. Things like this have shown us the tender mercies of the Lord.
But Holy Moroni it was hot. Like freakishly hot. And we had so much biking to do. Every door we got to, people were shocked that we were biking in the heat we were in. But that didn't stop us! We had a message to share and lives to save! And souls still need salvation when it's 108 degrees outside! No exceptions!
We have one investigator who is 15, (I may have mentioned him) and is the sweetest kid you'll meet. He melts my heart every time we teach him. But he has a really hard home life, and it crushes me.
We also are teaching these two kids who are really interested but their parents are less active, and we go teach them and they're kind, and loving, and fun... And their parent's won't stop putting them down! One kid plays football and I asked what position he plays, and his dad yells from the kitchen: "Left bench! He can't play football!" The look of discouragement on his face killed me.
Brother's and sisters, especially friends of mine who will be parents in the next 5-10 years, don't put down your children. I am blessed to have parents who are very supportive of everything I try, even the silly things! They cheer me on, and praise me after every performance and always have. They're honest with their critiques, and help me as I strive to improve, but always happy and never put me down. Even on days when I got nothing but put downs all day from friends and others and even teachers, I always relied on my parents to cheer me up and make me feel important.
BE THOSE KINDS OF PARENTS! I can't wait to be! Forget my hobbies, my kids will be my hobby. I realize that parenthood is a ways a way from me, and there's that whole marriage AFTER my mission thing I've got before I get a baby, but still. It's the concept that I'm preparing now to be a father worthy of my children. Someone that is worthy of taking on the role of raising a Child of Heavenly Father. That's what it's all about.
I love learning about the gospel, and it's so cool to study. A young woman asked. "Is it true that you can read the Book of Mormon multiple times and get something new out of it?" I responded by telling her that you could read the Book of Mormon an infinite amount of times and learn more each time. Because God is infinite, anything he creates must be infinite. Otherwise he would no longer be completely infinite and would therefor cease to be God. I told her how Elder Bednar has talked about how he has read it cover to cover well over 1,000 times, not to mention studying it for specific passages and specific scriptures. And why on earth would he continue to read it if he wasn't continually learning.
That's pretty cool isn't it?
Well, I've preached a lot. And it all seemed to have a bit more of a solemn note, so I apologize if you were searching for something very funny.
The Church is true. It has to be true. There's no other way. There is too much proof I see every day to say otherwise. If you have not had that witness yet, and don't know how to receive it let me draw for you the simple equation: Read the Book of Mormon + Pray about it= witness. It's literally that easy. It's a gospel simple enough for children and complex enough that gospel scholars spend their whole lives just trying to scratch the surface.
I love you all and pray for you daily.
I feel your prayers and appreciate them.
Write me and I'll write you back
The Church IS true.
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