Letter: February 21, 2012

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

This week has been going great.

We're busy all the time. We have a number of people who are really progressing. One person I'm most excited about is a woman we started teaching while I was here.

The others were found and other missionaries who started teaching them, so with this person I get to see it from the beginning. Anyway, she is so excited about the gospel. The second time we taught her, we reviewed the first lesson because other people were there and we started teaching them also. But it was great because we want her to have a strong testimony of the Restoration. Anyway, when we were explaining Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, she jumped in and started telling them the story. It was so great because she was so excited about it. She loves the Book of Mormon. We asked her what she read and she told us about Lehi and his family leaving all their things behind and going into the wilderness. And she sa

id, yea we need to leave our worldly things behind because it is better to go out into the wilderness and live in the Lord.

I was so happy because not only did she read it, she remembered what she read, and she was applying it to herself and not just reading it like a story. I'm going to be so happy the day she gets baptized.

We have really been improving our teaching. We went and taught another person this week and talked about testimonies and what they were and how to gain one. We talked about going to church, having the gift of the Holy Ghost, and reading the scriptures, particularly the Book of Mormon and praying about it. The cool thing was that we talked about the lesson afterward, we both felt the spirit strongly during the lesson, but it wasn't until we talked about it that I realized how much the spirit was there. I told my companion that I was so happy that she started talking about the sacrament because I felt that we needed to talk about that a

nd all of a sudden she started talking about it. Then she told me that she felt we needed to say something and then I said the exact thing that she was thinking. She also said that whenever she has taught one family she had in mind, that they were always joking around, but during that lesson they were very serious and really opened up. That lesson was a really great experience for me and the first time I felt like we really taught with "power and authority" as it says in Alma 17:3.

Also this week we had the opportunity to work with Elder and Sister Callister.

They go around working with all the missionaries in our mission helping them become better teachers. They focused a lot on using more scriptures, memorizing scriptures, and asking more questions to get the investigator talking. They are really great missionaries and I was glad to have the chance to work with them because they gave us many ideas to help better our teaching.

At Zone conference our President Holzapfel also gave us a great talk by Elder Oaks

called "Why Do We Serve."

Elder Oaks gave 6 different levels of why we serve. The first few levels of serving are basically because we want to get something out of it. The 4th level is out of duty or loyalty to the church or family and he said that that is admirable for a missionary, but is not the best reason.

The 5th is because we want to gain eternal blessings, which is definitely what we all want. But the highest reason and why we should be serving is because we love God and love his children.

This reminded me of something my Book of Mormon teacher at BYU said - there are 3 levels of keeping the commandments.

1-because they are there and we're told to do it.

2-because we want to gain blessings.

3-because we love and trust Heavenly Father.

Heavenly Father has already given us everything - he gave us his Son so that we can return to live with him. We shouldn't be keeping his commandments or serving him just so that we can be blessed-those blessings do come and we should be grateful for them everyday. But if we really love God we will follow the promptings of the Spirit and keep the Lord's commandments without hesitation.

Everyday I find new scriptures that I love. I write them down and put them on my wall so I can see them everyday.

Hebrews 11:29-30- "By faith they passed through the Red sea as by dry land...By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days." We can see miracles just like this in our own lives because we have that exact same faith-in ourselves, in the gospel, and most especially in Jesus Christ.

Romans 8:37-39- "neither death , nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God." Heavenly Father loves us unconditionally, there is nothing we can do and nowhere we can go that where we can't feel that love.

Alma 31:37- "Behold, O Lord, their sould are precious, and many of them are our brethren; therefore, give unto us, O Lord, power and wisdom that we may bring these, our brethren, again unto thee." Alma is serving because he loves the Lord and the people, just like Elder Oaks said we should. In this verse, Alma and his brethren are going out to preach to the Zoramites-people who hated him and the Nephites, but Alma and the sons of Mosiah saw them as children of God and even though the Zoramites hated and tried to kill them, they did it because of the great hope of having just one soul be converted.

This is the kind of love missionaries need to have for those they serve-we need to love our investigators like family and recognize that their souls are precious to the Lord.