Dear Family,
Great Week mixed with a lot of stress!!! But dont worry its good stress :)
So Monday we had a great day! We taught Andy about the Book of
Mormon. Things are going well with him. He has piano lessons on Sundays
during church so we are trying to go get him to change lesson times with
someone. He has some good friends that live close that are inviting him
to church. Hopefully his mom says he can get baptized.
Tuesday, the first full day of the new transfer, I had to tell
myself to be happy! So I am happy! It was a struggle to be happy on
Tuesday but now its not a struggle. Things are going well!
Tuesday we walked around neighborhoods to talk to people. We met a
few really good people in just an hour of walking the streets. One guy,
Ishmael, is Muslim but he went to the University of Utah and is really
familiar with LDS people. He talked to us for a while and we had a
really good conversation. He said he would be intereseted in meeting
with us. He also gave us a referral for a guy who lives on his street,
who might be interested!
Thursday we had a really good day! We taught Jarmaris and prepared
him for baptism. He is super solid! In the lesson he said, 'I am
starting to understand the Holy Ghost more. The only way I'm happy is
because of God, and its only when I feel the spirit that I am happy". He
is also getting his 'reading pattern' down. He is reading for a
specified time in the Book of mormon and then he reads a specified time
in the Doctrine and Covenants. His mom is starting to be nicer to him
and their relationship is continuing to grow.
One great thing that he said is that 'These people out there dont
even know that all this (the world) isnt their home. They need to wake
up and realize that we dont belong here. We are just in our days of
probation.' He also said that when he is playing a game on the xbox he
prays, 'I'm not happy because of this game but I'm only happy becuase of
you.' He is super solid... which brings us to his baptism this saturday
the 26th.
So we show up at 4:30 for his baptism at 5. It starts to get closer
to the time and our members are coming in and Jarmaris isnt there yet.
At 5:15 we called him 2 times and texted him a bunch. I just had this
sinking feeling that he isnt going to show up. Which was weird becuase
at this baptism I didnt feel as anxious as I normally do for a baptism.
This one I was just calm becuase I knew how solid Jarmaris was... but
then it started to worry us a lot! So it ended up that his mom, who was
supposed to take him, wasnt home and he had no way of contacing us
besides his moms phone. So in the end the baptism started 1 hour late
and someone had to pick him up. But he got baptized and he is still
really excited!
This week we had a great lesson with Ron. His wife is a member and
he is not. We have been trying to get in touch with them forever! We
talked to him about a month ago on his portch. He mentioned that he took
the lessons about 17 years ago. I told him that the teaching style has
changed and that he would love it. He told us to come by and its been
month since he said that. Well we finally had a lesson with him. We came
in and he made it super easy to get strait to the point. We started
teaching him and we told him that if we felt inspired we would invite
him to be baptiezed. As we taught we asked him how he has seen God in
his life and family. He said that during times when it was difficult to
find work and make ends meet he would pray for help and the next day he
would get a side job. After the lesson we invited him to pray and have a
moment of silence after, of which he could break, to allow the spirit
to give him answers. We had the longest moment of silence ever! it was
literally 2 minutes! But we invited him to be baptized and in the middle
of the invite he said, 'thats something I definitely need to do'. We
are meeting with him tomorrow (the 29th of april) and we hope it goes
great!
So Brother Brad Wilcox came to our mission this past saturday
morning and it was a great experience! He talked about how we are called
to our specific missions partially becasue of our mission president. As
I was thinking about that, Elder campbell pointed out that my love for
Maxwell has come primarily becuase of his association to our misison
president. Elder Maxwell has had a great impact on my life as I study
the way he teaches. He has helped me focus my love for knowing movie
quotes, in my previous life, to a love of memorizing and knowing the
gospel. He has had a great impact on my new love of learning and my even
greater love of the Gospel. I definitely believe that I was called to
this mission because of the effect that my mission president would have
on me.
Elder Campbell said the other day, "all the quotes you live have
big words. If theres a difficult word in it, its an Elder John quote".
Haha You've got to love Elder Maxwell!
I love you all and hope you have a great week!
Love,
Elder John
"Like goldfish in a bowl, some are mindless of who changes the
water and puts in the pellets, or, like a kindergarten child whose
retrieving parent seems a little late, concluding, "Man is alone in the
universe." Granted, some sincerely wish for more power in order to do
good, but only a few individuals are good enough to be powerful. But
craving power and the spotlight sucks out the spiritual oxygen, leaving
some 'past feeling'. Strangely, though desensitized, some are still able
to hear the beckoning click of a TV camera at a hundred yards. Doesn't
the churning over the places of mortal power remind us on the childhood
game of musical chairs?... There is an underlying reason, brothers and
sisters, for all this fleetingness: those who bestow the transitory
things of the world are, themselves, transients. They cannot confer that
which is lasting becuase they do not possess it! Some, so sensing and
seeing so little, want to have it all now!" -Neal A. Maxwell
No comments:
Post a Comment