November 14, 2016

Sorry guys I don't have a spiritual thought this week, hopefully I can have one next week. It's just hard when you don't have tons of time and whatnot. But I'll try in the future!

Monday:

Today got exhausting quickly. For some reason people poor out their entire life story and problems on us and there's obviously not much we can do. Idk why, they trust us or something. We had lots of it tonight.

Tueseday:

Well I'm obviously not following the election, but the election year of 2016 will forever be imprinted in my mind with a seriously negative connotation. I don't care who wins tomorrow, I just want this to be done. It's like getting a shot, it's not pleasant either way, but it's better to just be done with it...

Wednesday:

Donald Trump eh? Let the games begin. Now let's focus on things that don't raise contention. Cool little miracle. So my oblivious self left my iPad on the back bumper of a member's suburban and Elder May's iPad on the little step on the side of the suburban. Both ledges are less wide than our iPads and slippery. So the member went to go pick something up at the church real quick and I didn't even think about the iPads on the car. He took a windee road and the highway and then all the way back. Both our iPads stayed on! The funny part is that we had them on the bumper earlier and the breeze was enough to knock both our iPads off multiple times, but not the highway wind or the G force of turning the windee roads and speed bumps.

Thursday:

There's this lady we met last week that we've been visiting named Pamilla. Super awesome super sweet lady. She loves the church and the people. There's one issue, she's had a successful life and one thing after another happened and long story short she's now a widow with a hacked bank account and her life is now upside down. She just needs to get started back up and to do so she needs a place to live other than a hotel. We're trying to help her but there's so much we can do and she's thinking that us 19 year olds who can barely write a check can help her in the snap of a finger. We are trying really hard but we don't have much time or resources. So it sucks. She has lots and lots of faith in us and loves us to death. So we are hoping and praying.

Friday:

Well Pamilla thinks she found a place. Super cool, but I'm pretty bummed because she's one of our two solid investigators, but she's moving out of our area so we have to hand her off. Our other investigator also lives outside of our mission so we'll probably have to hand him off too. And man, he texted us today saying that since we met with him on Wednesday he's read 14 chapters and he explained who was in it and what was happening and loves it. That has never happened, he's golden on gold. But alas, we'll have to pass him on most likely as well...

Saturday:

Sunday:

Jeez man it's freezing, I wasn't expecting it to get cold here but it does! The humidity just pierces you. It's rough on a bike with the wind. Doesn't help that our heating doesn't work half the time either.

November 7, 2016

Many of us take baptism for granted, we don't truly know the importance of it. Sometimes we focus too much on the fact that we're washed clean from our sins. And that's great! But we're going to sin again, and yes there's repentance, but that's not the sole reason for baptism, it's kinda like a side bonus.

One of the most important reasons for baptism is being able to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost will comfort you, warn you, and bring to your attention when you're about to sin. I'll touch more on why that's important later.

Something a lot of us overlook or push aside is how vital baptism is. We can't enter into the kingdom of God without it. This is why we do baptisms in proxy for those in the spirit world who passed on without being baptized. Everyone gets equal opportunity.

The most important thing I think is the covenant made at baptism. We overthink it way too much. Could you tell me right now what covenants you made at baptism? Think about it for a sec...Even I overthought it until just this last week. It's so simple!

Read Alma 7:15-16

15 ...and show unto your God that ye are willing to repent of your sins and enter into a covenant with him to keep his commandments, and witness it unto him this day by going into the waters of baptism.

16 And whosoever doeth this, and keepeth the commandments of God from thenceforth, the same will remember that I say unto him, yea, he will remember that I have said unto him, he shall have eternal life...

Boom, there it is! It's to keep the Commandments, that's it! All of them, and not just the classic ten, but the word of wisdom, law of chastity, tithing, pray, etc... And of course a covenant is a two-way promise. His end of the deal is that you will have eternal life. That's a bargain.

It's funny how much we overthink things. It was said that the gospel is simple enough so that even a child could understand it. Yes, there's more depth than we can ever imagine, I've learned that since I've been out here. It applies to everything. But that's not what's important. The important thing is the foundation, then we can worry about the rest later, then we can overthink things. We gain that foundation by keeping the covenants that we made in the first place. You know what you need to do, so do it, and the rest will come. We all have discernment and the light of Christ, we deep down know what is and isn't true. As long as we live in accordance to the gospel and do the simple things then it's been promised that you willnever do something bad without first getting that prompting from the Holy Ghost. It's just a matter of whether or not we ignore it, and we ignore it all too much, myself included, I'm 100% guilty of it. And the more we ignore it, the less we will have the promptings of the Holy Ghost which includes warning us of danger, helping us in difficult situations or when seeking for an answer. He's not going to help us out if we are always ignoring him. If you gave someone advice and all they did was ignore it, are you going to keep giving them advice or let them try to figure it out on their own?

I went a little off topic. But you made a covenant to Heavenly Father at baptism that you'd keep his Commandments, you were given the gift of the Holy Ghost and one of those reasons was to help you keep that covenant with him. He wants you to return with him, therefore we were given the spirit to be with us always to help us keep that covenant by letting you know when it's about to be broken. So use it. Obviously, we being imperfect beings will and have broken that covenant many times. Thank heavens for the Atonement. But if we continue to break it then we truly have no remorse, meaning the Atonement won't apply. 

To wrap all this up in a bite-sized package, at baptism you made a covenant with God to keep the Commandments and He promised eternal life. To help you achieve that he gave you the Holy Ghost. Use that important gift to come closer to him and achieve that ultimate goal. 

Monday:

Halloween. Everyone's partying and I'm planning the week. Bright side, I drove for the first time today! It's been a while.

Tuesday:

Wednesday

Friday:

Sorry I've had a pretty bland past couple days. Normal stuff. But today we had a good three people not want to talk to us or accept anything from us because they believe Jesus is black. Cuz that's important to our salvation. He was born in Bethlehem! He's a Middle Eastern, that's a tan white. Goodness. We get that from time to time but especially today for some reason.

Saturday:

Knocking doors as usual. So far this week we've gotten 19 potential investigators. We also had someone a couple months ago kinda rebuke us for doing missionary work because it's "not of God" to have us leave home and have minimal contact (even though that's exactly what Jesus asked his apostles to do and even rebuked one of them when they asked to go say bye). Well anyways, we left her with a card and headed our ways. She called us this week and wanted to set something up. What the crap??? That doesn't happen too often at all. Like ever. So work hard and you'll be blessed in many ways. This week has been extraordinarily odd because people have been much nicer and accepting of us.

Sunday:

I had two dinners. And I ate ribs for the first time, and yes I ate with my hands, and yes I ate off the bone. I eat like a man now. (1 Corinthians 13:11)

11 When I was a child, I [ate] as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

I'm a man now.

I took almost no pictures, but I saw a park and Elder May dared me to do a flip off the park. Phhh. I'm not gonna let that down, so I said, "film me." And I still have it. 

October 31, 2016

I don't really have a spiritual thought because I only had time to write a talk for Lisette's baptism. But if you read Saturday, that whole day is a spiritual thought.

Tuesday:

So get this. There's a hill ("mountain") called Fort Mountain in Georgia that has a giant ancient wall built around it with fire pits in it that was clearly made by ancient people. The historical site there says that there's a legend which has been passed down through the Native Americans involving that structure. The legend that's been passed down is that there was a war and a white-skinned people built it there to take refuge before later being utterly destroyed. Sound familiar? If it doesn't than y'all need to read the Book of Mormon, or at least the intro. It's funny too because it baffles historians as to why there'd be white people here with the natives. There's plenty more evidence of the Book of Mormon, but that's not what matters right? We also taught Lisette the infamous word of wisdom and the fun one, the law of chastity. All we need to work on is coffee, thank heavens, that's the least I've had to worry about thus far with investigators.

Wednesday:

Thursday:

Yes! Deshawn is back in town. He's the guy who wanted to be baptized and was originally going to shove us out the door but then felt he needed to listen. But he moved to Florida. Well he was meeting with missionaries who we sent his way down there and now he's back. And he said he likes us more *smirk*. So we can start meeting him next week. Now we just need to help him overcome everything in the book.

Friday:

We just bought a couch. We've been volunteering at the local habitat for Humanity restore and a couch has been sitting there for $15 that just hasn't been bought. Everything was 50% off today, so we put in $4 each and bought that sucka.

Saturday:

Ooooooh man, up until about 8:00 pm today was a sweet day! I'll sum it up as much as possible. At 8:00 we just had a lesson with someone trying to bash us but was kinda not making any good points, but thought she was destroying us. It's just hard to bite your tongue with ignorant people. On to the good stuff. Lisette got baptized!! There were some loops we had to swing through that may have pushed it back, but we worked it out! Now this is the cool part. The past three days she's been having really bad tooth pains and last night it got really bad. She couldn't eat or talk and she'd taken 5 different pain medications. She also hadn't been able to sleep very well at all lately. So with the pain and exhaustion the baptism would've been hard. So we offered to come and give her a blessing. I gave it and said her tooth pain would go away soon and that she will be well rested for tomorrow. Today she said that she slept like a baby, her brother tried waking her up and she even slept through that. To make it cooler, she said her tooth hasn't been hurting her since we left at all, and she didn't take any medicine. What an awesome way to lead into a baptism! We've explained to her that baptism has to be done with someone holding the priesthood authority, now she really understands what power the priesthood has, even with something as little as that. At the baptism I gave a talk. It was ok. Our mission president showed up so I choked a little bit. After the baptism Nella gave a talk. And Nella is awesome, she has the faith of an ox. She's done soooo many crazy miracles with her faith. I'll give one of many examples, there was a lady who hadn't walked in 7 years and wasn't ever supposed to. Long story short, she was about to be fired because that lady accused her of something falsely. So she said to the bosses that because she touched the woman she will walk again. The next day, she was walking. Needless to say, she got her job back. And there's lots more like it. It's crazy!!I've seen her faith do cool things myself, and so have many others. Faith is real. Look up Mosiah 8:18. Also look up Mathew 17:20. Good ones. Anyways! So she went up and talked about the gift of the Holy Ghost and blew me away. I'm pretty sure she had Lisette in tears. So good good day. And if you read this whole thing, well then that's impressive. 

Sunday:

Lisette got the gift of the Holy Ghost. She said during the blessing she felt like a weight coming down on her head. A good weight though. And something about fire (I couldn't understand exactly, there were lots of people talking around us). A good feeling fire and weight. She doesn't have the highest English vocabulary, but she was explaining pretty much the "burning in your bosom." Pretty sweet!! We take for granted the things we have. You wouldn't believe the changes I've seen in Lisette these past two months. This past week has been tremendous, her whole countenance is different and he's there is a light about her now. I know...cliche. But trust me, it's real!

No pictures of the baptism yet...I will have to send them next week. But until then, here's these.

October 24, 2016

I sincerely apologize, but I don't have much of a spiritual thought this week. Usually something just pops in my head sometime randomly during the week and I write it down. But this week the only thing I felt I should share is this simple paragraph.

Read the Book of Mormon. I've seen it change lives and change mine. When I don't read it I feel much less in tune with the spirit, and when you're on a mission it's obvious when it's not there. I used to justify reading New Era articles now and then as reading the scriptures, in a sense it is, but nothing will impact you're life like the Book of Mormon when you really really read and try to understand it. Read it in the morning. Read it on your free time. Read it as a family. I could've written three and a half pages long as to why you should read it and loaded it up with scripture, but I didn't feel it. All I felt I should say is to just read it with an open heart and mind. 

Tuesday:

Lisette, our investigator getting baptized, met with us today and was super excited because she'd been praying that we'd both stay. Apparently so have a few other people, and it was on the plans that I was supposed to get a new companion all week, up until the last second. So that's pretty cool.

Wednesday:

Kind of the same ol' rice and beans. Just a meeting, service and a lesson with a less active. Nothing different, except I went in a taxi for the first time, it wasn't as exhilarating as I imagined it would be...

Thursday:

Remember I said Georgia drivers are horrible? I almost got hit four times today. I almost get hit just about every day, but two of these were exceptionally close. One I had to skid and the car pulling out slammed pretty hard and I missed it by half a second. The second one I was turning in somewhere and a car cut me off. I slammed so so hard on my brakes that I flew over my handle bars and my bike literally did a flip in the air. But don't worry, I caught myself on my feet...barely. The only injury was my wrist from the flying spinning bike. Elder May and I had to skid pretty hard to avoid getting hit at one point, Elder May was almost nailed. The fourth time was just the normal almost get hit, it wasn't exceptionally close. The best part is, from the dozens of times one of us almost gets hit, the person just looks at us and keeps going, not once has anyone been concerned. I'm 98.5% certain that it's totally legal to text and drive here. People even play games on their phones here while driving! I'm sick of it. Missionaries get hit all the time here.

Friday:

Just the normal gravyless potatoes today. Service, knocking, and lessons.

Saturday:

We had the Trunk or Treat today, that's my favorite church event so I've been pretty stoked. But then I went and it kinda sucked. It just brought back memories and now I'm pretty dang sad. All I want to do today and tomorrow is sit at home and sleep. But I can't. 

Sunday:

Today was...very interesting. Lisette came to church for the full three hours today and had us over for dinner! So that's excellent, now here's the issue. In the class we had a teacher today that doesn't teach doctrine on a base level and half the time isn't even true. Every time she talks she brings up her divorce, every single time-and the lesson was on eternal marriage. I can't even explain. It was one of the worst lessons ever for an investigator, thankfully the members in the class recognized it and took over the class, but still, it got ugly. But then it got into baptisms for the dead for some reason, not something an investigator likes to hear without explanation. So when we went to dinner we had a member with us and we intended to clear up the confusion she got from the class. The member we were with (and he's awesome, love him to death) but he started going off topic and eventually started skimming deep doctrine, lineages, temple ordinances (nothing it doesn't say in the scriptures but still a little far), and a hundred other things. The poor girl, she is so lost and probably thinks we're crazy. I'm kinda scared now. We explained to her that we will explain everything later, answer any questions and that we can get to the other stuff later. So she's still good for baptism this Saturday!