March 20, 2017

I was reading in my personal studies Ether 2 when the brother of Jared builds the barges and realizes he needs light in them. So he goes to the Lord and asks what to do. He responds in verse 23 with And the Lord said unto the brother of Jared: What will ye that I should do that ye may have light in your vessels? For behold, ye cannot have windows, for they will be dashed in pieces; neither shall ye take fire with you, for ye shall not go by the light of fire. So He's basically saying, "Well you can't build windows, and you can't make a fire, so what do you think we should do?" He asks the brother of Jared to think for himself. We can't have our hands held all throughout the days of our probation, we wouldn't learn anything. We are here to learn and grow and eventually progress eternally which includes becoming as God is now. So if we are truly in preparation for that, we need to be big boys and girls and use our agency to make big big boy and girl decisions. However, we are still very imperfect, so we need guidance and advice. Just like he was told he couldn't make windows or fire, we are told things to help us return to him.  Eventually the brother of Jared comes up with the bright idea (Get it? Bright idea...) of having the Lord touch the stones to light them up. There's a spiritual thought in that itself, but that's for another time. He still asks for the Lord's guidance when he comes up with an idea. Like this, we must too ask to make sure we are still on the right path. Not only will it ensure that we are on the right path, but it demonstrates humility too. Monday: Man what the heck happened to spring? Things are blossoming and everything was going good. Then today it all changed and we biked in this mid-30s half rain half sleet half mist garbage on the way home from another fallen through appointment. It froze me to the bone, and it's only getting colder... Other than that it was just another lovely P day. Tuesday: Wednesday: Thursday: We had a cool little miracle today. I was on exchange today and while we planned this morning we felt like we should go see someone who moved in recently, she was in the opposite direction of where we were originally going to tract, but it was ok. So we went and knocked on her door, she didn't answer so we left a note with our number. While tracting she texted us saying we were sent by the Lord and she did need help, a blessing. So we went over and she told us the night before she had been crying over something and prayed for a blessing of comfort to come around. First thing that morning we were there. Here's the cooler part, remember I said I was on exchange? Well the person I was on exchange with is from Brazil and this lady was also from Brazil, so he gave her the blessing in their native language, Portuguese. Friday: Saturday: Sunday: Is this what it feels like to be a missionary? The past few days Elder Summers and I have just gone through all our investigators being straight up with them and weeding out a lot of people. We dropped quite a few people and have a good bit of tracting planned for this next week, we are down to the lowest Elder Summers has seen in his whole mission (I've been that low a couple times) and we still have a couple more to weed out in the next couple days. It was 7:30 and we were heading up to someone we usually see on Sunday nights and we'd planned on seeing if he would needed to be dropped too. On our way we wanted to see some potential investigators that were nearby (these are they we knocked into last week on the second door), they hadn't responded to our text though so we were a little nervous they got anti'd. We stopped by anyways and they let us in, they were happy to have us! Last time we didn't finish the restoration with the guy and the girl came in late, so we taught it more in depth and the spirit was strong. It was one of the most powerful lessons I've been in on a mission. She said she started getting goosebumps when we started talking about how that authority is on the earth today and was passed down from Joseph Smith. Then as we were wrapping up we started talking baptism, she started crying! That's the first time I've seen someone cry in a lesson in my whole mission. They both accepted a baptism date. On top of that, the last time we came over we left them a restoration pamphlet. The very next day she went to her Dad's house in Winder and saw a restoration pamphlet on the table. They talked and the Winder Elders are teaching her own Dad! Afterwards we went to Antwain's place, he accepted a date last week, but we needed to make sure we didn't need to drop him. We weren't sure how serious he was and he met with missionaries a lot a few years ago. We got in and he told us he's been thinking lately. He'd been thinking about his baptism and how he needs to start taking these steps if he's serious. He asked what he needs to do. He'd been taught all the lessons a couple years ago, so we went over the baptism interview with him and he's ready to start taking the steps to it.