Monday, April 17, 2017

April 17, 2017

For my spiritual thought today I'll attach three screenshots that you guys can read. It really puts things into perspective regarding the sacrifice Christ made.

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday
Finding a lot this week as usual, but today we finally met someone with decent potential! He's in high school and said we can come back on Saturday so check back on Saturday for an update.

Friday:
We've just been finding, unfortunately I don't have anything weird to report, just a couple pastors trying ("trying") to rebuke us who think they're smarter than we are, little do they know...we actually have the spirit guide us through the Bible instead of college text books, but it's ok. They lived on the same street too, one of the wealthiest streets in town. Ironic too, since Jesus never lived in wealthy houses, let alone get his money from preaching. But this is the world we live in. Apostasy's not new - the book is the blue - the church is true. 

Saturday:
We didn't see him today, or the other person we were going to see or the other one. But it's alright because the first guy said we can come back Monday.

Sunday:

So I recieved bad news and good news today... Bad news. So if you remember I'm in a tiny ward smaller than most branches, it just can't be demoted. Well two more families are moving out before the end of the month. We're looking at like 30-40 people each Sunday now. Good news. After 3+ months of working kinks and going up the chain, we got permission to move on with one of our investigators who has been and investigating and coming to church for over a year. We can finally move towards baptism! We just have to get through a couple repentance items and solidify his testimony. I hope I don't get transferred before he can get baptized. Oh and it's Easter, happy easter! What did I do for easter? Good question, we went to church, tracted, and then had a wonderful dinner. Thanks for asking! I hope all your Easters were wonderful too.

April 10, 2017

Last week I briefly touched on personal revelation and recognizing it, now I want to talk about it a little bit more.

A quote from Elder Bednar goes something along these lines, "When we talk to God it is called prayer, when he talks to us it is called revelation." I like this. It reminds me of emailing your boss a weekly report, even though you may not get a clear and direct response from him, he still reads it. If we ask a question, there's guidance needed, or he wants us to change something, he will email you back instructing you what to do. We don't always need clear-as-day step by step instructions because we should be trusted, but He won't let us fall away without guidance. Also, in the same way your boss would give you instructions for you and those you're over, God is only going to give you revelation for you and those you're accountable for, such as your children, or if your a Bishop, the ward, etc...

We know the importance of revelation/promptings, but the hard part is discerning between our own thoughts and promptings. 
Moroni 7:13 says:
"But behold, that which is of God inviteth and enticeth to do good continually; wherefore, every thing which inviteth and enticeth to do good, and to love God, and to serve him, is inspired of God."

Even if it's only your thoughts, if it's good, just do it. When Elder Bednar was a missionary he gave one of the twelve (don't remember who exactly) a ride to the train station where he'd then go to east Germany. He felt it would be nice to give him some dinner money so he did, a pretty generous amount. Years later, Bednar learned that after he'd dropped them off and the train departed, they were stopped by soldiers in West Germany who were looking for passports, his wife's passport was an extended one which didn't fly with them. Long story short, after some tussle, the apostle just gave him her passport with the generous dinner money. The soldier came back and said they're good to go, handed them their passport, no money inside. After arriving to their destination they learned that if she wasn't allowed through, they would've taken her off the train, separated them, and it would've ended ugly. Bednar didn't know it was a prompting that would save her life, he just acted on a thought that enticed to do good.

I feel like often we think that since God is this awesome, all-knowing, almighty person, that revelation from him needs to have an impact, like something that hits us like a brick and goes way beyond our level of thoughts and ideas so revelation is easily discernable from ideas that pop into our heads. But here's the thing, the heavens and earth were created with existing matter and the lights from existing light, we know this from Abraham 4. So why is it so unreasonable for God to organize your thoughts into ideas? It's not, in fact to me it seems like the most reasonable way considering God follows patterns. So revelation can very well and most likely usually does come in the form of a simple idea. And if it's good, act on it! In this last conference, Ronald a. Rasband quoted Joseph Smith, saying, "If you follow the first impression, you'll be right 9 times out of 10." 

Tuesday:
I wanted to try the promise in Mark 11:24 "Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." About a week ago my electric shaver started dying and there was no charger to be found I probably left it in roswell. Since I needed it and no one else had chargers that would fit mine and I didn't want to go out and buy a whole new thing just for a charger, I prayed for one. A couple days later I asked Elder Bastos from another ward if he'd seen any chargers in his apartment that I could try, he said there'd been one since he got there that he found but didn't throw away. He said I could give it a try. Perfect match. And this was his last day here too. The Lord provides! ALSO!! There's a 70% chance of tornadoes tomorrow!! I'm so flippin stoked!! I'm also so upset that I can't track it, but it's suppose to be gnarly! Everyone keeps talking about it! We'll see how it goes.

Wednesday:
So the storm I was talking get about yesterday...it just rained hard all day with thunder. Not even lightning or wind, we got jypsed. But a separate storm rolled through that worked up at midnight, it was consistent lightning at least once every other second for 45 minutes. Most was in the clouds but towards the end they started popping out. I'll send pictures in a separate email. Also, remember how I said last week that they're taking one of the cars out of our car share? Well the other Elders decided they're just gonna take the car even though they're in the city, have sidewalks, have almost half as big of an area with two sets of missionaries to cover it, have the church building, and a million more members to give them rides. So now we waste 20-25 hrs weekly riding bikes. Not sure how that all worked out but I feel not so good about it. Oh and I found out that the car they took from us, they gave to Elders in Roswell, they've been on bike since the beginning of time and have city, members, sidewalks, lights, people to street contact, etc...The frustrating part is that I was just there biking my way around for six months and now I'm here and they take the car...I can expect to bike about 180-200 miles every single normal week

Sunday:
This is funny...Tonight we met a guy. He was one of those guys. I almost didn't write about him because I can't even attempt to write down all that happened and my thoughts. He's one of those people who thinks they're super smart but contradict themselves and have no other citations outside of Google. He was cross faded, too. He starts talking about leaving the body when you dream and other weird stuff about going into another realm and how everything has already happened in parallel universe-type things (I think) and I thought it was fun so I cooperated and would get him hyped because he's black and black people are fun to hype up. I'd say things like, "oh and that's why when you dream sometimes it happens in real life!" He'd then flip out and come over and be like, "You got me man! You feel me!" I think at one point we were even in psychic-spiritual link that he shares with his guardian angel so that was cool. He asked if I had "the dream" followed a couple seconds later by, "Ahhh Ya man you already told me it all!" He said religion was created to control "us" slaves (who couldn't even read the Bible in the first place) and that we, being black, we're connected by Hebrew ancestry. English is a curse put upon us too apparently... I have no clue man. That's not even the half of it all, it was good stuff.

We also dropped another half of our teaching pool so now we're down to about three people, one of which doesn't understand what we teach and doesn't wanna be baptized but has been coming to church for a while and that's why we don't drop him. Another has been coming for over a year and we don't really 'teach' him since he's a dry Mormon pretty much. And the other's mom won't let him come to church, but we still go over to solidify his testimony for when he leaves for college, then he can come to church and be baptized likes he's been wanting to for the past year. So it's been rough. We don't even have potentials after three weeks of nothing but hitting the pavement

April 3, 2017


In Quentin L. Cook's talk he talks about his kid who came and with excitement exclaimed, "I can do everything now! I can zip, I can tie, and I can ride!" It was pretty funny, but I think that can apply in other ways outside of how Cook used it. 

I think when we sit there and think how we've gone to church and read the scriptures we know everything and there's not much more to do. I'm guilty of it. I see lots of people stop going to church because they think they know it all already, but if they knew a single percentage of it they'd make an effort to come. So when we sit here thinking we know it all, I imagine Heavenly Father, much like Quentin L. Cook, thinking, "Ahh, how cute." That's what we are here for, to learn and grow, and obviously it won't come all at once. This is why revelation often comes the same the sun rises instead of all at once. If it did, it would be overwhelming and we wouldn't grasp any of it. It's like in the morning when you just wake up and you get headlights shining in your face, you wouldn't see anything, it needs to be gradual. You take stairs one by one to get to the second story, you can't jump to it.

Tuesday:
Today after district meeting we went tracting and that's about it.

Wednesday:
Today we did a good bit of tracting.

Thursday:
We switched it up today, we did service this morning, then we spent the rest of the day tracting.

Friday:
We tracting for a majority of the day.

Saturday:
Man, general conference was good. It's not quite the same when you're a missionary, it has a whole different meaning. Other than that we just tracted.

Sunday:
General conference again was really good, afterwards we tracted. Our awesome investigators we got a couple weeks ago along with the other guy whom we put all on date won't get back to us so we'll have to drop them all. Too bad. More time to find people who are going to take it sseriously and follow through though!

Monday:
We just got word they're taking our car away, now I'm gonna get thunder thighs for real. We get to use a car on Monday, which is p day, so it's pointless.


Sorry guys, I'm lazy this week. I guess I'm hitting "that" stage where I just don't write long emails anymore, it was bound to happen sometime. Plus not much has happened other than finding, so hopefully next week's email will be better!

March 27, 2017

If there's one thing I've come to find true on my mission it is that the apostasy is real. If there's anything I've come to dislike on my mission it would be the apostasy. It makes us look ridiculous and is the cause for many people becoming atheist as there are so many contradictions leading to confusion and flat out ridiculousness. For example, there's a "telepastor" that I heard of around here just the other day that is going around on TV (Heleman 13:26-28) doing all these things and everyone likes him because he's doing all these "miracles" and there's no commitment involved. He said for every dollar donated to him, he will save a soul. He's at 70,000 saved souls and the goal is 5 million. This is wrong on so many levels. But no one questions it (again, Heleman 13:26-28). When people look at us and ridicule us because we're weird and peculiar (Deuteronomy 14:2) it's just because everyone else has gone so far off the beaten path in the course of 2000 years that the original things are no longer generally accepted. So when the apostles were killed the authority to act in Christ's name and receive revelation for the whole church was gone. Well if any of you have played a game of telephone, you know that by the time the message gets back around it is not the same at attached, even though the intentions were good. Now multiply that times 2000 years. If you haven't played it, then it's like a steering wheel. Imagine you're in a car and suddenly the steering wheel disappears. Well as time goes on and the world (road) around you changes and swerves, you will find yourself very far off the road. So without that authority, apostasy is inevitable. I won't get into the details of the actual documented history of apostasy because it can come off as me trying to disprove and disown other churches. But, if you want to know a brief overview then I will attach a file. 

However, this is why the authority and prophets are so vital to Christ's church. Amos 3:7 says that "surely the Lord God will do nothing save it be through his servants the prophets," and if he's the same yesterday today and forever, then it would make sense that prophets should still be around.

Monday:
Guys...I had fried ice cream today. A member made it for us western folk. It was amongst the most delicious things I've ever had in the span of my entire life. My tastbuds shouted a triumphant cry of satisfaction and the purest, most exquisite joy filled their bossoms as they came to the knowledge that their work here was finished, from thenceforth they needed no more to taste as they have tasted the untastable. That's the best I can do to put it into words. I also cut my own hair today for the first time! It looks awesome!! Hopefully the back does too, elder summers said it did so I'll take it. 

Tuesday:
HOLY SMOKES!! This evening we had a couple storms blow through that were gnarly and lemme tell you about it. Regardless of the storms, we went out tracting, there was lightning all around but it was tiny and stayed in the clouds and we didn't want to be piles and stay inside twiddling our thumbs. We were about to leave for home and as we getting in the car we heard cop sirens and honestly thought it was for us because a lady was watching us, we were thinking she might call the cops, she seemed like one of those people. Then we saw two cops running across the street with urgency. We were like what the crap. Then two cops cars came rushing in and we were like "yup they're coming for us," they rushed into the parking lot (and we are the only ones there) and the way they pulled in made it seem like we're blocking off the exits and pulled up on either side. We waved, they waved, but then they turned around and left. Weird, there was obvious panamonia nearby though. Right after they pulled out I look up and tell elder summers to get back out to see. I don't know if it was funnel cloud or not, but it was an irregular looking cloud moving really fast and hanging really low from green clouds with a slight twist. It was close too, I'd say within a mile. I saw a bright green flash under the rapidly descending cloud. 30 seconds later the power went out. Immediately following that the wind picked up significantly blowing towards the possible funnel, there were trash cans and branches flying everywhere! The lightning got stronger and very frequent. I was stoked of of my mind!!! Then I realized oh crap, we're in an open parking lot at 9:00 pm with no one around except cops flipping out about something (ps we're across the street from government housing aka the projects aka ghetto) and there's what seems to be a tornado coming down less than a mile away. I was enjoying myself, but Elder summers starts getting nervous and says we need to leave now. I tried explaining to him that if this is a tornado, the worst thing to do would be drive and how lots of people die like that. But he's a bit of a hard head and I have to be with him, I figured if we died I can say I told you so and have bragging rights for eternity, so it was worth it. Our dumb tiwi that tracks us kept yelling at us for going over the speed limit trying to you know, avoid a tornado... But man, that was the craziest and sickest 2 minutes of my life. Cops running around, cops racing to us, explosions, tornadoes, it was like a movie! We got home and watched it be crazy and die down to a bag of popcorn. Man, that lightning is bright as day and has more bass than an EDM dubstep concert. Someone in the ward over died. A tree fell through their house. I guess some other died too. Sad.

Wednesday:
Like I said, this week we're doing pretty much just tracting. Today for some reason everyone was either kinda rude or really rude to us with the exception of two people one of which said he wasn't interested and the other was making dinner and wasn't interested in us coming back. So that was our day. Even most people in cars driving by were kinda rude. Even an active member that we walked by and asked if they needed help got a little sassy with us. Oh well, refiners fire... here's something cool though, as we were doing our thing I said, "Man, the Lord is testing our faith for something, I've never met so many rude people in a row, hopefully we get a referral out of this, and not a bible one (that's when someone clicks on an ad saying 'free bible' and they put their name and address and it says 'missionaries will be at your door to deliver your Bible,' so they don't work out well usually)." We got done tracting and were at a member's for dinner to conclude the night, while we were there we got a bible/book of Mormon referral! And get this, he lives exactly where our plans are for tomorrow, so it works perfectly.

Thursday:
I found my first four leaf clover! And the referral guy I talked about yesterday, he's not interested...Oh well. So much for the luck of a four leaf clover.

Friday:

Saturday

Sunday:
Dang, we were stoked for today because we had six investigators from four separate households committed to coming to church. Guess how many came? Zero. But the sad thing is, it's not unusual. Two of those investigators we had on date for baptism and were going to see tonight, one of which cancelled last second and the other didn't show up, so that wasn't thrilling.