Sunday, May 5, 2013

Grateful to Play a Part


Dear Family,

Awhhh man…I started to get the butterflies just looking at the picture of those teams in the final 8! Good luck Collin! Play your little #1 heart out. First off though, Mom I think option number 1 would be the best. I will call at 5pm on my Sunday (your Saturday)….maybe even a little bit earlier like 4:30 or something. Just in case anything goes wrong, I will do the 3rd option on my Monday, and pssshhh I won’t even care if Collin won state!!! It is Mother’s Day and MOM is 9537983247528937458234756982685487648627 times more important than a state volleyball championship. Haha jokes…I will actually be thrilled to hear about how it went, win or lose. Just make sure you give mom the most time at the end (save all the water works for getting off the phone). Lookin forward to it!

Also, speaking of mothers, taped onto my missionary planner I have that picture of Jesus as a child saying a prayer next to his mother, Mary.  I had a lot of cool experiences running into mothers this past week who are either less active or random ladies on the street where I was able to show them that picture and say something along the lines of… “If Jesus was as awesome as he was, you could only imagine how great of a mother this woman had to be?” I don’t know why but there were at least 4 times this past week that I can recall just sharing my testimony that living the gospel can help any mother raise her family the right way. I am glad I have such an awesome mother who helped me gain a testimony of that. In fact!!!... Oh mother dearest…I have a favor to ask. We met an awesome lady named, M.  She is a mother of 4 girls between the ages of 8 and 14. She has been away from the church for ages, because of something that happened with one of her kids and she refuses to step foot in the chapel. Anyways, she likes the missionaries still and allows us to come over.  I felt prompted to ask you to send her a letter to help her understand the blessings she is missing out on and how much better her life could be with the gospel in it if she could find it in her heart to forgive. It’s kinda like a mother to mother thing. Can you please do that Mommy? Also, Ezekiel 16:44 is great. It says something along the lines of "As is the Mother, So is the Daughter."

What else? This week was just awesome! I don't even know where to begin... HAHA. Monday night, just after emailing you, we went to the house of somebody that was found by our ward mission leader to teach them. Right when we got in though, I could smell that we weren't going to be doing the teaching that night.  Sure enough, we were teaching D, the Pastor of the Revival Life group... Sighhh…here we go. He started off by talking about establishing truth and all these other things and as soon as he paused I asked what he hoped to gain out of meeting with us. He then said he wanted us to receive truth and the Holy Spirit and to be able to speak in “tongues” by the end of the night.  I responded really quietly, “interesting”.  I then began to explain that I have been coming to people’s houses to teach them for a year and a half now, and that I had ran into quite a few people who wanted to convince us that we were wrong. I then explained that we come in a spirit of peace and love and that we would give him 5 minutes to explain his views and that they would not be contended by ours if he gave us the same courtesy. He agreed and started talking about the day of Pentecost and pulled out 3 scriptures. Luckily, I knew all of them, so I quoted them after he asked me to turn to them in the Bible... John 3:5, Acts 2:38, and the story of Peter giving someone the Holy Ghost and the man trying to purchase that authority. HAHAHA…he must of thought I was actually smart. Anyways, after he explained his whole thing, I asked him what we needed to do.  He said we needed to receive the Holy Ghost.  I told him kindly that I have already, and he asked “how do you know because you won’t speak in tongues which is the only visible evidence of having that Gift?” I then said that we could explain and asked if we could start our 5 minutes. Then Elder Lamb and I POWERFULLY taught about the Restoration and challenged him to read the Book of Mormon. He was brought to tears and asked if he could be baptized by correct authority... Haha…jokes. After we asked him to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it, he told us all the reasons why what we were saying was ridiculous. So our ward mission leader just said, “I can stay but these boys need to get home.” Then I asked if we could leave on good terms with a prayer.  He said NO because that would put us on the same level as him and that we weren't Children of God. So I suggested he say the prayer instead. “Father in Heaven aieuwfgeaiorhjgopaFWEFIHAFIGFGNMAIRFEW IGFAEWGNAGERAGNEIJUGA jfhewaiufhjagnrerjkiagiuepurghajgnjeragl eriwtauityheriutyhret n asedujinaewf, ewrathiujarhtjiajtgrnjvru (tongues)…please help these boys find truth, etc., etc. Then we got up and gave him and his friend a big hug before leaving (that totally threw him for a spin). Then Elder Lamb and I busted up laughing in the car and went away glad that we kept the peace and there was no contention on our side.

Sorry…long story just for a dumb Bible bash, but it was pretty dang funny! Other cool things that happened this week….We did our first “Missionary Leadership Council” with the sister leader trainers. It was great! Normally we do it at President’s house, but we had to go into the chapel because there were so many zone leaders and sisters. Also, I don’t know if I told you that I got to give G the Priesthood last week, but this week he blessed the sacrament. Haha…also on the way to kneel down he crashed down on his knees really, really hard. It thundered throughout the whole chapel. He was in a lot of pain but said the prayer on the water prefect. He also shared his testimony that brought me to tears even though he didn't say a whole lot.  I was just grateful that I got to play a part in helping him know that Jesus Christ is the Light, the Life, and the Truth of the World.

Love you guys so much! Good luck this week!!!

Love,
Elder Ward

 

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