February 17, 2014

.....

 This last week was stake conference and the stake president told me to give
a talk presenting the new missionary work plan that went into effect
In West Linn and Canby already. So I did. Now the entire Oregon City
stake is being trained by their local missionaries on how to do it.
It's really kind of neat to see it all done. My mission president told
me after I spoke that I gave that talk just like a general authority.
Not sure if that's a good thing or not if the message was coming from
a missionary...

I had to sit up on the stand for all three sessions. The whole
conference was about missionary work. It was like being in a giant
zone meeting for 2 days. I'll tell you what, watching the back of
people's heads that are talking gets really awkward. There's always
that person just off the center of focus of the person who is talking
who is looking at you. So look at them. Then they look away. Then you
look away! Then rinse repeat, for three 2 hour sessions. Agh. I hope
that's not what it's like being a bishop. That's got to be the worst.

I love you all and I know with a certainty that this message of peace
changes lives and the desires of our hearts. It make bad men good and
good men better. Or women, the gospel is not just for men. It is my
testimony that Joseph Smith was without a doubt the priest that God
called to restore his church again to the earth. I know that Jesus is
the Christ and that through him my soul can feel confidence in
tomorrow knowing that my conscience has been wiped clean through the
grace of Christ. He loves you even more than I do, which is kind of
hard, because I love you a lot! Ha ha

Love

Your elder Lloyd!

Sorry for the typos, this iPad's not the best at taking exactly what I
type. It auto corrects the stupidest stuff

Snow? In Portland? Inconceiva​ble!

February 10, 2014

So this last week was a little odd. We were doing everything just like normal, and then on wednesday things got cold. FAST! I went on an exchange on Wednesday with Elder Fontaine on the Oregeon City 4th ward. That man is a beast. He's a really cool, and very professional missionary. He's been doing wonders for that district of missionaries. It was 25 degrees for most of that day, but with the 25 MPH winds and the humidity it had the chill factor of 10 degrees. It was the first day I had been on a bike since I left St. Johns Ward a year ago. I feel very blessed to have a car. I'll just say that. My butt was bruised the next day... I think I've gotten soft. We were tracing for an hour and half in the frigid weather and we were hoping that just one person would let us in so that we could warm up. Nobody let us in, but a few people scheduled return appointments with us. It was awesome :) I love tracting. I wish I could do more of it.

Then on friday we were told to stop driving and start walking everywhere. It snowed easily a foot and a half here in Canby. They get snow here like every 5 or 6 years. ha ha. kinda crazy. right after our cars got grounded a member in the ward told us that he was going to drop off something. Little did we know he was going to drop off half of the hostess store. Want any twinkies? I had literally forgotten what those things tasted like. We had a lot of fun walking everywhere. It was nice to just change up the routine. We got to spend a lot of our snow time with the A. family and also with D. It was amazing to see those miracles come to pass.

We asked H. (she came home from her mission the day before I got to canby for medical stuff) if she would like to see an example of the plan of salvation lesson so that she could learn how to teach it. She said yes, and we got D. over there so we could actually go inside, and also so that we could teach him at the same time. He had a ton of good insights. He's still in that fighting the middle ground stage of things though. He's got a girlfriend that's anti religion, but is still comfortable around us. He knows he wants to be active, but he's got some decisions to make concerning a lot of things. I hope we can get in with him more this week. We gave him a "Preach my Gospel" missionary manual after our dinner appt on Friday. He thanked us for it. He was kind of stoked about it. 

We picked up two new investigators that we will be turning over to the Spanish and YSA elders this week. I'm glad to give them both more work to do, because both sets need the help in finding new investigators. They are both pretty solid investigators too. 

Other than that, we had a little fun playing in the snow with people who just needed the one on one time and other less actives. It was a good week. Church was cancelled. But it was good stuff.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, we taught a lesson with E. while trudging in the snow for 2 hours, and then it was another hour of travel time on top of that. It was awesome. I totally destroyed my shoes walking around for the last three days in them because of the ice layer (which was a result of the freezing rain on top of the snow) but it was a lot of fun. 

I love you guys a lot. One thing that stuck out to me just last night was the idea that the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are actually Jesus' mission journals. Jesus had a lot of the same experiences that we do as missionaries. Going from area to area, even Jesus did not have the same level of success in each City. But despite the mocking and the litany of disrespect that he received he remained stalwart and true to the things that he learned about the eternal nature of his Father. He taught the people with parables that the people were familiar with. He tried brand new ways of reaching each individual person. He wasn't stagnant, he was constant. He wasn't belligerent, he was bold. He may not have been liked by everyone, but His mercy was and is for everyone. 

I love you all. I hope the mercy and grace of Christ has touched your lives this week. I hope you can see the miracles in each and every day. I'm rooting for you, and I pray for you guys.

Love,

Your Elder Lloyd

Super Church Sunday

February 3, 2014

This has been an incredible week. Many things have happened for the
good of  everything. I seriously wish I could express all the miracles
that go on in a single week here in the mission field, but if I did
you'd just be watching an unedited movie of my life because it's
constant.

So Monday and Tuesday was fairly normal. Although it seems to be that
everyone that we're teaching this week needs to be taught the Ten
Commandments. Maybe God's trying to tell me something... Hmmm. I love
just being able to share the message of the gospel and the scriptures
with people. The Ten Commandments, aka the Decalogue for all of you
that have read "Jesus the Christ," really boils down the whole gospel
into such simple terms. It was so interesting to see that with each
person that we taught we broke the Ten Commandments into 2-3 lessons.
There's so much depth to them if you actually start to think about
them. This morning we were actually teaching them to C. and we got
on the subject of honoring our parents. Many ideas were exchanged on
what exactly that meant.

-back in the law of Moses a father could justifiably kill a son or
daughter if they were disrespectful to him or his wife.
- you obtain a length of days on the land as you show your care for
your parents in their old age, which your children will see your
example Nd therefore take care of you
- as you hearken to the counsel of your mother and father you learn
intelligence through obedience. D&c 130:19. When we live intelligent
lives we live full and spirit driven lives.
- honoring our parents is symbolic of honoring our Heavenly Father.
Hebrews 12:9 we honor god by obeying him. Obedience shows our love. If
it shows god our love for him, then why not would obedience to our
parents show our love for them?

Many more ideas were shared but those were the ones that stood out to
me the most.

So on Wednesday we got iPads. It has changed my iWork's of missionary
work soooo much. Everything that E. could possibly ever need is here
on huge iPad. Videos, scriptures, visual aids. Pamphlets, Facebook,
email, our area books, maps, Siri, and much much more. I feel like I'm
getting sucked into technology more and more. I don't know if I like
it, but maybe that's just because our mission president told us that
we need to take away some proselyting time to update the devices with
the entire area book by hand by the end of the transfer,which ends in
three weeks. That's over ten years of records in some cases. Oi! It
didn't help that we also had to do stake reports on top of that. I
felt little bit more like a Full time secretary last week.

The iPads really have helped though. I've been reading though the
lasts session of general conference on the gospel library app, (Mind
you this is the first time I've owned a "i" anything!) and I've been
reminded of a lot of good things. I really needed to hear "look ahead
and believe" by Elder Dube. I had been struggling with comparing
myself to myself from back when I served in West Linn. I absolutely
loved the people in west linn. They are some of my best friends and
always will be, especially Dustin. But my problem was that I was
looking too much on the past and not looking forward to what God has
waiting for me to do. I had plateaued. Which, given the circumstances
with difficult companions, is easy to do. But it's not right. It's not
good to fall into. The thoughts of "there is much yet to do" we're
pounding in my head as I read through that talk. I got me super pumped
up. When we were walking out on the streets my confidence was through
the roof because I knew that I was there for a reason. We carry the
kingdom of god with us as we enter into people's houses. We are on the
most important mission that God could ever ask of us, to invite others
to come back to him.

What also is quite interesting to me is that many of the people that
we are currently teaching have absolutely no Christian background at
all. The idea of god is foreign to them. It makes for a much slower
teaching pace. But it's also rally good for us to get back to basics
and dig deeper into the meaning of things with these people.

This last Sunday I had the opportunity to attend three different
church services. E. came to the other ward because of schedule
conflicts with our ward. So I went with him to fast and testimony
meeting,which was really good. That was one of the best testimony
meetings I've seen in a ward in a long time. E. had some good
questions. After that we went with E. to his church. It's a Baptist
 Church. I think. It was little odd for me to see people clapping and
waving the hands to the Christian rock music, the pastor praying while
the music was still going on, the collection plate going around,
Christian adoption services soliciting families during the main
service and so forth. It wasn't odd because I thought it was bad, but
because I wasn't used to it. I remember going to a Baptist Church with
uncle Edwin back in Texas, but this one was different. Then again it's
been 15 years or so. There was a lot more technology involved in this
one. I really felt the spirit while we were singing their songs, I
just wish I had had a chance to hear some of the preaching. We had to
leave to go to our own ward after 45 min, and they still hadn't
preached yet. E. told us afterwards that February is "missions
month" there so that's why they were soliciting so much during this
service. He also told us that their sermons are usually only about
5-10 minutes for the whole thing. I was a little baffled. I guess I'm
just used to 3 hours worth of hearing from the scriptures and
preaching. Great and wonderfully friendly people. They really focused
on marriage which was awesome. We got invited to the pastors Super
Bowl party later on that day and we went. It was fun to talk to E.
there while he was in his Patriots jersey and the pastor was dressed
down more. We talked about a lot of things while not watching the game
like the word of wisdom and scripture study. They thought we couldn't
drink soda at all. It was good to correct misunderstandings about our
beliefs in such a non threatening situation.
Well I've got to go. I know there's a lot more at I wish I could share
with you, but there's just no time. I love you all and hope you all
had a very wonderful super bowl Sunday.

Dustin- I guess the sea hawks proved that they are truly the best. We
heard about the score. That's horrible. I'm sure you were pumped!

Recalibration

January 27, 2014

Wow, this week was awesome, nothin' but awesome. We were able to work extensively with T. and D. this week. We taught them both 3 times each this week. It's been really cool and challenging learning how to teach someone with legitimate ADHD. We really have to think outside the box on how to teach the fundamental principles of the doctrine. Tony responds much better to videos and the gospel principles book for Sunday School class. He can't remember much of what we teach him, but he does remember what he reads. It's interesting. We're trying to relate everything to him as much as possible so that his interest remains while we teach.

We got to eat with T. and his extended family on his wife's side. They offered me a habenjero pepper since it was the first time that I had eaten at their house (it's tradition that they do). They told me to take a bite, but I put the whole pepper in my mouth. I held my own very well I thought. My mouth didn't start on fire till after about 30 seconds. I swallowed a good chunk, but I spit the rest out. My stomach didn't feel so good after that for the next 24 hours, but it was AWESOME! You should see the video... after I get home. I'm not posting that one on Facebook till then. I tried to play it off as best I could. There was sweat and tears. Thankfully no blood, but it was awesome!

So we went over with D. a couple times to practice some music. One night the other elders didn't show up so he just opened up to us and told us what he was really going through and his intentions. He wants to be back active in the church and has even had thoughts about serving a mission (he's 23 years old and has tattoos). He just needs to take things kind of slow right now. It's hard for someone to be less active for the majority of their lives and then try to jump straight back into it. He has the biggest heart. he's really talented with his music too. 

We had an old investigator and her less active husband from before my time here in Canby walk back into church after over 3 months! It was awesome. He's a way cool dude. He's 24, he's a marine and now he's working as a hired security guard at a top secret facility. It's really cool actually. He just wants to find a nice quiet place to raise his family. That's nothing but a miracle that he came back on his own free will considering they are temporarily living in a hotel in downtown Portland.

This week was a good reflecting week for me. We were able to work hard and long hours. We were able to hear from an Apostle. We were able to go to the temple for an endowment session, and we were able to teach our entire zone how to be effective teachers. 

The idea of Charity and compassion is something that I'm personally working on. It comes as we view others in their eternal nature. If we view them, as God views us, as where they can be in the future rather than what they've messed up on now we can be merciful yet still constant in our standards. We can show others the consequences of their actions, but still show them how if they will simply rededicate themselves to living a Christ Centered life with obedience to the commandments they will still see just as bright a future than if they had never messed up at all. We can show those we love the benefits of righteous living. When they truly see the benefits, they will be more motivated than if we constantly remind them of where they "fell short of the glory of God" in the past. those were just some thoughts that I've had lately

Hearing an apostle speak and shaking his hand was awesome. But the thing that possibly stood out to me the most was the fact that Elder Christofferson is a man. He is just like you and me. He even told us that HE has questions about the gospel. He is still subject to temptation and sin. He's actually a little shorter than I thought he would be. I literally saw before me a man. When I heard him speak it was no different than if I had heard my companion speak. When he spoke it wasn't anything different than going to church. The SPIRIT was still the one that taught me what I learned. But the spirit was definitely there. It was strong. I saw Elder Christofferson take moments to stall and think. He's a man. He doesn't have all the answers, but he listens to the spirit. He's built a level of trust with God that I haven't. When God tells him something, he follows through. He's actually willing to sacrifice what's required of him. He doesn't go looking for an extra measure of his life to sacrifice. He just does what the Spirit directs. 

Thinking about that made the idea of God much more personable. God is still in the image of man. He looks like us. He feels like us. If we saw him we'd be able to shake his hand just like I did Elder Christofferson. God isn't some ethereal spirit that wanders from sea to sea. He's a real being and he loves us. the question is when we see him, can he trust us?

I love you all. I'm not sure if I expressed everything like I wanted to, but I've got to run off. We've got to go cut another missionaries hair. I love you guys so much!

 

Love ya!

your elder Lloyd