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!