William has continued to progress well. We have been teaching him the Gospel of Jesus Christ, so as we taught it, we began teaching about the sacrament. The sacrament kind of ties all of those things together, because it includes enduring to the end, as well as continues repentance after baptism, and the sacrament is how we remember our baptism. In addition, we are promised in the sacrament prayers that we will always have the Spirit to be with us when we strive to do our best to keep the commandments. We stressed the sacrament as part of one of our lessons this week because William hasn't been to church yet. He works on Sunday, and so we asked what he could do to switch his schedule around or something so that he could come to church. We half expected him to have a problem with that and maybe resist just a little bit. But he immediately just said, "Yeah, I'll just ask my supervisor if I can do a double on Friday so I can take Sunday off." I was blown away by his enthusiasm and his faith. He knows he needs to get to church, and he'll do anything to get there. We are going to have a church tour with him on Wednesday morning, to show him around and help him be more comfortable. He's excited for it, and we're excited for him. We are also going to teach him about the Word of Wisdom soon, and he has a few problems with that, so we are praying that he can have the faith about that as he did about attending church.
This week we had a cool chance to visit with the Sisters and with someone they are teaching named Mason. She is going to school here, and the sisters have been teaching her for a month or two. During our district councils, the sisters have brought up some stuff about Mason that they didn't really know what to do about. Basically Mason is very smart, intelligent, and intellectually capable, and she had a lot of deeper level questions about the Church and our more unique and peculiar teachings. The Sisters didn't really know what to do about some of her questions, so they asked Elder Erickson and me to come with them to a lesson so we could explain some things. We have both spent a fair amount of time on our own and together learning about some of the things that Mason had questions about, and were really excited to meet her and talk. Our discussion, which happened on Friday, was one of the best just plain discussions I've had in a while. Most of the time, people who have questions like she does (questions on eternal marriage, deification of man, the separateness of identity yet unity of purpose of the Godhead, etc.) ask them in an attempt to argue. However, Mason was asking with a sincere desire to understand what we believe and why we believe it. There are definitely some things that she believes that are different than what we believe when it comes to the basics, which makes explaining these complicated matters a little more difficult. But we did our best, we each taught our views and shared scriptures to teach them. We testified of truth and invited her to pray about the things we taught. Though our views on things differ, we had a great discussion and were able to teach and clarify many things that she had questions about. She actually invited us and the Sisters over to dinner tonight (Monday) to continue our discussion and we were really excited to go, however we couldn't find another male to come with us so Elder Erickson and I won't be able to attend. But we'll give the Sisters a few pointers on difficult questions if they come up again, and hope that they do well.
Also, one awesome thing this week. On Saturday we got home for the night, and I noticed that I had a message from Laura Villalobos. She said, "Not sure if Joey told you, but we freaking did it! We went through the Temple last night and got sealed to each other and the kids. We just might be getting it together now, kind of...." Haha it was such an awesome thing to hear. The Villalobos fam is one of my favorite bunches of people I've met on my mission. They're so awesome, and I was so glad to hear that they made it to the temple. We've been bugging them to get there for quite some time haha. This month marks 2 years since they joined the Church, and I'm just so happy that they went. I can't wait to come visit them again sometime soon. Maybe we can arrange something before I come home, even though they live in Montgomery and are moving to Huntsville in a week or two - both a pretty good ways from Tuscaloosa. We'll see what happens. I'm just so happy that they made it to the temple and were sealed as a family. The blessings of being an eternal family are awesome. One of the joys of being a missionary is being a part of things like that.
Pretty much the rest of our week was spent trying to find the elect. I know they're out there somewhere, and there are a couple people we met that we've begun to teach, but things are just slow and steady I guess. I'm just grateful to be a missionary, and though I'm excited to get home and back into "normal" life again, I love doing what I'm doing. I plan to finish what I started, and leave it all out here. There's nothing greater I could be doing. Like it says in Alma 29:6, "Why should I desire more than to perform the work to which I have been called?" Right now, I don't really want anything more than that. Why would I? Being a missionary is awesome!
Alrighty, love y'all! Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers. Have a great week!
Elder Beach
#RollTide
Hanging out at "The Club" on p-day - the ward building that also is used as the Institute.
My parents met with other ABM parents in Salt Lake for dinner. Left to right - Elder Johnson's parents, Elder Vanderhoff's parents, my parents, Elder Tribe's parents, Elder Murphy's mom (short one in the front), Elder Stanger's mom behind her, and Elder Ashton's mom on the end.
No comments:
Post a Comment