January 23, 2012

1/23/2012

Wow, you are super lucky! I wish I could go to the temple all the time.  It wasn't until the last time I could go during the MTC that I realized that going through is very important.

About Frank.... NO WAY!!!!! thats awesome!!! Who is baptizing him?? And I, too, will admit, that I was a little teary eyed....just for a second

Not a lot happened this week except that we nailed 20 lessons finally!! (That is this mission’s standard of excellence.)  It’s taken 6 weeks, but we finally reached it.  

Sunday the Bishop walked up to me and asked me if I would bear my testimony for 5 minutes, because one of the speakers forgot that they were giving the talk today.  I looked at him and said that, that was a long time for 1 testimony. I asked if I could instead give a talk and he agreed to that. I looked at my watch and realized that I had about 10 minutes to prepare one before sacrament meeting started... right then this scripture popped into my head:

"D&C 84:  85   Neither take ye thought beforehand what ye shall say; but treasure up in your minds continually the words of life, and it shall be given you in the very hour that portion that shall be meted unto every man"

I said alright, and wrote down the scriptures that came to my mind next on a 3x5 card    2 Nephi 31:5-7;10-11  &   D&C 18:10;15-16.

I talked about the importance of baptism and missionary work intertwined. Everyone said it was a great talk; all I wish is that I could remember what I said...

Also I’ve been noticing that my memory has been going down the drain.  Even my companion says that my memory is "shot".  I just hope that if he’s transferred to a different area tomorrow, that I can be blessed with a knowledge of this area and the people in it... maybe I just need to forget my issues and just start getting to work!

The other day we were able to do some service work. When I say service work, I mean demo a part-members bathroom. It was super fun, we all used sludge hammers and normal hammers. We were able to smash in the toilet and the bathtub. The father isn't a member, and neither is the son, but we are working on them. The son has taken all the lessons, but his father wants his son to wait 6 months to show that he really wants to be baptized. Sadly, the son can only play video games on Sundays, and sometimes he just stays home from church with his dad to play Oblivion and Skyrim. They play a lot of video games; the one they love to play is Oblivion, and that is the game I ended up playing for some time back home.

At the end of the demo, everyone was bleeding, except my companion and I. (Keep in mind that pieces of tile were flying around everywhere.) the wife asked why that was and if that was because we had angels watching over us. I said "yes." She turned around to the husband and said "see." I guess they were talking about it earlier. Anyway, we are having dinner at their house later tonight. Hopefully we can better understand how we can help them understand why it is that this gospel is important.

Also we were asked to teach the Relief Society (women’s organization) on Thursday night. We did a role play of how you could introduce the gospel to your neighbors and how to get past the awkward stages of talking about it. We did pretty well and threw in a bunch of humorous things. It went over pretty well.

We had a dinner every night this week, and when people get sick, they bring us a huge load of food, and then we get a call/text from someone asking if we can come over for dinner that exact same night! Also, something to note is that EVERYONE loves football, when we come over, some of the members leave the TV on even though we are eating dinner and run back and forth.

Alma 26:12

We have used this scripture a ton in most of our lessons and it really does help us understand the testimony of our investigators.

Love,

Elder Benedict VIII