Tuesday, May 3, 2016

3/28-4/03/2016: The Seasoning

"Christ built a home to best accommodate the spiritual needs of His
children. It was called His Church. The spiritual blueprint for this
Church can be found in the New Testament. Occasionally the Savior made
a “change order” to the blueprint. Such a change order came in the
form of a revelation. For example, the Savior initially commanded His
Apostles to preach the gospel to the house of Israel but not to the
Gentiles (see Matthew 10:5–6). After the Savior’s Ascension, however,
He gave Peter a spiritual change order--a revelation by way of a
vision--that the gospel should now be taught also to the Gentiles (see
Acts 10). This experience of Peter taught at least two important
governance principles in Christ’s Church: one, the blueprint could be
changed, but only by revelation from Christ, and second, such
revelation would come to the prophet who was God’s spokesman on earth.
In other words, God’s Church would be governed by divine revelation
and by order.
If one desired to discover Christ’s Church today, he would want to
match the spiritual blueprint found in the New Testament against every
Christian church in the world until he discovered a church that
matched the blueprint--organization for organization, teaching for
teaching, ordinance for ordinance, fruit for fruit, and revelation for
revelation. In doing so, he might find some churches that had some
similarities--a teaching or two that overlapped, an ordinance that is
the same, some offices that bear common names--but he will only find
one church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that
matches the blueprint in every material respect."
(Tad R. Callister, What is the Blueprint of Christ's church?, CES devotionals)

I really like what he goes on to say in listing all of the different
parts of Christ's church that match what we have today. I know this is
the true church, and that everything in it matches perfectly Christ's
church!



3/28
We did a bunch of cool zone stuff for preparation day- lead by the
best zone leaders ever! First, we had a really sweet Easter egg hunt
around the stake center. They put candy in balloons, eggs, and all
over the stake center. It was super sweet and they were able to do a
good job of getting candy (and tacos may I add) into balloons without
destroying them! Then we played chair soccer- just like regular soccer
*futbol* except it's a free for all and the chairs are your goals.
It's super crazy! I got marked by the zone leaders all up and down my
arm, marks that feel like they're going to be with me for a while
haha. We played signs (at the sister's request) after that. None of
the elders wanted to play it really, but once we had started playing
it, we all had fun with it.
The only lesson we had after that was with brother Gowey. He's really
changed into someone he wasn't before since I first started teaching
him. Now that he has been baptized, and that he is on the road to
eternal life, I can definitely see that he is changing to be something
different.
3/29
We had interviews with president Holmes today; 2nd interview for this
transfer, oddly enough. It was really cool to be able to talk with him
a little though, about what's happening at home, what I can do to help
my area, my companion, and all such things like that haha. He and his
wife fed us lunch, and they made Oreo blast cheesecake........... For
the win
I got to go on exchange with Elder Munroe, the only elder I've been on
an exchange with so far that was from the best place in the world-
otherwise known as Phoenix, Arizona!!! (It took my like 9 tries to
spell that right......) It was really cool to be able to talk to him
about all the cool stuff back at home, and how it relates to doing
missionary work. Sweet exchange!
He didn't have too much planned for us to do, so we spent almost 4
hours Tracting... And tracting... And Tracting. I'm slowly getting
better at it; it becoming less and less uncomfortable interrupting
people's days to bring them the gospel. As we were walking around I
was able to give Elder Munroe some advice from my experience as a
missionary so far. He really seemed to enjoy that, and remarked that
it was nice to have a "seasoned" companion. Apparently I have been
seasoned, through my many interesting experiences so far.
Speaking of interesting experiences- I got a gun pulled on me.... Again!
Haha we were Tracting and we walked up to this dude who had an AR15 in
his hand, pulling it out of his car. Elder Munroe likes guns so he
started talking with him about it. As we did that a man came out from
the door, very apparently holding something behind his back. We looked
at him, and I saw a flash of light reflection from behind his back.
Elder Munroe said- "oh is that a..." And then he named I type of gun
(I dunno these things). The man said yes, and then pulled it out from
behind his back and pointed it at us.
"This is private property" he said. "And I'm going to have to ask you
to leave." I think his friend caught on to the fact that we weren't
welcome, so he took his AR15 (big gun mind you) and also pointed it at
us. In about 25 seconds, we went from comfortably talking about Jesus
to now having two guns pointed at us.
Oh
Crap
We started to slowly back away, and Elder Munroe said, "oh dude we are
so sorry! We didn't know. We just saw your friend pull out that sweet
thing and we just wanted to talk with him about it." The original gun
guy looked at us confused.
"We are missionaries" I said. "We go around talking to people and it's
not everyday that you see and AR15! We saw it from down the street and
just wanted to come check it out, we didn't want any trouble."
I don't know if our words consoled them, or if the spirit was working
on them, but at that point I guess we calmed them down enough to where
they both lowered their guns. They apologized to us and talked about
how some punks have been walking around beating people up and stealing
all their stuff. We told them how we understood their point of view,
and how it was definitely okay that they did that. They walked back
inside and we walked away, equally as terrified. They said it wouldn't
be long in Montana till you had a gun pulled on you..... it only took
me 7 and a half months!
After that fun experience and a little more Tracting, it got late and
we headed home. As we were getting ready for bed, Elder Munroe started
playing something I recognized on his IPad-- so I went to look. It was
something I recognized: the Phone Call. Haha it had been so long since
I had seen that, I forgot how unimaginable dumb it was! We got into
watching that so much, that when we were done we also watched Johnny
Lingo! Good videos, funny videos.
3/30
Had some fun role plays in District meeting today- they best one was
where I was the star, of course! Haha well the one that I liked the
most was where half of us were going to be the investigators, and the
other half were gong to be missionaries. The catch? Only one of us was
actually interested in what the missionaries had to say. I got
voluntold by elder Hansen to be such investigator, and so I tried my
best to be interested in what the missionaries had to say and to want
to invite them back. When we got back and talked about the role play,
it turns out that no one was really against meeting with the
missionaries- except in elder Hansen- so in reality, I was just the
MOST golden amongst golden investigators. Sister Cox was a little
upset at that, but she did end up using it to bring a cool lesson, so
I guess all is well right?
When we took the zone picture One of our Zone leaders- Elder Cobabae-
made a comment that gave me one heck of a confidence boost! (Not
really) he noted that we literally have just enough elders in the zone
to fulfill all leadership needs. And then there is us- Elder Hansen
and I are the only non-leadership elders companionship in the zone.
Great.
After district meeting and a small district lunch outing was over,
Elder Hansen and I grabbed a couple of rakes and headed over to the
George's to help them rake up pine cones. the pine cones in this time
of year are crazy!!! There is SO MANY OF THEM!!! It took us like an
hour and a half of work, and we only got like halfway done!! Hah well
I guess it means more service for us, right?
We had dinner with Simons, which is always interesting. She is kind of
against the church, their son thinks he's going to hell, and he
(brother Simons) knows so much about weird things in the gospel that
he has a hard time not telling you about it. We always have a fun time
there, as we rarely do much talking. We did have a great
"conversation" about Easter though, and were able to share a cool
video with them. Brother Simons is one of the best cooks I've met on
my mission, and so we had some bomb chicken and dumplings, as well as
this really cool molasses, pudding, graham cracker chocolate cake
thing. Oh man, it was good!
3/31
I'm still no good at weekly planning... We tried again today, and even
though we were planing stuff for the full time we had we didn't get
anything filled for the week. I gotta at least try to figure this
stuff out... But anyways yeah we got some type of planning done and
then we went to Sue's and talked with her about the 10 commandments
and the little hand tricks that go along with them. She seemed to like
them also- so it turns out those tricks aren't shut for kids haha!
After that we went and visited sues' friend, Winnie. Sue told is she
was going through a weird time right now and that she would like our
help. We agreed, and then we headed over to her home and talked with
her about general conference. She said she would watch, but we don't
quite know how committed she actually is. I guess we'll find out this
weekend! After that we headed out to beavertail and we FINALLY were
able to have a good lesson with Abby ad Destinee. When we first got to
their house Desstinee had just gotten home from a track meet, and so
it was sweet to talk with her for a while about track stuff- even
better was the fact that she basically runs all the events I did in
school! So I was able to talk with her about a bunch of her times and
about some of my best memories from high school track. I was even able
to use track to transition into talking about the gospel of Jesus
Christ (and it wasn't even awkward mind you!) which was pretty sweet,
and the two girls seemed to like it. That was probably one of my
favorite lessons so far in this area. The spirit was there, we had a
member walk in halfway through the lesson and just start testifying,
and I was able to talk about one of my favorite things in high
school!!
4/1
APRIL FOOLS!!!! I only pulled one prank, and it was the whole rubber
band around the sink extension thingy and so when elder Hansen turned
the sink on he got sprayed. I got the idea from my uncle David, who if
I understand right does that every year to my grandparents. It's a
classic, and oh man it is pretty funny. I had a bunch of other ideas,
but I didn't do most of them because pranks are definitely frowned
upon on a mission haha. So I just stuck with that!
Besides that the day was just full of planning, travel to lessons that
cancelled, and then of course we had to go into Missoula to get the
necessary conference snacks! Haha I can't wait for conference!!!!!!!
4/2
Conference is blowing my mind...... Holy goodness if conference is
always like this for everyone, why in the heck isn't everyone bouncing
off the walls excited for it?! Everything that was said seemed to just
penetrate into my soul. Maybe it's something special with the spirit
that I have on a mission, but the notes I took kind of stunk because
each time I'd think about something i would be taken off to a tangent
world of self-discovery. I've been really studying about the 2nd
coming over the past transfer, and so everything I heard them talk
about was like- "you need to do ____ or when Christ comes again you
will be destroyed!" And so I was always just sitting around like,
"holy goodness, I need to change." It was super fantastic haha.
We watched the first two sessions of conference with sister Godbout,
an 89 year old lady in the ward. she is super cool, and her cats are
weird. They are like super cuddly.... Until you try to pet them. Then
they run like your hand is made of acid. And them to add onto that,
she said something about how she thought my Uncle Mike was cute when I
pointed him out in the choir. I don;t know what to think about the
people here in Montana!!!!
Priesthood sessions was interesting to start off. First, no one came
early to set up the projector or anything like that. So we had to try
to Jerry-rig an HDMI cable to fit into a laptop with no HDMI port.
Fun. And then, as President Neilson began his talk, the projector died
out. This whole group of "tech specialist" brethren (or at least
that's what they claim to do for work) got up and tired to problem
solve. Having the little bit of tech help support whatever stuff I
have from home, I went up while they were talking, looked that the
projector, and then turned it back on. Turns out, someone had just
bumped the chord and made it turn off. So I just plugged it back in
and turned it on. Haha I felt like a genius! Not really, I just made
all of them look dumb! I felt kinda bad, but whatever I guess we got
to watch the rest of conference so it all worked out in the end,
right?
4/3
General conference still blew my mind. So many talks about how we can
be better prepared for the 2nd coming.
"You can be saviors on mount Zion."
"Obedience is the lifeblood of faith."
Two of my favorite quotes from conference today. When we heard Elder
Cook say the saviors on mount Zion thing, we look at the members we
were with, and we all just kinda let our jaws hit the floor. That hit
all of us hard! Family history is the bomb diggidy apparently! Ahahah
We watched the last session of conference at Sue's, and she made some
pretty boss spaghetti with some of the best sauce I've had. She said
that it wasn't even then best stuff she could make, and that we would
have to wait until later to find out what it really was! Makes me
excited!
We visited Winnie after that, and talked with her about why she didn't
come to conference, and actually turned it into a restoration lesson.
It was super scattered, but it worked really well. We ended up tossing
a tennis ball around while teaching for her dog, which was the most
energetic dog I have ever seen. He literally chased that ball around
for an hour and a half. I knew dog were crazy, but oh my gosh!
Got transfer calls!!!!! My new companion?!
Elder Hansen!
My new area?
Clinton, Drummond, and Seeley Lake
Haha yet another transfer where I don't move and neither does my
companion. Elder Hansen says this has only happened to him like 3-4
times, so I guess I should feel special!! Haha

(Took this personality test, and apparently I'm a parrot/owl. I dunno
what do y'all think?
The zoo zone, everyone- 8 elders, 12 sisters. Only zone in the whole
MISSION where there are more than 6 sisters.... AND WE HAVE 12!
Had a really nice sunset the other day.....)



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