Greetings from The Great OCM!
It
has been a fun-filled week here, mainly because of General Conference!
Those men are definitely inspired and gave talks specifically for me and
our investigators here.
Last night we went on splits. Elder Hill and I stayed
out on bikes while Elder Jensen went out with a member. While we were
out it started pouring rain so Elder Hill and I got drenched. That was
an adventure. I thought it was rather fun actually.
There is a young family we are teaching here and they
are teaching me just as much as we are teaching them. They have sooo
many questions and they know a lot about deep doctrine for some reason.
Those lessons are pretty intimidating. I get nervous for those ones.
Especially since there is so much studying to do in preparation to those
lessons because it is not things as simple as what is faith, but more
like: tithing, the temple, what Christ's atonement did for everyone, and
the resurrection to name off just a few. But is good to be humbled and
to know that you have so much yet to learn.
I would just like to emphasize a couple of things from
General Conference, namely a talk given by Elder Ballard
concerning...you guessed it...missionary work. Missionary work as he
says is not a responsibility for the full time missionaries only, but
for everyone. He mentioned how many members are scared for missionary
work to the point where they do not pray for missionary experiences
because they don't want their prayer to be answered. I challenge all of
you to do as the apostle directs and do these two things:
1. pray every day for a missionary experience
2. talk to one person about the gospel/refer them to the missionaries before Christmas.
This
talk was perfect for our ward fast we have coming up. Hopefully the
members in our area here will catch the fire of this great work.
Realize, that if every member of the church obeyed this challenge then
the missionary force would receive 15 million referrals in the next 2
months, and from referrals come the greatest percentage of baptisms.
One of my other favorite talks was Dieter F Utchdorfs
during the Saturday morning session. It seemed to be specific to one of
our investigator's needs, mainly because it spoke of how our church
leaders sometimes make mistakes but this does not mean that the church
is not perfect, simply that mortal men make mistakes. Amazingly, this
investigator and his wife attended that very session of conference.
I just would like to close with my personal testimony
that missionary work is hard!! very hard yes! The Lord never asks us to
do comfortable things! We have come here to this earth not to be
comfortable but to learn, and growth only happens out of the comfort
zone. But what I do know, is that although it is hard and uncomfortable,
there is no greater reward than sharing the gospel and seeing it work
in the lives of the people you are delivering it to. The joys of
missionary work are entitled to you as long as you act, share, and grow.
Just remember that you can do it, there is no one who knows of the
truthfulness of this gospel who is inadequate to share it. I love you
all with all my heart and hope you have a wonderful week.
Love, Elder Beutler
