Greetings from the Great OCM!!!
Another great week in the Ohio. Dad, thank you much for your letter, I really enjoyed it. I received it Saturday in the mail.
We
taught some awesome lessons this last week. We brought the members out
and the spirit was super strong, definitely one the best weeks for just
feeling the spirit all the time. The lessons we taught seemed to be
textbook, full length restoration, with a member present and the
appropriate invitations. It was awesome. Right now the focus in our area
is rebuilding the teaching pool since we had a baptism and our
progressing investigators are either not progressing, or just waiting
for divorce paperwork so they can get married. However there has been
some aspects in the Amish community. We are still doing service for an
Amish family and they are getting super comfortable around us. We keep
trying to drop hints to bring up the gospel, but they do not take the
bait! The hard thing is if we start teaching them the lessons and the
community finds out they will loose everything so there is a lot at stake
and we are fasting and praying for this family often. We want to
baptize another Amish family. Other than that all goes well, our recent
convert Don is now working on his family history and working towards the
temple at the end of September. We have a mission temple trip in
October and I am stoked for it! I love the temple! Speaking of which, how
far along is the temple in Cedar City?
So, here is an
insight from my studies: I have recently watched a few of the bible
videos the church came out with (I have them all on disc) and I watched a
few of the ones where Peter is teaching the people from the book of
Acts. I want to be bold like Peter. Elder Donaldson and I realize that
we are not bold enough and do not focus on the restoration of the Gospel
of Jesus Christ enough. For example, we often talk to people about the Book of Mormon because it is interesting. Christ coming to the people in
America. It is just a statement that creates curiosity, but we want
more than curiosity. We are changing how we do things in that we want to
be bold in declaring that The Church has been restored. This is our
unique message to the world. Also, in Acts 5, Peter states that he is a
witness that Jesus is the Christ, along with the witness of the Holy
Ghost. Usually we tell people on the door not to take our word for it,
but to ask God, but if what Peter is saying is applied, we should let our
witness stand along with that of the Holy Ghost, so we are going to
stop telling people not to take our word for it. After all, I am called
of God. By revelation I have been selected as a personal representative
of the Lord Jesus Christ. To stand in His place, to say and do what He
himself would say and do if He personally were ministering among the
very people to whom He has sent me. My voice is His voice, my acts are His acts, my words are His words, and my doctrine is His doctrine, for I
am His agent. And he who receives me receives Him, while he who rejects
me rejects He who sent me. How Great is my calling! How great is our
calling! We have all taken upon ourselves the name of Jesus Christ! We
are all a witness to the world of the restoration of His gospel, along
with the witness of the Holy Ghost. It fulfills the law of 2 witnesses, 3
when you add the BOM.
There are rumors floating around that our mission will have I-pads soon. . . we shall see.
