November 22, 2015
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| The Holy Deserts of Nevada - haha! |
Good evening everyone!! I am sure that you are wondering why I
am on my email right now….since it’s Sunday night instead of Monday. We actually just drove across the Holy
Deserts of Nevada and got here in Elko tonight, and we got permission to email
tonight because we won't have a P-day this week. So here I am.
But it has been a great week!! We had 3 of our 4 zone conferences, with our
last one tomorrow here in Elko. Each one has been such a total blast, and I
have learned so much from each one. It
is great!
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| The Sparks and Quincy Zone Conference |
I mentioned last week that our conferences were on Chapter 1 of
Preach My Gospel and the 4th missionary talk, and it has been awesome. Elder
Ash and I have given our portion of the meetings about what it means to be a
successful missionary and how to teach with power and authority and what it
means to teach with power and authority. Preach My Gospel tells us that our
success is measured by our commitment to teach and invite others to come unto
Christ, so we also talked about what it means to be committed. Elder Ash is a great
missionary and is really good at giving trainings, so it has been lots of fun
to get up there with him and work with the different zones. This round of zone
conferences has been a lot different than the first round, because this round
we are doing combined zone conferences – with at least two zones each
conference. And tomorrow we have the 3
zones on the east side coming together here in Elko. So each conference has
been a bigger group, which has its pros and cons. It is always fun to get
together and see other missionaries and play games and converse with them, but
it is also fun to work with them on a more individual basis. With these bigger
groups they can tend to be a little bit rowdier, too. But nonetheless, we love
attending these meetings and seeing all the missionaries in the mission!
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| The infamous space heater in our room |
This past week we finally were able to get our hands on a little
space heater to put upstairs by our beds, because our heater downstairs works
great, but there is like no way for the air to get upstairs, so the upstairs is
usually about 10 degrees cooler than the downstairs. But we finally got our
hands on one and set it up between our beds. I guess it works just a little too
well, because the other night apparently I woke up and yelled, "It's so
DAGGUM HOT up here, TURN IT OFF!!" while I was slapping the ground around
the heater trying to find the heater to turn it off. I had no recollection of
this happening, but in the morning Elder Ash asked me, "How did you
sleep?" and "We're you warm enough?" and I answered "I
slept great, and yeah I was plenty warm, how ‘bout yourself?" And then he
explained to me. Elder Ash is a good sport. I never knew that I was such a
loud, reckless sleeper...all of my companions have told me funny stories along
those lines...many of which I yelled in Spanish, so most of my companions can't
even understand what’s going on – haha!
Another funny experience happened today at church: In the middle
of Sacrament meeting these two kids of a recent convert got up and starting
running around and yelling in the chapel during the middle of a talk! It drew
the attention of just about the whole room, and the chapel is funny shaped, so
they were standing right in the middle. And then the little girl yelled at her
brother, "NO! I need to go to the bathroom, too!" and then shoved her
brother into one of the pews and took off running. It was quite comical, but
then again they weren't my kids running around. But certainly one to remember.
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| Our crazy schedule |
This transfer is actually totally CRAZY for us, and beginning
today for the next three weeks, we don't have a single day without something
going on, except for Sundays! I won't
have a p-day this week, but instead we are doing 4 exchanges and have a zone
conference tomorrow, and then Thanksgiving right in the middle of the week! (Which
we are way excited for…to have a turkey bowl with the Sparks zone, and then
dinner with an awesome family in the ward!) So it will be a whirlwind the next
few weeks, but we are excited for all of it.
President Chesnut was bouncing the idea around with me last
transfer of putting another set of missionaries in our ward and splitting our
area, and then having us travel more around the mission and work more with the
missionaries and proselyte less. This probably won't happen this transfer, but
the transfer in February we have to open up at least 2 new areas, and so we
have talked about doing it then. So we will see, I think it would be exciting
to do some more traveling and get to know the other missionaries better, but
that would also mean that I would get to do less of what I love to do the most,
which is teach the Gospel! So we will
see what we end up choosing and what the Lord wants.
Next week we will have Elder Snow come and visit our mission and
have a mission tour and we are super excited for that! And then we also got
word from President Chesnut two days ago that President Robbins of the
presidency of the seventy has asked to come on another mission tour at the
beginning of January, so we have a hunch that he is coming to introduce iPads
to the mission...but we aren't sure yet. We are going to ask President Chesnut
tomorrow and see if he knows anything about iPads yet, but that would be
exciting if we did.
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| Exchanges with Elder Cruz |
Our proselyting area really seems to take a hit when we are busy
with zone conferences and everything else. It seems as though all of our solid
investigators who are progressing slowly just come to a halt when we get super
busy...and it stinks!! I wish so badly that we could keep up our area while we
are attending all of these meetings. But oh well, it teaches us that we really
need to rely on the Lord to bless our area while we are away from it, work as
hard as we can when we are working in our area, and pray and expect
miracles!
Not only does our proselyting area take a hit when we aren't
working, I feel as though I personally take a hit, too, because I don't get the
chance to study! It’s become like my favorite part of the day, and it really is
a huge blessing that I kinda take for granted until I don't have it! But one
thing that I did learn this week in studies, however comes from the Bible
Dictionary under the topic of faith. It tells us: "strong faith is
developed by obedience to the gospel of Jesus Christ; in other words, faith comes
by righteousness."
So we can gain faith by simply just being obedient, and as we
practice those good works, our faith grows. But then it also tells us that,
"faith always moves its possessor to some kind of physical and mental
action" – so once we have faith,
that faith inspires us to have better works. So it’s this weird thing that
faith grows by our works, but our works grow our faith. It produces this cycle
that grows our faith stronger and stronger. The opposite is also true, if we
stop doing small things to grow our faith, then our faith slowly decreases.
Satan knows this and tries to tell us it’s OK to miss just one week of church,
or that it’s OK if we don't say our prayers. So the only way to get faith or to
grow it is to just start somewhere, jump in, and give it a try. This can be
something simple such as saying a prayer, attending church, opening the
scriptures...nothing too crazy, it doesn't take rocket science to grow one's
faith.
Well – I have to wrap it up, we are going to plan our day for
tomorrow and then catch some sleep! We have zone conference tomorrow and then
we are going on splits with the Zone Leaders here in Elko. It should be a great
day!
I love being a missionary. I love being a representative of my
Savior Jesus Christ. I know without a doubt that this is HIS church and HIS
work. I know that His gospel blesses families, and I know that I want my future
family to be blessed by that Gospel.
I love you guys!
Love,
Elder
Todd
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