Week 25 (Week 8 in Michigan)

September 07, 2020

Fried potatoes, onions and beef. Yum!

Hello everyone! This week has been great! With a new transfer starting, many missionaries are moving around, and we are even getting about 38 new missionaries in the next few weeks. These are exciting times for sure! For me personally, my current companion and I will be staying in Bad Axe, but we will be getting a reassigned missionary who was previously serving in Mexico.

Earlier this week my companion and I decided to drive down to a town just on the borders of our area that we hadn't been to yet (or so we thought), called Sebewaing. It turned out to be about as big as Bad Axe! While walking around, we ran into two older ladies who were cleaning up a garage sale. We had a great talk with them, and they both accepted Books of Mormon. As we continued to walk down a main road in the town, we noticed a McDonalds that seemed familiar. Turns out we had driven through this town many times. Whenever we drove down for zone conference or transfers, we drove through this town, and google maps would always say to turn right at the McDonalds.

At the start of this week we had a lesson with a pastor we had previously met with. He's a super nice guy, but he just wasn't willing to listen to what we had to say, so our lesson didn't really go anywhere. However, a few days later we had a lesson with another pastor from a different church, and boy was it night and day, in comparison. His name was Tim, and when we met with him, he had actually read quite a bit of the Book of Mormon since we last saw him. He had some great questions and really enjoyed hearing about our beliefs and about the origins of the Book of Mormon. Though we had given him a fresh copy of the Book of Mormon when we first met him, this time he had a very old version that he had received some time ago that was printed in 1977. It was cool to see the angel Moroni on the cover, and some different pictures at the start of the book as well. It was a super good conversation and it was a huge uplift that both me and my companion needed dearly, after all the rejection we have been receiving. It was especially cool because I had just recently finished reading through the Book of Mormon again and wasn't sure where to study next. I felt prompted to study more deeply 2nd Nephi and, sure enough, I was able to answer a lot of Tim's questions using the verses I read in 2nd Nephi.

We also found out the other day that the Elders down the street still do not have an apartment lined up in their area. Elder Earle is going to be moving up to an area farther up north, but Elder Huntsman is staying here, and he will be getting both a recently reassigned missionary and a brand new missionary as well to train. Yup that's right, he will be training for his LAST transfer of his mission. It also will be his first time training since he never had the opportunity before in his previous mission. That means that in a few days we will have 6 Elders all on the same street. Can you believe that? I sure can't.

At one point this week, I was listening to a talk by Elder Holland called "The Will of the Father" given at BYU some years ago when he was president of the college. It was a very powerful reminder to me of our call as members of Christ's church. He spoke of Jesus and his ministry, how he always was on the errand of his Father, following His eternal plan in everything he did. Even in the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus shrank under the pain of the "bitter cup" he was asked to drink, but nonetheless he submitted himself to the will of his father, and suffered for all of us. Sometimes we are asked to drink a bitter cup ourselves, however difficult, and we can either shrink and be bitter about it, or submit to the will of our Father in heaven, and trust in his eternal vision. Of course, we will never be asked to suffer as Christ did, but that doesn't mean that we won't have trials and hard choices. I'm thankful to know, however, that God is aware of me, and aware of you, and he knows what's best for you, and sees all of us for what we can become, rather than for what we are now. That's why it is so important to do the will of the Father rather than what we may think is best to do, because we don't have the same eternal vision He has.

I'd just like to end with a scripture that stuck out to me this week that I think fits along nicely with this wonderful talk by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland:

"Therefore, fear not, little flock; do good; let earth and hell combine against you, for if ye are built upon my rock, they cannot prevail. (Doctrine and Covenants 6:34) If we are built upon the rock that is Jesus Christ and do the will of our God, we have nothing to fear."

~Elder Kasey Lightheart