Week 27 (Week 10 in Michigan)

 

 Port Austin fun!

Hello again y'all! This week has been wonderful! I hope you are all doing well and staying safe.

Earlier this week we went over to Sister Pedinger's house again to do some more service. It started with merely clearing out some stuff to set up some pallets for firewood during the winter, and then after a little while, we started pruning trees with any tool we could find. She had 3 clippers, and a saw, but we had to improvise with a huge dull axe (a bad axe 😆) and a rake for the rest since there were 6 of us. Let's just say, it was hard work, but super fun. We worked for about 3 hours and pruned back all that she needed. Although, we didn't have time to help take care of the brush on the ground.

Service time.

After service, we rushed back home, showered, and got dressed, in order to head to a lesson. This time with our miracle friend Ben, who came to church last Sunday. He's quite the interesting guy! In his apartment, he had a Lord of the Rings Risk set out, and was working on making his own complicated board game inspired by Risk. He also has a sweet electric guitar that he doesn't even play! And then, after a little while, we noticed a record player with tons of oldies records. Anyways, the lesson went quite well, and Ben agreed to come to church again and meet with us again the following week as well. Fast forward to Sunday and he came once again to church!

This week as well we had 2 wonderful lessons with our friend Tim. The first time he had mainly been reading a biography about Joseph Smith to learn more of the history of the church, but upon leaving him with a Come Follow Me booklet, he read along with this week's scriptures. Let me tell you, this man is very knowledgeable when it comes to history, and already he seems to know a lot about our church history. We had some great discussions with him, in which he did a lot of talking. In fact, several times he would ask a question and then kind of answer it himself, and he is quite quickly realizing how much what we have been teaching makes sense. In our second meeting, Tim was amazed by how perfectly Come Follow Me aligned with what we had been discussing. When we first met him we asked him to read 3 Nephi 11, and he did so and read a few chapters further as well. But Come Follow Me this last week covered 3 Nephi 8-11 and gave him some better context. It was just so awesome! 

This week as well we had the opportunity to have a member of the Seventy, Elder Basset, come to our mission. He gave us some great instruction, and shared with us some cool insight about the biblical story of David and Goliath. However, I heard that he shared some really profound mission experiences in a meeting exclusively with brand new missionaries and their trainers... Elder Huntsman gave us some of the details, but I guess the rest of us missed out. Nonetheless, it was really cool to get to hear from Elder Basset, even though he wasn't actually here in person. 

One day we also decided to go to a burger joint called Big Boy which we had been to a couple of times since it is good and somewhat cheap. When we got our food we were surprised to see that the fries were different, and the burgers were slightly different too. Even some of their menu items had gotten more expensive. The fries were not near as good, and the burgers were far messier than they were before. Now don't get me wrong, we still enjoyed ourselves, but it was just a little bit of a let down. When we asked one of the waitresses if they had changed chefs or something, she said no, that nothing had changed. We left a bit suspicious, but satisfied nonetheless.

One of the things Elder Basset really stressed during our Mission Tour this week was getting to know our members and gaining their trust. So to start out we tried to call up some members that we don't know too well. After a couple of voicemails left, we decided to call Brother Lowry, a member in our branch that goes to church fairly frequently. When we pulled up his number, there were two different Brother Lowrys, Guy and Ken Lowry. I asked which one was which and Elder Christiansen thought Guy was the one who we somewhat knew. We called up Guy Lowry, and set up a lesson with him in a few days. Then, when the lesson came up, we drove to his apartment complex, and were trying to make out which one was his. This bigger guy started walking towards us, and none of us recognized him, so we said hi and asked what his name was. Then he was like "uhh. I'm Guy Lowry". Awkward... We totally thought we were meeting with the Lowry that attends our branch, but instead we were meeting with his brother, Guy. It was perfect though, because we hardly knew him. He explained why he can't attend church right now due to health problems, and can't over zoom because he doesn't have internet, which explains why we had never met him before. Actually, while we were talking with him outside, a lady pulled up in a van, and walked up to us, handing us a little booklet of the book of John from the Bible. Turns out she was an evangelical minister. We accepted her booklet, and in return gave her a Book of Mormon with our number in it as well. A good exchange if you ask me!

This week I was studying quite a bit of the Saints Volume 2, and I was once again amazed by the faith of the early Latter-day Saints. At one point during the early settlement of the Salt Lake Valley, a swarm of crickets swarmed the saints' crops, and nothing the people did seemed to stop them. When things seemed dreary, many thought of abandoning Salt Lake and instead moving to the thriving California area, but during a meeting of the Saints in which John Smith (Joseph Smith's Uncle) was urging the people to trust in the Lord, a huge concourse of seagulls came down into the valley and scooped up many of the crickets, allowing the Saints enough food to survive and not starve. Sometimes it can be easy to think that miracles are simply a thing that occurred during ancient times, as recorded in the Bible and Book of Mormon, but I know that miracles still occur today, and that God still speaks to and directs his children today, just as he has always done.

I love you all and I hope you have a wonderful week! 

~Elder Kasey Lightheart