Week 28 (Week 11 in Michigan)

 

Lake Huron Selfie!

Hello again everyone! Another week has gone by, and boy has it been great! 

One of the highlights of this week was meeting with our friend Ben so much. We met with him 3 times this week, twice for lessons, and a third time to eat at a pizza place called the Gathering Place. It was actually super good pizza, and they had a sale that night, so it was perfect. Unfortunately, Ben had to work on Sunday this week and couldn't come to church, but we talked to him about General Conference next week and he is planning on watching at least some of the sessions. 

Pizza with Ben!

While walking around the other day we ran into a type of worship service out on the street, in front of the courthouse. We stayed for a little bit while everyone sang songs, and the head person prayed for us missionaries. A guy we had met quite a while ago named Alen was there, and so we got to catch up with him a little bit. After the service was over, we walked with Alen, and he invited us over. He apologized for not answering our calls, and talked with us for about an hour. He's a great guy, and very humble, and has gone from church to church over the years, but made it clear to us that he doesn't plan on converting. Nonetheless we are excited to keep meeting with him, even just to get to know him better.

At one point this week as well, we discovered a custom t-shirt shop near us, and naturally decided to make some. We actually should be getting them sometime today, so hopefully I can attach some photos of them! But we each bought a shirt for ourselves, all 6 of us, and then also all pitched in to buy one for Elder Earle who was living here last transfer. The model for the shirts was to have "Bad Axe Boys" on the front, and a skull and cross axes on the back with different colored bandanas for each of us (like a skull and cross bones but with hatchets for the bones). And then on the back too all of us will have our nicknames, mine being "The Quiet One". If you can't already tell, we have really had a blast together here in Bad Axe despite the limitations still in place with missionary work.

The "Bad Axe Boys" and our custom t-shirts.

Once again this week, on Friday, we went and helped out Sister Pedinger at her farmhouse. Last time we pruned a bunch of trees down, and this time we simply piled up all those branches and raked up all the little needles and pinecones. After a few hours of work, we had to get going, and Sister Pedinger sent us away with some goat cheese and crackers. You know, I totally thought the goat cheese and milk she let us try would be kind of off, but both tasted great! But yeah, we were very grateful for her kindness!

This Sunday as well was unique. Lately we had been having over 25 people come in person to church, and we had to have some members just sit outside. Well we decided to open up 2 sacrament meetings to fix this, and also started doing the actual sacrament part of the meeting at the end so that those online wouldn't have to wait for us in person to do the sacrament. It was definitely weird, but also very special. We even had one of the new boys in the ward pass the sacrament.

While I was reading in the New Testament, in 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, I was really impressed by the faith of the Saints in Thessalonica. Even after the apostles had left them, they stayed faithful through much affliction, and were great examples to the people of Macedonia and Achaia (some of the surrounding cities I assume). Sometimes I find it hard to connect with the people of the Old and New Testament, but lately I've been seeing such great parallels between the early Latter Day Saints and the early Christian saints in the Old World. I've never been a huge history buff, but lately the history of the Church of Jesus Christ has fascinated me, notwithstanding of course the great spiritual truths within the scriptures as well.

Anyways, I hope you all have a wonderful week! ~Elder Kasey Lightheart

Sand castle church for a video.

Singing for a Sunday Devotional