Week 37 (Week 20 in Michigan)

 

Our lovely snowman

This week was quite awesome! We have been having a lot of fun with this Christmas Light The World initiative, and helping others to participate as well! We also had our first major snow day this week in which we got a good 5 inches of snow or so. But overall it was a blast.

For #LightTheWorld we were able to make banana bread for one of our dear friends, nachos for another, make a few posts on social media, and help shovel a member's driveway and car out. A member in our branch had a doctor's appointment the next afternoon and needed us to come up and shovel some snow. Turns out his driveway connects directly to a main road and the snowplows buried his car... well we drove down and shoveled as best we could, and salted the tough ice on the ground under the snow. The drive up in the morning was a little slick, but on our way back most of it had melted away, which was nice. The day before, we also shoveled the sidewalks at our apartment complex, and just after we finished (and naturally started to build a snowman), the maintenance guy over our apartment complex came by and asked us who shoveled the walkways. We explained that we had, and he offered to pay us, but we declined. We even agreed to shovel the sidewalks any time that it snows, and he was very grateful for that. After speaking with him we finished our snowman, and took some selfies with him, which I will definitely include.

Snow day fun!

At one point while having exchanges with our district leader at our apartment, someone knocked at our door and could be heard walking down the stairs. When we opened the door there were 2 Wendy's Frosty on the floor. We rushed to the window and saw one of our members, Byron, getting into his car. We yelled out to him, and I guess he saw that there were more than 2 of us because he came back with 2 more Frosty 5 minutes later. Let's just say, we love Byron.

This P-day we also decided to drive down to Caseville, a little beach town in our area that we haven't seen much of yet, to explore a couple shops. Unfortunately, many shops were closed, including the book store, which we mainly came for. But there was an awesome thrift store open still that we checked out. They actually had some sweet deals and we also ran into Sister Pettinger's mother for the first time. She was very nice and excited to see us. 

It was especially nice this week to have a couple of church Christmas devotionals including a tour of temple square, and a few messages from some of our general authorities. With beautiful music and powerful stories, both of these meetings were very spiritually uplifting. 

To end I'd just like to share with you all about a parable I was reading about the other day. So I have been studying the book "Jesus the Christ" which talks in immense detail about the Savior. Well, this particle parable that I read about is called the "parable of the laborers". It talks about a man who hires laborers to work in his vineyard, and agrees to pay them a penny a day. Well, as the day goes on the man sees others standing idle, and asks them to work for him as well. Even at the last hour of work he asks others to work, and at the end of the day, he gives them all a penny, both the ones who had worked the full day and those who had only worked an hour. Now the laborers who had been working from dusk to dawn were upset, and complained, but the man reminds them of the agreed pay of a penny from the beginning. What this parable is teaching us, is that God wants to reward all of his children. And his reward is available to us all if we so choose to follow his way and his will. But the focus of our lives should not be on how much we should be rewarded and deserve recompense, but rather on how much we are willing to work and give our all to the Lord. "Those who diligently labor, knowing that the Master will give to them whatever is right, and with thought for the work rather than for the wage, shall find themselves more bountifully enriched." 

What greater time than now to focus on God's work, which is to "bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man". We can make a difference in the lives of others, One By One. I invite you all to Light the World this Christmas season by serving others, and I promise the Lord will bless you! 

~Elder Kasey Lightheart

P.S. Just in case you were wondering 😀: