Hello!
Wow, what a busy, fun and quick week it was!
Everything is
going swimmingly here in Philly. The work is going well despite the
small amount of proselyting time we had due to our schedule. Our
investigator, Thomas, made some great strides this week. His mom told him
she wanted him to stop dating his LDS girlfriend because she and her faith
were a "bad influence" on him and said she wasn't allowed back to their
home anymore. He said that God had led him to this point of his life and
that his life has changed since he has began reading the Book of Mormon
and he was going to stick to it. He told his boss he wasn't working on
Sunday anymore and he showed up to church and had a great time. We are
super excited for how things are going for him.
From Tuesday to
Thursday, we had golden re-trainings and on Friday we had our Mission Leadership Council. It is such a great experience being around new
missionaries and being able to train them but at the same time be
learning from them as well. We had some remarkable discussions. One of the
things that I talked about was how we need to be looking for the good in
others - there is a good quote by President Uchtdorf about looking for
the good in others. It was originally about marriage, but I made some
edits to apply it to missionaries...
"Most people are
about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” It fits nicely with
its scriptural companion: “Seek, and ye shall find.”
If we look for
imperfections in our COMPANION or irritations in our COMPANIONSHIP, we
will certainly find them, because everyone has some. On the other hand,
if we look for the good, we will surely find it, because everyone has
many good qualities too.
Those who save
COMPANIONSHIPS, pull out the weeds and water the flowers. They celebrate
the small acts of grace that spark tender feelings of charity. Those who
save COMPANIONSHIPS save MISSIONS.
Brethren, remember YOUR CALLING.
Work each day to make your COMPANIONSHIP stronger and happier.
My dear friends, let us do our very best to be numbered among those hallowed and happy souls who save their COMPANIONSHIPS.
I told of an
experience (which I am not proud of at all) that I had where I was in a Sacrament meeting and the first speaker gave an incredible talk; the
second speaker got up and the first few moments he must have said the
word "um" 5 times - I caught onto it and decided the rest of his talk I
would tally the amount of "ums" and by the end he had said the word "um"
141 times. I told them how because I was so focused on his
imperfections, I had not noticed the rest of his talk, anything good
about it whatsoever and I just ended up feeling horrible about myself
after I did that. Again, not a story I'm proud of but a learning
experience.
This week I was
able to spend some time in Wilmington with the Zone Leaders over there. We had a great lesson with one of their brand new Chinese investigators,
taught her how to pray, and invited her to be baptized which she so
kindly accepted - beyond prepared. Chinese people are the bomb.
I also had an
exchange with some of the Zone Leaders up north from Lehigh Valley. They
came down to our neck of the woods. Philly was snowing pretty badly, so I
had a really fun first experience driving in the snow - some tips: Don't slam on the brakes, brake earlier than expected. No - I did not
hit anyone's car, just a tip :)
We taught a new
guy named Richard, from Ghana. He's awesome, pretty sincere guy, looking
to change his life, excited to see where things go with him.
This week our
mission's focus chapter from the Book of Mormon was Helaman Chapter 5.
It is fascinating as I read it the amount of times it said the word
"remember" (I counted in a good way). Spencer W. Kimbell taught that
remember is such an important word because we need to remember our
covenants because they will keep us safe - "Remember is the word,
remember is the program." The word remember is found 88 times in the Book
of Mormon, lots of things to remember!
I also love the
popular Helaman 5:12 scripture about building our foundation on Jesus
Christ because when the adversary comes your way, if you're not prepared,
your foundation will fall. As I was reading more about this there was an
analogy made about how you cannot usually tell the difference between a
strand of cobweb and a strand of powerful cable until stress is put on
the strand. Our stress is most likely to come in the form of temptation.
A shallow acceptance of the gospel does not have power to cope w/ the
full powers of darkness.
We had two missionaries go home this week. In his dying testimony, one missionary said
"The church is true, the Book is blue, Jesus was Mormon, too" (pretty sure he --- he was not Mormon, but it was pretty funny)
Love this gospel, love you all.
Elder Wilde
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