August 19, 2013

Happy Birthday to Kyson!!! I can’t believe he is getting baptized in a year.

There has been a change in the mail policy, so instead of sending stuff to the mission office you can send it straight to my apartment (This means I expect packages now). Our address is 20679 Glenbrook Terrace #201 Sterling, VA 20165. So you can send me stuff straight off Amazon, too. You could send me some church music to listen to in the car! That would be appreciated. I’m also out of vitamins, so you could send me a supply unless you want me to get frail and unhealthy. Please send me a picture of my state ring too! Speaking of that several people have known I was on the LP basketball team (missionaries, ward members). One guy in the ward had his dad visiting from Utah and he came over and talked to me about it. He also said he watched the Bingham football game and was at the bball game against American fork at UVU.

Last Sunday the bishop had all of the missionaries bear testimony in sacrament meeting because we had extra time and it went really well. We also got our first investigator to sacrament meeting! He came with his 20 year old Autistic daughter and one of the members asked him if she was his wife (hahaha). He also brought a cup of tea with him... hopefully it was herbal (we haven’t got to the word of wisdom yet - haha). It went pretty well and he sat with a member family we had taken to a lesson with us earlier, but he had to leave after sacrament because he has been really sick lately.

Transfers are this Thursday and my companion is headed home. He lives in Kamas, Utah and his dad owns a pizza place called Summit Inn. I thought dad might know where that is. I’ll be getting a new trainer, for my last 6 weeks of training on Thursday as well. It should be good because I will be able to get help from two different points of view. Everything is improving every week and I am feeling ready to show my new companion around when he comes in this week. I know my way around and we have a pretty solid teaching pool.

I’ve decided to memorize a new scripture every week just to help me get to know the scriptures even more. The one I memorized this week was Mark 9:23 "Jesus said unto him: If thou canst believe. All things are possible to him that believeth." This was a great scripture that I hadn’t heard of before, but is now one of my favorites. It really is true, especially on a mission. If you have pre-formed opinions about an area or people then that limits you. You can only achieve what you believe is possible. If you go into an area on your mission and tell yourself that it is a bad area, then you won’t have success. We had interviews with President Riggs and he shared some parts from Alma 48. It talks about how Moroni strengthened the weakest cities in order to defeat the Lamanites. He said that we need to focus on strengthening our weaknesses, so that when the adversary attacks he will be "astonished". The Lamanites were shocked when they attacked the cities and they went from really weak to strong. They knew the weak places because they had attacked them before. Satan knows our weaknesses and he is going to keep attacking them, but if we strengthen them we will "astonish the adversary". That is a motto President Riggs is using. He also uses 1 Nephi 22:26 a lot. It talks about how Satan had no power because of the righteousness of the people. So if we live as righteously as the Nephites did then Satan will have no power over us. This is another reason we are doing this 40 day fast. To strengthen our weaknesses so we can "astonish the adversary".

One of the missionaries in our zone just got back from home because of medical reasons. He was talking to me and was shocked to find out that I had just gotten here because he thought I had been out for awhile. He said I don’t seem/act like a greenie. I forgot to tell you last week that the museum that we went to was in transformers 2. The part where Jetfire attacks them was filmed there. Apparently bed bugs and ticks are a huge problem out here. Some of the missionary apartments have bed bugs and they take forever to get rid of. The ticks carry Lyme disease which causes long term joint problems and short term sickness if you don’t get on an antibiotic. One of the sisters in our district has been dealing with it for the last several weeks, but is better now. I haven’t seen any ticks yet, but I’m looking out because that would put a damper on things. It’s been in the 80's a lot and not to humid lately which has been pretty nice. It has even been kind of chilly in the morning when we jog to the gym.

The other day while we were teaching a lesson the words of a scripture popped into my mind, but I had no idea where the scripture was at (turns out it was 2 Nephi 25:26). I just thought I would make a desperate attempt to find it, so I flipped open the Book of Mormon (an unmarked copy). I just flipped open to a random page and it was right there! I took that as a pretty good sign that I should read it. I shared it with him and he liked it a lot. I’m not sure how much it helped him, but it was pretty awesome to me. We also gave a woman a blessing with oil because her foot has really been bothering her and they don’t know what’s wrong. That was cool.

We've been making invites for members to pray and find three names of people to share the gospel with, so we should be getting a lot of referrals soon. We haven’t been getting any and so we are really trying to push the members. Love you!!!

-Elder Miles