Its been a month since my birthday!!! Its crazy how time flies. So this
week I hit my six month mark. I am officially now past the 6 month
mark!! It feel like it has been forever but at the same time it feels
like it has been a week or 2.
This week was a week
that was so awesome! I was able to go on splits with one of the branch
missionaries and we did amazing things! We taught some really good
lessons and had a blast laughing my head off the whole time!
This
week was really neat. It didnt feel like we taught a lot of lessons
because some days we were punted ( being rejected all day long) but then
other days we taught like 6 lessons a day! It was really neat.
We
had the opportunity to go to the bukid (desolate place in the middle of
nowhere). The middle of nowhere and do a community service project! We
helped a family gather coconuts. It was a lot of hard work.
Did you know coconuts aren't really brown? That may sound like im stupid but i didnt know that before i came on a mission.
I dont have something really fancy this week to talk about.
This
past sunday we had 6 investigators at sacrament meeting. It was so neat
to see them come to church. One of the investigators asked me after
sunday school what it felt like to be baptized. I paused for a second
and had to take a second to think about how to describe the feeling of
being baptized. All I could think of was how happy I was when I was
baptized and how I knew that it was the right thing. So I told her that
and she got the biggest smile on her face. She said she wanted to have
that feeling. Pretty neat! There is a rule in our mission that minors
have to attend church for 4 months consecutive before baptism. So it
means that she cant be baptized till June. Unless her parents are
baptized then it can be 4 weeks.
This upcoming
week is going to hopefully fly by really fast. We have Zone Training
meeting a party tmrw night. ( No its not a real part, Its an open house
for Reyponz)
This week was good for spiritual
insight for me. I have been studying the plan of salvation a lot this
week and I came across the topic of the fall of adam and eve which led
to adversity. As I thought about adversity this week I really came to
understand Christ's Atonement for us. Christ faced a lot of adversity in
his life. Then on top of it all he took upon himself all the sins of
the world so we can return to live in the presence of Our Heavenly
Father. As I thought about this and how through the adversities that
Christ faced, he did it so he could understand each one of us.We have a
father in Heaven who loves us very much. Through the times we struggle
most he is there for us. At times it feels like he is the only person we
can talk to. It feels like we are all alone and have nowhere to go. But
this is only the thinking of the adversary and what he wants us to
think. This leads to us making decisions that we regret and puts us in a
state of misery that we feel like we can never escape.
"For
the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam,
and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the
Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint
through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child,
submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to
all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child
doth submit to his father. (Mosiah 3:19, The Book of Mormon)
How
true this scripture really is. The lord will throw challenges at us
that we don't want to face. Challenges that we feel like will never end.
We need to become like a child and submit our will to the fathers.
I
know that things maybe tough for us right now at the moment but it is
something that we need to do and endure and try to see what god needs us
to learn. The message that I am called by god to serve is a message
that can help us through our trials that we are facing. IT brings
comfort and peace and joy to our lives.
This gospel is something I love dearly and wish everyone would listen to it. It has changed my life.
Love always,
Elder Carlton