Elder Nicholas Berrett is currently serving in the Billings Montana mission (serving most of Montana and a good portion of Wyoming) for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He is excited to serve the Lord and the people of Montana and Wyoming for the next two years!

Monday, May 8, 2017

Voice Recording, May 8

Well, good morning! I actually have some time today to make a quick voice recording.  Well, I guess I have time every week, but I feel a bit more comfortable doing it today.

How are you doing?  Oh! Keep your eye out this morning I’m sending out Mother’s day stuff.   This week has been really good.  The Lord has really lifted me up and taught me a lot this week.  I feel really great.  Also, let’s see… I haven’t had pancakes in weeks.  Really since I left Helena. Apart from I think breakfast at dinner once.  Most mornings I make myself this egg breakfast burrito.  With bits of chopped up onion and crushed red pepper. Really good.   Especially with all the red pepper because it gives you a bit of a kick in the mouth to kind of wake you up in the morning.  But it still tastes wonderful, you can still taste the eggs, it’s just really good. 

Speaking of that, we were doing service for a guy named Chris the other day and he made these awesome elk burgers.  Super good.  And mom, you’ve converted me, I love red meat. It’s not the best…. Thankfully I don’t really control my diet at dinner.  But yeah, totally medium-rare, it was great.  But anyways, he offered, he said “Hey I like my burgers a little spicy, Elder Berrett what about you?  And I’m like “Heck yeah!” So he put some serrano peppers on it, and oh my goodness, it was the perfect amount of kick to spicy to flavor, oh, it was great.  Amazing burger.  I loved it.  But other than that, yeah, I loved this week.  I guess not “other than that” that was a pretty good highlight of my week.  
I read quite a lot this week. This week I finished the Isaiah chapters in 2nd Nephi.  I just finished Enos this morning.  I think I’ve told you, I’m doing the Doctrine of Christ read through, that I’ve started a bunch of times.  But I kept like giving the Book of Mormon out or… Well this time to make sure I don’t give it out, I’ve been marking with little colored tabs.  Like the big points – like there’s a lot of markings about Faith on this page so I’ll put a red tab there.  Or a lot about repentance so I put a little orange one.  Green for Enduring for the end, Blue for Baptism, and Yellow for the Gift of the Holy Ghost.   And then also coincidentally this transfer we are studying in My Purpose about becoming more Christlike, and our purpose is the Doctrine of Christ.   It is to invite others to come unto Christ through Faith in Jesus Christ and his atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and Enduring to the End.  So it’s kinda like “aah!”  It’s fun!  I’m learning a lot.  It’s kinda funny doing this read through because everyone else in the mission, apart from those who just came in, have done it.  President Wadsworth challenged us all to do it, or to finish it by, last Christmas??? Yeah.  (laughs) It was last Christmas.  So that was kinda funny. I’d started it, but never finished. It’s Wonderful.  I’m loving it.  Let’s see, just today in Enos I was reading and something new stuck out to me where he’s saying, I don’t have a Book of Mormon up here with me, wait! Yeah, I do.  It’s on my tablet. Duh.  That’s why they give us these things.  So in Enos chapter one, well, there’s only one chapter, he makes the comment in… it’s near the end I could have sworn…  I might just have to walk downstairs and grab it. Oh no! Verse 17. “ And I Enos knew it would be according to the covenant which he had made, wherefore my soul did rest.”   And I was just like, “woah.”  There’s a great scripture that testifies of the peace that comes from covenants with the Lord.   Just for example there, like that’s a covenant that the Lord made with him, that the promise being that if they were faithful in creating the records, that God would preserve them.  “And he covenanted with me that he would bring them forth unto the Lamanites in his own due time.”  So because of his faith, and the faith of all the other prophets who pretty much asked for this, and all the Nephites, unto preserving the brethren, the Lord covenanted with them.  And so I kinda like that.  Also there was something that stuck out to me the other day and I do have this up here, in one of my Preach My Gospels, actually the one that I found it in and marked it.  I was studying Chapter 1 – My Purpose, the other day, trying to prepare for district meeting, and I found this promise in here.  It says “When you are set apart by priesthood authority, you receive the right and privilege to represent the Lord.”   You received a ministerial certificate that verifies that authority to the world.  And then here’s the promise- “President Spencer W Kimball said, the setting apart may be taken literally.  It is the setting apart from sin, apart from the carnal, apart from everything which is crude, low, vicious, cheap, or vulgar. Set apart from the world to a higher plane of thought and activity.  And so that’s what we are promised. We are literally promised to be set apart from all this.  We’re promised to be set apart from sin.  I’m just like, “that’s awesome!”  And then what we have to do,  “the blessing is conditional upon faithful performance.”  And I was talking to my companion and I’m like “what do you think ‘Faithful Performance’ is?” And he showed me a couple of scriptures that kind of helped me to understand a little more. It’s being faithful and doing all you can do.  You know the Lord knows our thoughts and intents of our heart.  In there it says “Faithful Performance”, not “This blessing is conditional upon you receiving 5 baptisms.” Or you know, “you declaring repentance on the sinners!” It’s you performing and giving all you can unto the Lord, faithfully.  I was like, I love that! So, that was kind of like a cool insight I had today. I hope you enjoy that little thought.

Things here have been going good.  Let me think… Oh yeah!  I kind of get to use my technology skills to help out a bit. There’s a sister in the mission, in my district, Sister Wood.  She was in the last zone I was in, she broke her tablet, actually pretty much the same exact thing that I did, I mean except she dropped it.  Not only did the LED screen underneath everything crack, like mine did, but I mean the screen, the touchpad, everything just broke.  So at that point they decided it was way cheaper just to buy a new tablet and that’s what they ended up doing.  She has her new tablet, but she wants to be able to get all of her photos and everything off her old tablet.  And you know, that’s kind of understandable, it’s her mission. And like all her family history records and everything that she had on there.  Thankfully for me, I had it all saved.  Anything that I figured that I’d want to save in case my tablet broke or something like that, I backed it up to the little micro SD card that I bought and I can put in my tablet. And all my apps I have set to save all their information on there.  Any photos I take are immediately not stored on the device, but on the SD card.  The only thing I can’t figure out how to do that is Gospel Library.  All the videos I’ve downloaded are on here, but that’s no big problem.   You know, if something were to happen, I’d just re-download them.  But, everything is saved on this microchip, or micro SD card, and then I have it backed up to like a flash drive in case I were to lose it.  Which hopefully will not happen. Because I have freaking spent so much money.  This is ridiculous.  Anyways, on to what I was getting at. She was asking for some help. She was kind of telling me about this problem and the thought came to mind that I know how to help her there.  I can put my technology skills to a good use!  It was kinda cool.  I was taking a look at it and thinking how it could be done.  I am going to need a member to go on Amazon for me and snag a little adapter or see if anyone in the ward has one, so that I can basically connect this to a screen, but yeah, I’m like, “I can help!”  Yeah.  It was great.  It made me happy.  I’m like “that’s a talent that God gave me that I can use.”

Ummm, let’s see, enough of that though.  I had some ice-cream last night.  I’m still not recovering from it.  Man, coughing like crazy.  Also a little congested, so ice-cream and congestion don’t go too well, plus lactose intolerant.  Slightly.  I was like laying in bed going “Why did I do that to myself?”  It was kinda worth it though.  The Cookies & Cream was great.  It was an impulse buy at the store the other day.   I’m like “I have Lactaid, I’ll be fine…”  And then like, yeah.  It was great.

Let me think.  There was something I was going to say.  I love that Chatbook you sent the other day!  Oh my goodness I was going through it just, it’s amazing.  It does make me a little sad, seeing just how much my siblings have grown, but that sadness is completely overcome by the joy of not only what I’m doing here, but of seeing them grow as well.  And knowing that I get to see them soon. And knowing that the Lord has blessed you guys but continues to bless, and has blessed me so much.  I was thinking about that the other day, the promise in Preach my Gospel, that I was just telling you about.  I only have three more months left.  Three and a half.  Yes, I have three and a half more months left that I can use that promise to the fullest of my ability while I am set apart as a missionary. So, I was thinking about that the other day.  I GET three and a half more months. I can do this! 

Again, things are going well. Oh! The wonderful blue blanket that you sent me ages ago in Butte,  I’m still loving.  It’s a little rag tag, torn in some places, a little sewed up around the edges, but it is still by far the warmest thing and the greatest thing ever.   And the fact that I can just wash it, and travel with it, is amazing.  I mean, even when I go on exchanges, like I have that giant laundry bag of mine, like it’s a perfect day bag.  Just throw in all the clothes and everything I need and throw in any service clothes I might need and toiletries, and at the top, once that’s all down I throw in my blanket, kinda stuff it down like a sleeping bag, and put my pillow at the very top to hold it all in.   Cinch it up, and it looks like I’m carrying a military bag, but it’s even got like the back straps on it and everything.  It’s this perfect day bag.  Yeah.  It’s great. 

Sorry random thing, but thank you so much, you’ve helped me out a lot, you’re the best mom ever. Really.  With mother’s day coming up I’ve been thinking about that a lot.  You’re just freaking fantastic.  Fan-freaking-tastic. Oh my goodness.  (coughing fit)  Wow.  I’m coughing, if you didn’t know. 

I have a lot of ties.  Like I have this tie hanger? Tie rack thing? Yeah, that’s what it’s called. Oh, one moment…

Sorry, I had to quickly fill my companion in on what was going on this morning with the phone and other things.  Laundry is almost done.  Don’t have too much going on today.  We have the whole zone, it’s a really, really small zone, like in my district there’s just three companionships, and in the other district there’s just two.  The zone leaders and the district leader.  Their district meetings must be really, really interesting.  Especially considering they all live in the same house.  One of their apartments flooded with raw sewage, and I’m like “Oh! Kinda like Graybull!” And they moved in with the Zone leaders over there. They are really getting tired of all the beds taking up the whole floor. So they’re asking around and they figured out how to make their own bunk bed out of PVC pipe.  And all the members are telling them “That’s stupid, that’s not going to work!  It’s not strong enough.”  And there’s these two big guys sleeping on this PVC bunk bed.  (laughs)  And it’s held up for I think like, let’s see it was like three days before I got here that they made it. So it’s held up since then.  I’m just picturing it in the middle of the night, it’s just going to snap. And these boys are going to fall on each other, and it’s going to be kind of hilarious.  Personally, I wouldn’t do it.  And if I had to, I’d go for top.

Not much else is going on.  It’s beautiful out here. Just gorgeous.  We’re kinda in the middle of nowhere.  15 minutes outside of town.  The members are super nice.  Love our mission leaders in both of the wards.  Super loving, super great.  Ward councils are a little funny, but they’re all great people with lots of great intentions. 

That’s about all I have for right now.  Um, Love you, and I hope you have a wonderful day. May the Lord Bless you and Keep you… Oh yeah!  I was going to talk about my tie rack earlier.   I just have a lot of ties.  Like it’s overflowing.  That’s all I had to say about that. One just fell off.


Love you and have a wonderful day.  Bye! 

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