Well good morning.
Wow this has been one roller coaster of a week. Holy cow.
Granted college stress has been a majority of that, but that’s all gone
now. So where to start? Probably with college. So last Monday and
Tuesday I was in doing all the applications and everything, you know, you got
the email end of all of that. So I have all the accounts created, got my email
set up, which gosh, I’m really thankful for because the account they gave me
has unlimited space. I’m like “No way!” Typical
accounts will have like 15 gigs free.
Our LDS one is 50 gigs free. This
one is unlimited, so, yeah. I’m like
storing everything in there now. It’s
great.
Let’s see… Wednesday.
Just a super great day. Trying to remember what we did. We didn’t do district meeting because we had
a zone conference this week. So I’ll
just skip to that, because that’s next at least as college wise goes. Friday I’m talking to President and I’m like,
“Hey, so…” Oh yeah, as I’m doing all the forms and everything, I’m going
through and I see that the placement test has to be done completely (before he
can register) and I’m like “ugh, are you kidding me?” So maybe I go home what,
like a week early? And then I’m going through and I also have to attend this
Coyote Kickoff thing, whatever that is? Some orientation thing? And I’m like, “Okay, when is the latest one
of those?” They run through July and
their latest one is August 3rd.
And I’m like, “Uhhhhhh…. No. I’m not going home two and a half weeks
early.” But then I’m like, “Crap, what
if I have to? I don’t want to do this.”
So at Zone Conference I was talking to President, and I didn’t tell him
about this third thing, but I’m like “So I might need to go home a week early…” And he’s like “Oh, ok. Just let us know. We’ll get that all figured
out.” And so Friday we get home from
Zone conference, I look up the number and call the counselor, and the office is
closed because they are only open Monday through Thursday. So I’m like “Oh perfect.” So this weekend has kinda been like “Waiting
for Monday, waiting for Monday….” And
then Monday hit and I just got off the phone with her. Super sweet lady. She’s understood what a mission was, and I
explained to her all I’d done so far, and she’s like “So classes start the 21st…” And I’m like “I get home the 19th.” And she’s like “Oh.” And then after talking and doing some
figuring out, I can skip the Coyote thing, and I can do like a late start or
something like that. Basically I go in
Monday morning, the 21st,
take the placement test then, and then go see a counselor, plan my
schedule out, enroll in everything, and get all this done that Monday. And then start classes. However because it’s late start classes, I
can only sign up this semester for Tuesday / Thursday classes and I think meteorology
was a Monday / Wednesday class. Which I’m like “Crap. Ok.” That will limit my
options to classes, but it’s the only thing we can do.
I’ve had just a lot of cool spiritual experiences this
week. Like this morning and last night I
was really praying. I was like “Heavenly
Father – 1) please help my family, 2) please help me know what to do right now,
I have this decision to make. What am I
going to do? And as I sat down this
morning, I was praying the same thing, I prayed it as I began my personal
study, and I opened up to Alma chapter 43, and my attitude has just been like
“Oh great. The war chapters.” Like
they’re great, and there’s tons of stuff in there, but it’s just a lot harder
to look for principles in them. But
immediately, the spirit was with me, I was clued in, and, let me open it up
here, So Alma 43 - there’s the Zoramites that Alma has been
trying to teach, and they had very little success trying to bring them back
into the gospel. You know, all these
less active members. And they end up
joining the Lamanites, and then stirring them up to anger along with
Amalekites, and were basically saying, “Hey, lets go kill the Nephites.” We’re talking at the beginning it says they
came upon the Nephites in thousands. You know, just falling upon them. They had this massive, giant army. I’m like, “Holy crap.” Immediately the spirit
is like, “Yeah, that’s your problem.”
The Nephites saw that the Lamanites were coming upon them. But it says
“Therefore they made preparations for war.”
And as I’m reading, the spirit is like, “okay, what are you doing to
prepare for the rest of your life? And all the battles and things that Satan is
going to throw at you and your family and temptations and everything?” And it talks about the Lamanites designs and
the purposes that they might usurp great power over them and bring them into
bondage. And the Nephites purpose was to
support their lands, their houses, their wives, their children, their families,
that “they might preserve them from the hands of their enemies”…. That they
might worship God according to their desires…. Their liberty, their
rights… But ultimately in the end, along
with obviously the Power of God, one of the big things that helped them, was
the fact that the Lamanites all they had was their weapons basically. Apart from “skin girded about their loins”,
they were naked. And the Nephites were
girded about with, “Moroni had prepared his people with breastplates, and with
arm shields, and also shields to defend their heads…” and they also dressed with thick clothing,
and it says a couple verses later in 21, “therefore they were exceedingly
afraid of the army of the Nephites because of their armor, notwithstanding
their number being so much greater than the Nephites.” And as I’m reading this, the Lord is
basically like, “Hey.” You know, poking
me with the spirit. And he’s like
listen, “This mission is to prepare you for the rest of your life.” It makes a
comment in here, in verse 38, “While on the other hand, there was now and then
a man fallen among the Nephites by their swords and the loss of blood, they
being shielded from the more vital parts of the body, or the more vital parts
of the body being shielded from the strokes of the
Lamanites, by their breastplates, and their armshields, and their
head-plates; and thus the Nephites did carry on the work of death among the
Lamanites.” You know they had armor
covering all their vital parts, not part, not most, but all. And basically as I’m reading the Lord is
like, “You need to serve the full two years.”
It talks about just all that they did to prepare and calling upon the
Lord and relying on him and they were able to be victorious and save
themselves. And then I went and read
Preach My Gospel Chapter 1 – My Purpose, and it testified that there are people
out there who need the gospel. So not
only do I need to finish preparing myself, setting the foundation for the rest
of my life, there are people out there that need the gospel, need me the last bit.
I’m like, “okay.” So basically I finished
personal study with the attitude that no matter what, I’m not going home early.
And I know that the Lord is going to help me and provide a way to do what needs
to be done, because I do feel like I do obviously need to attend college, but
if needs be I’ll just work and postpone it, but it was really cool this morning
it was just like I did call and see that he did provide a way. It may just be a couple of classes, but I’ll
be able to get started. And honestly it
might be better because then I’ll have more time to get a job, work, get myself
going, get a schedule going, and then when the next semester comes, sign up for
more classes, and then work my schedule around that as well. But, it really,
really worked out. I’m really thankful
for that.
Um let’s see, zone
conference. That was amazing. Had just super spiritual, powerful
experiences. As President Wadsworth talked about striving, and you change just
as much as you allow yourself to be changed.
He said that when he was younger, he didn’t want to go on a mission, he
said “cause I was afraid that I’d go and I’d change too much, and I wouldn’t
like the same stuff, and all my friends wouldn’t want to hang out with
me.” And then he’s like, “I went on my
mission and guess what? I changed.” But
1) it was all good, and 2) he only changed as much as he allowed himself to be
changed, his personality was still the same and all these things. He challenged
us all to be more obedient. Sister
Wadsworth spoke of having good attitudes about things. I think there’s been a
bit of a pessimistic attitude about somethings on our mission, like tiwi coming
– a little black box that yells at you in the car, which comes in the first
week of August. That’s the official date now. Like they are saying “C’mon! No! Rethink those negative thoughts!” From
“This is gonna suck” to “These things save lives!” These things have been
proven to reduce the amount of accidents and also the severity of accidents and
they’re really trying, and I’m like “It will be great! I only have to deal with it for two weeks,
but it will be great!” That’s probably not the right attitude to have. But, yeah.
Things are going good here. Didn’t make any more improvements on our
house this week because we’ve been busy, which was good. We went on a fun hike Monday. There’s tons of pictures that were taken, and
I think I have some on my camera, but a lot of them were taken by a sister in
our district. She goes home with me actually. Sister Jacobi. And so I have to wait until this Wednesday to
get them all from her, and also pictures of like the float and everything, so,
yeah. I have lots of more pictures I am
going to send you, just none from the hike or things this week. Also, I was going through and I can’t
remember what I have or haven’t sent you and so thinking back to the
principles, and going over all the rules, I do feel that this is
acceptable. Remember back when, near the
start of my mission, there was the apple icloud share or whatever it was thing?
You know, I had my pictures on it and everything, well President Wadsworth
asked us all to not use that. The
biggest reason being that people could comment and ‘like’ all the photos and
everything, and it was kinda like social media.
Well I was thinking, on the photos app here, I can create an album and
share it with people, but people can’t comment or really do anything, as far as
I’m aware of. I’ll double check
that. I’ve been looking and I can’t
really see a way. It’s just like “Here’s
a bunch of photos that I have.” So I’m
basically just going to stick all the photos so far from my time in
Stevensville. I counted and it’s like
103. Granted like 40 of them are really
cool views or sunsets that I’ve taken.
Especially around Elder Johnson, he loved taking nature photos, so I
just kinda took them around him as well, because you know, I’m not going to
waste the time. So, there’s that. So keep an eye out for an email like that.
Let me think… yeah. I love the work, it’s going great here
actually. We had a lesson with Amanda
this week. That was amazing. Getting to
teach the restoration to someone who has never heard it again. It’s been awhile. Sadly. We’ve been trying, it’s just like no
one is immediately wanting to hear it.
But Amanda, she’s super busy she’s an English college teacher, over at
the University of Missoula, and then she also teaches English online to
foreigners, so she basically creates these online lessons, and then students
submit these minute, or two minute clips of them speaking in sentences, or
writing sentences and speaking them.
Things like that. And she listens
to them and grades them, that’s a job that she likes because she can pretty
much do it at any time, or she can say get up at six, and do it, she has two
young kids, one is like two, three, and the other is like five or six, actually
I think he might be nine, and you know she says “I like it because I can pull
out my headphones, get them something when they need it, or help them when they
need help, and then sit back down, put my headphones in and press replay
again. But she is definitely a mom. Every time we go over, she’s like “Can I get
you boys anything to drink?” And I’m like, “We’re fine.” She’s like in her
early 30’s. Her personality, well
partly, so take Jamie, and instead of dogs, she loves the kids, but that same
just crazy personality just like everywhere, and that’s her. She’s a little calmer, and maybe not as
brash. Or violent. But I was just kinda sitting there, and I’m
just like “You remind me of someone…”
and then it clicked, and I’m like “Oh! You remind me of aunt
Jamie.” I’ve met a couple of people who
remind me of aunt Jamie out here. But
yeah, it was super fun to teach her that. She has read the Book of Mormon a bit since we
last taught her, it’s been two weeks.
She read the introduction, title page, all the testimonies of witnesses,
and then read up to 1 Nephi 4. Had a
couple questions about what some things meant, like in the introduction it
talks about the latter days, and she’s like, “What is that?” and we read it and as much as she loves the
scriptures, she has a hard time understanding the Old Testament, or not
necessarily understanding, but she’s like, “it’s just… boring. It’s more of a
historical account.” Which is fair. She was saying “You guys challenged me to, so
I was reading First Nephi and trying to go through it, and it was just so
historical, and so I decided to skip to 3rd Nephi 11 where you
pointed out that Christ came, and so I’m reading that and comparing it to the
Sermon on the Mount in the Bible…” And
I’m like, “Woah. Okay. ” So we’ll see
how that goes. Like, that’s kind of a
cool thing, I should do that sometime, you know, when I’m not doing a thousand
other things. I’m trying to finish the
Book of Mormon, I’m also trying to complete Presient Nelson’s challenge he gave
to all the YSA over the last YSA devotionals, to go through the topical guide
and look up all the scriptures on Jesus Christ and read them all. And Holy Cow, it’s like, it’s a crap ton.
But yeah. I’m going to pause this because it’s been 19
minutes and 23 seconds, and make a new one.
Love you Bye!
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