Zone Conference is on Friday (which I am super stoked for) and that’s when I’ll receive the package you sent me a jillion years ago… yup. But I am also excited for the new package you’ll send! I thought being away from worldly music would gradually decrease those songs in my head and my desire to listen to them, but it may have actually increased that craving. Elder Zaleski says that I need to replace that craving with an alternative of uplifting music. For some reason I keep getting that “Dollar Bills” song by Wyclef Jean stuck in my head!
Phew, I’m glad I have your permission to buy a GPS. Hopefully that will be useful. I’m assuming it’s going to take me some time to actually work myself up to using that much money. But the time will come when it’s absolutely imperative to have.
Meal plan is going better I would think. I’ve discovered soup in a can! And I don’t even need a can opener! It’s freaking grand! But on a more serious note, I think I’m starting to get the idea of what to buy and what I’m not going to eat in a week. Maybe lettuce isn’t such a good thing to buy…
Wow. Thanks for that quote by President Hickley. It’s super spiritual and dope and stuff, but it’s kinda depressing. And it kind of contrasts the message we received in Stake Conference yesterday, which was predominantly about optimism. It was cool, because instead of heading to Altoona for instruction from Stake leaders, we received a broadcast from Salt Lake City to multiple stakes in Northeastern United States. It felt really cool having M. Russell Ballard, President Eyring, and a couple of other general authorities speak directly to us. Richard C. Edgley, the 1st Counselor in the Presiding Bishopric told of interesting analogy that if we stumble along on temptations and the other bumps of life that we shouldn’t jump ship of the church. We have partaken of the fruit of the Tree of Life, so let us not be one of those who looked to the massive pointing finger of the world and felt shamed but let us continue on this journey upon our heavenward vessel. We know where we’re going, we know the sights we’ll see, we know our destination. M. Russel Ballard, I felt talked directly to me as a missionary, telling of how we are serving in the same area where the first leaders of this dispensation served while in the genesis of our latter-day church. And because we are in this last dispensation, there is much work to be done. Henry B. Eyring’s talk, though, was by far my favourite. He spoke of being a “wise optimist” and how the decision between seeing life in a positive or negative light each morning affects our attitude the rest of the day. It’s cool because our main investigator right now, Dakoda, who’s set to being baptized this Saturday had to leave in the middle of church, foiling our plans of teaching a quick lesson at the close of the broadcast. I was worrying the whole time thinking, “great, now we have to do some sort of blind finding in Bedford.” I’m not sure why I have such anxiety toward finding, but I dread it every time we set out to contact new people. But this talk really made me wonder if it was my attitude, not the activity, that was bringing me down. President Eyring said, “there will always be peaks and valleys, but the trend will continually be upward.”
I can honestly say that this week has been full of ups and downs. It’s been an interesting week where we’ve found some really unique people; take that as you will. We’ve found a lady who is profoundly interested in new scripture (I always rejoice when I find people without preconceived notions toward the Book of Mormon) and has agreed to be baptized, a man who’s been humbled to the comparisons of Job, losing his family, job and girlfriend in the past year, a young girl who feels completely oppressed by her parents, believing that she will never be happy unless she is emancipated, a guy with a relationship with God completely based off of dreams, and a crazy woman who understands the consequences of sin but completely disregards her feelings of guilt and encouraged us to “live life to the fullest.”
Oh, I advise anyone who has problems with someone believing that additional scripture is false to read 2 Nephi 29. It rang amazingly clear to me and shattered any fragment of disbelief in the Book of Mormon in my mind. It’s an awesome chapter to end all bashing!
Elder Low
P.S. Thanks so much for the weekly forecast! Keep sending it in that format, it tells me everything I need, including the centigrade translation of the frustrating Fahrenheit scale. It will help a lot in choosing my wardrobe of shirts and ties. You know, I have silk and polyester… THESE THINGS NEED TO BE DECIDED.
P.P.S. Keep reminding that sweet little Ashton of his Uncle Tanner! I don’t want him to cry when I greet him in two years!
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