Memorable last weekend

  Saying goodbye to one of my favourite families ever - the Shoemakers. Bro. Shoemaker is our ward mission leader.

  Zach's baptism

 On our way home, we saw some horses and buggies! Good ol' Amish Lancaster.

 Aaron and Kelsey took Elder West and I to the new stake centre in Lancaster for our stake conference. The Harrisburg and York stake split and the Lancaster stake was created. Our ward (no longer the Lewisberry 1st Ward) is now called the West York ward in the Lancaster Stake. This is us eating our goodies before the conference began.

 Aaron's baptism.

Monday, 25 March 2013

I couldn't sleep last night. Elder West says it was probably anxiety for what was to come. I had pretty much convinced myself that I wasn't going home until I had passed certain checkpoints -  there always seemed to be another checkpoint. Zach's baptism was the last one that was to come to pass on Sunday night. When that was done, I felt a strange emptiness. Time has seemed to mean nothing over my mission. I'm not sure anymore if it felt like 2 years or not. It's definitely been a while. But maybe it hasn't felt like 2 years.

 

Aaron's baptism went really well on Friday. It was so well attended that we thought it better to have the service in the chapel instead of the Relief Society Room. It was also so well attended that the service tended to be a bit noisy, there were young kids in attendance and I was nervous that Aaron's nonmember relatives that came wouldn't have a spiritual experience. I was so worried about that one fact that it probably blurred my vision of what was important, I was definitely not in the right mindset. But all that changed after the baptism happened. Because we were having stake conference that Sunday, our Bishop had suggested that we do the confirmation at the baptismal service. As all the Melchizedek Priesthood holders laid their hands on Aaron's head, his future father-in-law (the father of his fiancé Kelsey) gave one of the most powerful prayers I had ever heard uttered for a confirmation. You could literally feel the Spirit and the love that this family had for Aaron. I think he felt it too.

 

Zach's baptism couldn't have been anymore perfect. Although a smaller group had congregated for his service, the love was definitely there. He asked Elder West and I to give the baptism and holy ghost talks. I was surprised because I thought for sure he would have been sick of hearing from me by now. So after his baptism I spoke about the unspeakable gift of the Holy Ghost, how it is a foretaste of eternal joy and a promise of eternal life. I spoke of how he would need to continue to "receive the Holy Ghost" throughout his life. I spoke of how we are entitled to receive it as a constant companion but that it will come as he would humbly ask, seek and knock. The Holy Ghost will not always strive with us and sometimes it may be hard to recognize it when it does, but I told him that there was power in such striving, that the central purpose of this life is to seek for lasting joy, which the Holy Ghost helps us find. I reminded him of a comment he made in one of our appointments where he told us that Becky (his wife) was different than the others growing up and there was a light inside of her. I told him that as he would faithfully keep the covenants he had made and follow the Holy Ghost, that light would also be in him.

 

It's been such an amazing week filled with all kinds of spiritual highs. It's made it very difficult to leave this area because I am leaving so many people that have become like family to me. I know that there are great trials ahead but also great joys. But I know that as I apply my own advice to keep my covenants and strive to follow the Holy Ghost, God will always be there with me for he has promised, "there I will be also, for I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up." (D&C 84:88) And He always keeps His promises.

 

See you all on Wednesday.

 

Love (for the last time),

Elder Low 

Monday, 18 March 2013

It was announced yesterday in Sacrament Meeting that I am in the single digits for how long I have left here in Pennsylvania. I hyperventilated a bit and then some more as they asked me to give a "5-7 minute" departing testimony.

 

It's weird. It doesn't feel like I'm going home. Honestly having Aaron's baptism scheduled for this Friday and Zach's baptism scheduled for this Sunday, it's kept me pretty focused and immersed in helping them the best that I can. It kinda just feels like I'm getting transferred again, which I kind of am, but to the Spirit World. o.O

 

It just so happened that it was our Zone Conference this week as well. It comes for every missionary where he must also give his "departing testimony" to the missionaries as well. Lots of missionaries plan what they'll say their whole mission, they see those missionaries get up and talk about how it all flew by and how much it changed them, wondering if their time would ever come. But the day came for me, as it always does, and the feelings of a departing missionary were awakened within me, they always do. I, on the other hand, had no idea what I wanted to say. I stood up there for what seemed like eternity before I mustered up words to say. All I could think of was the quiet testimony my trainer had expressed almost two years ago in Zone Conference. I echoed those words but they came from my heart. My simple testimony was the truthfulness of everything I had learned and taught for the past 22 years of my life. I quickly sat down among my fellow departing missionaries while they one by one gave eloquent farewells. President Topham then got up and expressed thanks for the wonderful spirit in that testimony meeting. He then talked about how he came out with a lot of the missionaries who just gave their testimonies. He talked about his first week, feeling like an inadequate mission president and one of his first duties was to travel to somewhere called Bedford, PA. There was me, being trained by Elder Zaleski. His reminiscence brought tears to my eyes as I've seen how much we've grown together.

 

And now it's back full circle. Elder West is doing great, definitely a lot better than I was doing when Elder Zaleski was leaving. Aaron actually asked Elder West to baptize him and I think he's becoming more and more aware of the calling and power he has. He will be a great missionary and will continue to blow things up in Dover without me. Yesterday I watched him go around the chapel completely independent of me, greeting many members and investigators of his own accord. He's definitely grown as well.

 

There's a family up in  Dillsburg that we've been working with for a while now. The father has problems with tithing and that has been the supposed reason they haven't been to the temple the whole time they've been members of the Church. As we've started to teach them the missionary discussions again, their testimonies have been slowly growing and their love for the church and the missionaries began to be reignited. We thought that this week would be the week we would battle their concerns head on. We led into a temples by way of the Plan of Salvation, speaking of the essential need for ordinance work for the dead. They agreed and our conversation turned in a direction I hadn't expected, they began to bring up what they felt were their own inadequacies of why they felt impure, unprepared, and unworthy. They acknowledged the importance of going for themselves, but the process of becoming who they wanted to be seemed long and hard. I tried to resolve their concerns, telling them that the Lord looketh not on the outward appearance but on the heart and that to see the fulfillment of those promises and blessings, they needed to take steps of faith first. We committed this good brother to paying his tithing this Sunday. Silence enveloped the room and the Spirit was thick. Then finally, he said, I'm just not ready yet. Another, more awkward, silence filled the room. I just had no words to say. Here was this man, unwilling to take the first steps toward the greatest blessing in his life and I could do nothing to help him see the importance of it. Here I've been isolated from the temple from 2 years, and believe me I've learned to appreciate it, and he was just procrastinating the things he needed to do to experience the true peace of the gospel. It was heartbreaking.

 

I've seen many successes this week and I glory in my Heavenly Father for those tender mercies, especially that Aaron and Zach have been so prepared for these moments, but I've also seen many disappointments. All I can do is carry on and eventually those disappointments are all swallowed up in the grandeur of true gospel joy. For "weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." (Psalm 30:5)

 

Elder Low

Baptism Day and Elders just want to have fun

Monday, 11 March 2013

This week has been a good one again. Everything went perfectly for Katlynn's baptism. It was a tough baptism because she technically lives in the Camp Hill ward but comes up every weekend to go to Church with her grandmother in the Lewisberry 1st ward. Through some very stressful phone calls that involved two stake presidents, two bishops and the mission president, things clicked and we had a wonderful service. Both Bishops are very much in love her and her family now. However in preparing for Katlynn's baptism and actually performing the ordinance myself,  I think that I felt more temptation to be descend below what was expected of me throughout this week than ever before. But yet for some reason after the baptism had been completed, simultaneously the temptation stopped.

 

It was interesting how much Satan wanted me to fall and the whole week was me pitted against him. It all came down to who did I love more. Not just God but if I loved Katlynn too. I've been learning a lot about charity this week and how the true meaning (namely the pure love of Christ) has been so lost throughout our modern day. True charity, true love, endures. And the degree of our charity really determines how we act. Elder Curl (a past district leader) once told me that there was a hierarchy to motivation:

 - That the lowest motivation was to obey or keep the commandments or serve others or whatever because of fear or duty. That perhaps if you didn't do these things, the consequences would certainly be undesirable and so you act to relieve yourself of that kind of tension. Not a bad motivation, but not the purest, he said.

- The next kind of motivation was to act because of temporal reward. That those who keep the commandments might get something out of it, immediately that would bless their lives and make things more comfortable. Yes, the state of those who keep the commandments are blessed and happy in all things (see Mosiah 2:41) but there is yet purer motivation.

- Surely no one would frown upon the motivation of eternal reward, that perhaps if we do the best we can here, we surely will be comfortable in our mansions above. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth," said the Savior, "But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven." (Matthew 6:19-20) That our stride through eternity and our degree in the Celestial Kingdom would be our motivation to act and serve one another is a good desire. But still there is a purer way to serve.

- "If ye love me, keep my commandments," Jesus said (John 14:15). Truly the purest motivation to be our best selves should be the motivation our Savior had for helping us, namely that pure love, which is charity. Charity for God and charity for our fellow man.

Unfortunately without this love, really nothing else matters, for without charity, Paul said, all our good works "profiteth [us] nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:3). I'm starting to see more and more how a pure motivation and love of God casts out any desire to do evil. Satan cannot be where the pure love of Christ shines.

 

I saw this charity in one of our investigators this week. I told you last week about Zack and how he decided to be baptized before I left Pennsylvania last week. We were talking to him this week about prayer and scripture study, about how they were not just commandments but the only way through this dark and dreary world. The iron rod - the communicated "word of God" (see 1 Nephi 11:25) - marks the solitary path that leads safely to where we want to be. We referred to his reasoning for wanting to join the Church and how he told us the previous Sunday that he had been praying about the decision to join while reading the Book of Mormon. Expecting a grand answer of his sacred communications with the Father through this constant recourse of prayer and reading, he surprised us by telling us that in addition to that he saw the example of his wife growing up through high school. He noticed something different about her, a light that she had that he didn't. He says he had no idea how they ended up together but he changed a lot for her - he gave up chewing, smoking, drinking, and now in meeting with us a hardcore addiction to coffee. He knows he wants their home and their family to be like hers and that was very important to him.

 

Can love change people's very nature? Can it change our desires? Can it thwart the very powers of hell?

Absolutely. For charity never faileth.

Elder Low

Monday, 4 March 2013

I  have had one of the best weeks of my mission. It has seriously been full of miracles. Ever since Katlynn asked me to baptize her last weekend I've really felt like I needed to stop fighting God in some things and give my will completely to His. I felt like I needed to be "purified even as he is pure" (Moroni 7:48). Little did I know that as I really tried to be everything my Heavenly Father wanted me to be, He was eager to open the windows of heaven to pour out blessings, so much so that there has been hardly room enough to receive them.

 

I just want to outline some of those blessings that I've experienced recently,

 

1) A member of our ward who had recently moved to the northern part of our area called Dillsburg has been reaching out a lot to the other residents of her retirement home. Last week she brought three of them into Sacrament meeting and excitedly ran over to me. She said, "these are three of my friends and they all want to investigate the Church." As you could probably tell, my jaw hit the floor. Never had any investigator been so easily placed in our teaching pool than Barb and Alyce (two of the ladies she brought). We promptly set up an appointment for a couple days later. At that appointment, they expressed how they had been always searching for a Church that "felt right," and they explained how as they went through all three hours of our Church services, they felt an insatiable pull towards our Church, so much that they knew this was the way to go. They described feeling the Spirit in such detail that we were not hesitant to talk boldly about joining the Church. Both women are in their 60's and both are widows. Alyce in particular told of how she had been married to her husband only 8 months when he passed away. She said she never allowed herself to cry about it, but as she relayed the story to us, she began to weep uncontrollably. We consoled her with the knowledge we have of the Plan of Salvation - about the answers to what the purpose of life is, where our spirits go after we die, and the sure fact that we would indeed live again. Alyce told me that the moment she met me, she knew I had something to share with her that would make a deep impact on the direction of her life forever. It was stunning for me to hear that and I just thank my Heavenly Father for the opportunity I have to be a missionary.

 

2) I mentioned last week about a young man named Aaron we're currently teaching. He's been dating a member of the ward on and off for years and they are currently engaged. Ever since he's been in contact with the family of his fiance (all of whom are active in the Church)  they've talked to him about the Church and invited him to come with little success in him gaining a testimony. The Bushey family even gave him a quadruple combination which has been in his possession for 2 years - without him ever opening it. Elder West and I stopped in on the Busheys a couple months ago and asked if we could start teaching him - he agreed and we've been teaching him steadily ever since. He currently has a baptismal date for 23 March (my last Saturday in the mission) and is working toward it like a boss. In our last meeting with him Brother Bushey was joking with Aaron saying that the reason we were meeting with Aaron so much was so that the family wouldn't influence him toward the dark side too much. Aaron cuttingly said back, "well, they've done a better job at getting me to join the Church than you have the last two years."

 

3) During a trying time this week, I asked Elder West to give me a blessing to be strong and faithful. Something just told me to ask him. Surprised at my request, Elder West agreed, and although he had only given two blessings before, I definitely felt that the words he spoke were directly from God. "You Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love you and are proud of the work you've done. But they need you still. Your investigators need you. This work needs you." His Spirit electrified me and helped me in more ways that he probably comprehends.

4) This last fast and testimony meeting was kind of painful, haha. And to top it off, it was one of our investigators' first time at Church. Zack had previously not been fond of the Church even though his wife, Becky was a fairly active member. We started teaching him about 3 weeks ago with slow progress. He doesn't have much of a Christian background, so the Book of Mormon seemed foreign, almost fictional to him. As I sank in my seat in Church, I wondered how we were ever going to recover from this strange blow to Zack's perception of our Church. But to my surprise during Sunday School he told me, "you know I've been reading the Book of Mormon and praying about it, and have decided on my own that I want to get baptized. And I want to do it, before you leave." I'm sure the look on my face was funny, for Heavenly Father had made up where others, including me and my lack of faith, fell short. His wife was so happy, for she thought he would never come around.

 

Miracles. They happen.

 

Elder Low

February 25, 2013

I've learned so much more about life being on a mission than I ever could have anywhere else. When asked how much strength one should have left when one breaks through the finish line, a coach will always reply with "nothing!" So also as we run this race of life, the prize is not to the swift nor the strong but he who endures to the end. It's not enough for us to passively drift through life, looking for the end on the horizon, for if we do so, we'll waste the day in chasing tomorrow and find ourselves with many empty yesterdays.

 

I think I'm starting to realize why missionaries when they approach the end of their mission they start to dread the thought of coming home for fear that there isn't enough time to accomplish all that we feel needs accomplished, leaving many songs unsung. There is a reason that the great missionary section in the Doctrine & Covenants tells us that only an attitude of having an eye single to the glory of God qualifies him for the work, for nothing short of thrusting in your sickle with all your heart, might, mind and strength will bring salvation and peace of consciousness. Serving a mission is like living life. We may choose to waste our days fulfilling selfish desires and wasting the day away dreaming of our mansions in the future, but the only way to peace in this world and eternal life in the world to come is immersing yourself in service and holding nothing back.

 

I have so many goals for the last 4 weeks of my mission that I wish I would have accomplished a long time ago. And now I may not accomplish them without sufficient time.

 

But we should always appreciate what we do have. You asked about those I am teaching and preparing for baptism right now. Currently a young girl named Katlynn (I think I mentioned her a couple letters ago about how she bore her testimony) is preparing for the 9th of March and we have a guy about our age named Aaron preparing for the 23rd of March. Katlynn actually asked me to baptize her, which I am glad to do. It's nice to always be working towards something. And to know that I will have people working towards baptism up until my last Saturday here will help me be all that I can up until the end. For that is where the race analogy fails, for "they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we [for] an incorruptible.

 

"So run - that ye may obtain." (1 Corinthians 9:25, 24)

 

Elder Low