We had interviews
with President Eaton and I always enjoy those so much! I always come
out of them with more spiritual strength to keep pressing forward!
After
our interviews President Eaton had a referral for us and she just so
happened to live down the street so he walked over to her apartment with
us to talk to her. On the way President Eaton started talking to this
15 year-old boy that looked way older about families and the gospel. The
whole time I was thinking, "I'm contacting with President Eaton! The
pressure is on!" Haha! That doesn't happen every day!
We
also had Elder Lawrence and his wife visit our mission and we were able
to receive some amazing counsel from them! But before I get into that
I'll answer some questions my mom sent me.
So
my biggest challenge this week was probably...eating two dinners in the
same day. Haha! Yeah we'll communicate better next time to make sure
that doesn't happen.
My
biggest success was probably having more members present at lessons with
us! We had more this past week than we've had in a while and we plan to
keep working on it!
My
favorite person this past week has been our investigator Lodes and her
husband Rojelio. They are Catholic and they are just now learning about
the gospel. They are not committed to being baptized but they are so
open to learn and they both understand that baptism is a promise and
commitment with God so they want to take it seriously!
My
favorite tender mercy this week was when Sister Eaton sent us all the
talk entitled, Becoming Perfect in Christ by Elder Gerrit W. Gong. It is
such a great talk and I really needed to read it! She also sent a
document about perfectionism and the healthy and unhealthy stages of
being a perfectionist. It was super great of her to do!
My goal for this week is to have a bigger focus on baptism in every lesson.
This coming week I am excited about finding people that will accept the invitation to prepare and be baptized!
The
scripture that has the biggest impact on me this past week is Alma
57:25 when it talks about how all of the stripling warriors survived the
battle, however still received many wounds. This reminded me that as long
as we are on God's side we will find success and we will be saved. It
also reminded me that we will all receive wounds in this lifetime. I'm
talking more so about spiritual wounds rather than physical wounds. But I
know that through Jesus Christ we can all be healed!
Now,
on to the most amazing part of this week! Training with Elder Lawrence!
We started off the meeting by listening to Sister Lawrence talk about
the House of Israel. She talked about why one of the names for Jesus
Christ is the Holy One of Israel and how he preached the gospel first to
the Israelites. She explained what it meant to be an Israelite and a
Gentile which led her to talking about "believing blood." I had never
heard of that before but it was all so interesting to me! She explained
the lineage from Abraham on down, so it was a lot of history information.
It totally fascinated me! I learned so many new things and was reminded
of other things that I have learned but forgotten. She talked about the
different tribes and how the lost tribes are scattered but predominately
in the area of Russia and those countries. She also explained that
before this life many of us promised to serve missions and to help
gather scattered Israel. I literally have pages of notes from her talk! I
loved it so much! I can't even begin to describe it all to you in
detail. Because of the meeting, I now have the goal to study more about the
gathering of Israel and to learn all of the names for the twelve tribes. I also learned that the symbol of the tribe of Ephraim is an ox! Haha!
Oxen are hard working and stubborn so maybe that's why I can be so set
in my ways sometimes!
When
Elder Lawrence spoke to us he mentioned how he was really impressed
with how all the missionaries handled themselves, so that was a nice
compliment! :) He also taught about the importance of finding Israel. He
said that we have been preparing for this from before this lifetime so
we have no time to waste. The time we have to be full-time missionaries
is so precious! He talked about having a
better focus on baptizing! We shouldn't
just expect miracles, we should expect baptisms! He and the leadership
of our mission met and they made the goal to have 40 baptisms in the
month of November! How cool is that! The whole mission is focusing on
this right now! We have all committed to pray for 40 baptisms in every
prayer we say, to think about a verse of scripture about either baptism
or the doctrine of Christ each week, and to prayerfully sacrifice
something so that we can more fully focus on bringing others into the
waters of baptism! I'm so excited about this goal because the whole
mission is going to be more unified and working hard to achieve it!
Elder Lawrence gave us excellent advice on having faith and being fully
believing instead of doubting. If it is a righteous desire it can
happen!
There are a lot
of things we need to do in order to reach our goal but I know that as we
all pull together and try our best, that God can provide the rest, and we
can help 40 people on their way to receive salvation!
There
was also a lot of talk about being born in the covenant at our meeting.
Before, I thought being born in the covenant meant you were born in the
church, but I learned, or was reminded, that it actually means that you
are born to parents who are sealed in the temple. I have always wanted
to get married and sealed in the temple to a righteous man for eternity
and Elder Lawrence talked about how we all need to have that be our
goal. Talking about marrying outside of the temple he said, "You were
not prepared for that." He said that the saddest thing would be that we
return home and marry outside of the temple and that is so true! We are
eternal beings and we need to be sealed to our spouses for the eternity!
We are the kind of people who strive our best to become like God and we
do that by making promises with Him in the temple!
I love this church because I know that it's God's church and it provides us with the way back to Him!
And on a completely unrelated note here are some funny pictures of us! I love the different colors of the trees!
Love,
Hermana Soliz :)
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| Me and Hna Lewis |
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| Happy Fall Everyone! |
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