Unplanned Member Participating Lesson

We had a really amazing miracle happen. We were planning on meeting with a member named Corey at the park. So we show-up at the park, but we happened to be a little late. We eventually found Corey and sat at a table with him. We began to pray and begin our lesson. After our prayer, someone came up to us and was wondering if they could join us. Of course we said yes! So he joined us, and we tried to get to know each other. He shared with us his struggles and the difficult times he went through in life. He said he went to prison for something he didn’t do, suffered abuse, had many bruises and scars from boxing, and was just struggling. He was super grateful to be able to talk to us, he didn’t have anyone to turn to. We asked about his religious background and he said he believed in the creator. Some sort of higher power, that we can pray to that created everything around us. We talked about Jesus Christ and how he suffered everything for us and that he was the creator of all that was around us. My companion shared a scripture from the Book of Mormon with him, and after he read it, he sat there for a second. And was astonished, he said this scripture was exactly what he needed to hear. He told us it was honestly kinda scary. I shared with him that because of the Savior’s sacrifice, he knows our pains and our afflictions and we can turn to him for support. So we shared the scriptures in Alma 7 about that. Afterwards I felt like I needed to talk about the importance of families with him. So we talked about that to which he responded “it’s like we are in my head or that we know me.” He was just amazed. We gave him a Book of Mormon, and promised him many great blessings as he read it. We hope that we meet him again soon. I can’t imagine what he was going through, but I’m grateful for the experience of meeting him.

Baptismal Date for Parry

After meeting with our friend Parry for a second time, we put him on baptismal date! He’s really great, super nice guy. I felt like we really needed to extend the Savior’s invitation to set a date for him—and this is my first time really extending a date to someone that wasn’t already committed to baptism. I’m truly grateful that he chose to work towards a date and begin his journey following Jesus Christ. He’s super busy, with college and working, but he sacrifices in making time to meet with us. At the core of faith is sacrifice, if we didn’t have to sacrifice, faith would be a whole lot easier. But ultimately life is a test, a test of our faith. We have to be willing to sacrifice to draw closer to the Savior and experience his power in our lives. We then lay up all of our sacrifices on the altar of the sacrament. All the Lord requires is a broken heart and a contrite spirit. Jesus Christ paid the ultimate sacrifice for us; so we don’t have too. We just have to trust him and turn to him. In order to turn to him, it’s going to require sacrifice. I’m just super happy that our friend Parry trusts him enough to make sacrifices in his life to come to know him.

Lake Church?

We also met with our friend Peter, which didn’t go quite like I thought it would. We didn’t have his phone number in our records, so we previously tried to visit him. He wasn’t home so we left a pass-along card with our number in the hopes that he would message or call us. Fortunately he did! And on the call, he explained to us that he’s looking for a church; he’s tried many churches, but he’s yet to find something that even closely resembles the richness of the Bible. He said he was looking for the Lord’s church. Anyways, super kind guy, he was asking all the right questions and sounded really elect. He also went on to talk about the ad he saw, and he was telling us to tell the people that were in the ad that they did a really awesome job. He then asked if there are any videos that show what our church service looks like? I was actually just about to mention we could send him a video, so that flowed perfectly. After the call we sent him the video, and he sincerely thanked us for responding to his request so timely. He then said that he prayerfully watched the video we sent him, and wanted to talk about our church service some more. So we then met him at his house the next day. It was really great meeting him. He told us how he drove up to attend this Lake Community church, and he said it was super great. So he kind of already made up his mind before we met. He shared his concern about our church service. He had this big Bible and he turned to a few scriptures about the sacrament in 1st Corinthians and a bunch of other references I don’t remember. But basically his concern was that we use water for the sacrament. And he read these verses about drinking the blood of Jesus Christ and the fruit of the vine. He said that he wanted to be honest with us, it’s pretty clear that it should be grape juice (because that’s the fruit of the vine). We didn’t really get too much of a chance to talk, we kind of just put in our two cents because he just kept talking haha. We told him that it doesn’t exactly matter what the sacrament is, it’s what it symbolizes. It symbolizes the blood and body of Christ. I wanted to mention how the prayer and authority was also the most important thing, but didn’t get the chance to. He went on about a lot of churches and how they slowly stay away from the word of God in the Bible, and how important it is to follow it. To which we are all in agreement. At the very end of our conversation we finally had a chance to say something. I told him the answer to his question about the sacrament lyes in John 15. I invited him to read it. Long story short, Jesus is the vine. I hope he takes another look at the Church of Jesus Christ.

Spiritual Thought

I realize I haven’t been doing spiritual thoughts in my emails. To which I hope the whole email is spiritual to begin with. So it kind of diminishes the need for a spiritual thought. But oh what the heck, we’ll dive into one this time.

This bishop pulled us aside after church last Sunday and said that he wants to do a missionary themed sacrament meeting next Sunday. He asked each of us to give a talk about missionary work in the hopes of helping get the members more actively involved and anxiously engaged in this great work. So as I’ve thought about what I’m going to write I’ve had a lot come to me. But I’ll share a portion of that today.

“When our time in mortality is complete, what experiences will we be able to share about our own contribution to this significant period of our lives and to the furthering of the Lord’s work?” - President Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Ponder on this question. It’s definitely made me think about the work that we are doing a lot more. I hope it does for you to. This life in mortality is a hingepoint of all eternity.