Tyler's Baptism & Powell River
November 11, 2024
Things as they Really Are 2.0
So we watched the Young Adult devotional with Elder and Sister Bednar and it was incredible! We watched it with Tyler and Elder Tomasson. Elder Tomasson was just set apart the day before and will be serving a mission in Cameroon. So that’s super exciting! Anyways, if you haven’t watched the devotional, I urge you to take the time to, it’s well worth the time. I basically said pretty much what Elder Bednar said about AI in MLC like two weeks ago. So if you want to hear more of my thoughts on this subject you can read that email.
This particular quote from Elder Bednar, among others, stood out to me.
“Now beware. The ease of use, perceived accuracy, and rapid response time that characterize artificial intelligence can create a potentially beguiling, addictive, and suffocating influence on the exercise of our moral agency. Because AI is cloaked in the credibility and promises of scientific progress, we might naively be seduced into surrendering our precious moral agency to a technology that can only think telestial. By so doing, we may gradually be transformed from agents who can act into objects that are only acted upon. And we may unwittingly help Lucifer to achieve in mortality what he was unable to accomplish in premortality.”
Another thing that stood out to me from the devotional was that we must empower ourselves as agents to act, not as objects to be acted upon. This recurring idea and theme has been brought to MLC and Stake Conference (Elder Johnson talked about it) and now this devotional; this principle has become increasingly more relevant.
The Hospital Experience
I’ll try my best to describe this experience, but I don’t know if words can really describe it haha. It’s almost like I tried to explain the Office show to someone that has never seen a clip of it. You can’t understand it till you see it. Long story short, we received a call to give someone a priesthood blessing, which I mean that’s almost 100% time why missionaries are in a hospital, so you probably could’ve guessed it haha. So we went to go find this guy we’ve never met and give him a blessing. He was in the psychiatric unit, so we were definitely in for an experience. Let me tell you, we were only there for like 10 minutes, but it felt like we walked into a whole new world that exists outside of time. As soon as we walked into the hallway, we were greeted by a tall man holding a small flower. He acknowledged us by saying, “ah, children of God.” We then met the member that called us to give a blessing to someone there. We walked into their unit with her, and were greeted by a man running on a treadmill. The requester of the blessing met us, and he expressed that he was glad we were able to make it. We then found a somewhat private spot outside in a small greenhouse looking area to give the blessing. He sat down, expressed that he wanted the consecrated holy oil for the blessing. The one guy we met in the hallway came in with his friend. The member told them that they can come in only if they would be quiet. So then we did the blessing, and I gotta say it definitely lands the top spot for the weirdest blessing I’ve been a part of; not because of the words that were spoken. But because the guy we met in the hallway sat on the floor holding the hand of the recipient of the blessing and his friend held his hand. As I gave the words to the blessing, he mumbled the words of his blessing. After the blessing the guy’s friend asked us if he could tell us a secret. To which he responded, “I am Jesus Christ” the guy next to him then said “whatever he can conceive he can become in his dreams.” The guy next to him told us that we are “men of God that have come as destroying angels and to bring judgment.” He later asked me “look what I did to your keychain.” (He saw that I had keys in my pocket). I then asked him what he did, to which he responded that he turned it into titanium. He said our bones are now titanium and we are robocop. After that we made our descent out, and my companion said he was trying so hard not to laugh haha. Even though we were only in there for 10 minutes it seemed as if we were there for way longer. I tell you, it’s a whole different world. It was a fun experience, I’d do it again, mission core memory right there.
Tyler gets Baptized
We had Tyler’s baptism and it was awesome! He even shared a brief testimony with the ward which was powerful. He brought his grandma and now she wants to get baptized as well, so that’s pretty cool. We confirmed him a member of the church and bestowed upon him the Holy Ghost at the service as well. This was my very first time confirming, so that was a special experience. One of the members of the congregation transcribed the blessing and emailed it to Tyler. So I hope it was good enough haha. A member came up to me and told me the blessing was really good and that it sounded like I had a lot of experience with blessing. I’m glad that it went well because as soon as I put my hands on his head my mind went completely blank, but you know it wasn’t a blessing from me because if it was, it wouldn’t be anything remarkable. It’s all from God.
Emergency Transfer
We received a phone call from the Assistants about an emergency transfer. The Sydney sisters from the Victoria Zone are being transferred to Powell River. Which is pretty big! Considering that the Sydney area had 3 people on baptismal date and that Powell River is a completely new area being opened up. And on top of all of that, it’s the middle of the transfer. President could have waited till the transfer was over to put missionaries there, but I guess it needed to happen now. So he’s got to be receiving some big revelations on this because it makes absolutely zero sense on paper haha. He informed me two weeks ago in my interview with him that they secured an apartment up there. He was ready to do an emergency transfer back then and move the North Island Elders there. But that all changed when he discovered that they have one friend that they found and have been consistently teaching (which is a pretty big deal up there). Shout out to the North Island elders!
Joseph’s Patriarchal Blessing
Anyways that’s basically everything for this week. I’ve been studying Joseph Smith Jr’s patriarchal blessing which is incredible! If you haven’t studied it, take the time to read it here. Now you may read it and think we’ll duh it all just makes sense. And if that happens, read it again and really ponder it, it’s pretty epic (there’s parts of his blessing that haven’t been fulfilled yet).
“the heavenly Priesthood [bearers] will unite with the earthly, to bring about those great purposes; … a work that God and angels have contemplated with delight for generations past; that fired the souls of the ancient patriarchs and prophets; a work that is destined to bring about the destruction of the powers of darkness, the renovation of the earth, the glory of God, and the salvation of the human family.”