5/21/2012

This is the little stream that comes out of the University Hall dorm...It's gross lol

Second picture is one that I wanted Damon to see, but is cool in general. It's a picture of one of the Civil War casualties. The Cemetery near our apartment has many graves from the war, but this one was one of the few that is still legible.

the Historical marker in that cemetery. Talks about some of the important events that took place for the starting of Carbondale and how it relates to the Civil War.

These are just pictures of my planner. I'm terrible at laying the tape down, but I love the pictures I picked :D BTW the rocks represent balance...I thought it would make a good reminder to keep everything organized :)

We had an incredibly busy week this week!!! Holy Cow!!! I was so worn out yesterday, that I'm glad that we are back to P-Day, where we can relax and rest up for the week to come.

We had a total of 14 lessons with Less-Active, Recent Converts and investigators, and that's not including the lessons we had with members, for dinner which adds another 3 or 4. On top of that, we have a baptismal date set with Emily Cisco, who was a referral from a priest in the ward. She is set to be baptized June 9th. We meet with her again this week!!! We are sooooo excited for her. She reminds me of Kevin, where she just completely understands and agrees with the Doctrine. She is only 17, so she does have to talk with her parents still, but we are planning to make sure that happens early, in case they have any concerns. It's really great!!

I want to start off real quick, with a nice little tidbit fact I found out this week. Carbondale is actually the birth place of Memorial Day!! The little cemetery I took a picture at was where the first service initially took place, being led to a nearby Baptist Church. Attending the service was the great General, John A. Logan, who is actually a local from Murphysboro. He enjoyed the service so much, he decided to write a decree to see it turned into a holiday, which it started out in a general form within many of the states, but then became a national holiday. I find it awesome that I get to celebrate Memorial Day, in it's birthplace :) The entirety of that story is found on the picture of the Historical marker that was in the cemetery. If Damon is looking for a Civil War hero to do a report on, may I recommend John A. Logan? :)

Ok, so the work is amazing!!! Except for when it was bike day...we didn't get nearly as much done on Bike day haha(Neither of us have a bike, so we walked a lot). On Monday, we taught Shenika another lesson, which was great...I miss working with her as much as we did when we were teaching her the lessons, because she is super funny! She leaves for Chicago pretty soon, so we only have a couple weeks left to work with her. We got her started on FamilySearch.org and got here interviewed for a Temple Recommend. She is progressing very well still, and I hope that continues in her new ventures up north :)

Tuesday, was a sad day, and a great day. We said goodbye to most of the district, as they were transferring out, as well as goodbye to the Steeleville area in general, because they are closing it to missionaries. We inherited a bunch of great resources from Steeleville, and have put them to great use this week. It's actually been very helpful to understand the books in the Old Testament. Understanding the Old Testament is so important, because we can see a perfect level of parallels between how God ran His Church during the time before Jesus Christ and His Church that He restored to the Apostles in Jesus Christ's time, as well as that same restoration for the very last time, in this dispensation. Proof that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever...a fulfillment of prophecy. One thing I've noticed is that the Gathering of Israel is an extremely important event in God's eyes. He has revealed this principle to his prophets many, many times, both in the Bible and the Book of Mormon, and it is a fulfillment to the blessing bestowed on Ephraim, that it will be that tribe who first receives the restoration of the Gospel, and he will be the one to gather Israel by sharing that Gospel in its fullness, to the entire world. Missionary Work has always been part of God's plan. So many scriptures testify of it in the Old Testament; Dueteromony 33, a lot of Isaiah especially Isaiah 49, Isaiah 54, Jeremiah 16(Where the Gathering of Israel will be a greater event then the Exodus of Israel out of Egypt), Ezekiel 34, Ezekiel 37, Daniel 2, and many, many others. God always keeps his promises, and these are all Covenants unto the children of Israel, that he will gather them again...And I play a part in the fulfillment of these prophesies, and that Covenant among men. No other church, on the face of the earth, has the authority from God to bring his children back into the fold. It is a call given to those in the lineage of Joseph, and is in accordance to the priesthood, which was the same priesthood held by Jesus Christ; There were needs for a restoration, and the fulfillment of this need came to a man, Joseph Smith, who was a choice seer, raised up from the fruit of the loins of Joseph, who was sold by his brothers in Egypt, in which the his blessings and birthrights were given unto his son Ephraim, of which was Joseph Smith's lineage, as well as mine. I fulfill my purpose and call from God, even unto the fulfillment of prophesies that have been since the beginning. 

The rest of Tuesday was full of work. We taught Louis, a member referral, who is from Thailand. He has found out that Christianity is the right path to God, but wants to find the true church of Jesus Christ. We taught him the first part of the Restoration and will hopefully teach him the second half this week. 

We also taught the Tomas family, which was an amazing lesson. We taught the Plan of Salvation which went really well. They are currently Catholic, as many Latino families are, and they see parallels between our beliefs and the beliefs that they know of in their church. We are helping them understand that truth will be presented to them, directly from God, and that knowing Joseph Smith was a prophet is a key starting point to knowing the truthfulness of what we teach. Francisco understands this very well, and to be honest, I believe he already has a testimony of what we believe. I think it has helped to make him a teacher, by letting him translate what we teach to his parents. We will be inviting them to baptism during our next visit, which will be amazing! We are aiming for a month of preparation time to help them receive that personal witness of the truth, from God Himself.

We also taught Chad Wyatt this week, without his wife, who was still at work. The lesson went very well. He pointed out that he has seen a show on the History channel that discussed how many artifacts have been found in the North and South American Contents that contain Ancient Hebrew, and he was able to see how that really helps demonstrate evidence of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. We discussed that even though it is great to see evidence of the things we believe, because there is a lot of substantial evidence for the things that are in the Book of Mormon, that an even better convincing evidence is an answer from God. We discussed about answers he has received in his past, and how that relates to an answer that he can receive about truth. He really liked this, and I really hope it helps motivate him to keep up with commitments. He struggles with procrastination a lot! Lol

Of course, we had our lesson with Emily as well. We taught the Plan of Calvation, which is a version of icons that demonstrates the Plan of Salvation using Calvin and Hobbs. It's pretty cool. She understood the concepts really well. She is a very smart young lady. As I said before, I'm really excited for where she is headed. She read the scripture we gave her twice since we last saw her just so that she had the full understanding...She is on fire! :) 

Hmmm...I realize that I haven't shared to many crazy stories, so I want to share one and hopefully I can try to share a crazy or funny story once a week. This one is from my first transfer.

Elder Bassett and I were walking down Walnut street (which is a one-way street headed east, with 3 lanes. It is the main drag heading east), when someone behind us honked. We turned around to see a women in her car at the corner, waving us over. We walked up and she said, "I never get to feed you guys so here's some money for dinner", which she proceeded to hand us some money. She had a long line of cars waiting behind her, so we quickly said thanks and let her get on her way(we still don't know who it actually was), and I put the money in my pocket without counting it. We continued back on our path, when immediately across the street, a guy started shouting at us; "Hey, Hey!!! Wait! Stop right there!" He immediately bolted out into the street, which was rush hour (nothing like Utah rush hour, but still quite a bit of cars). He nearly got hit by 3 different cars, running into the street in a drunken stupor. He came up to us and asked, "Are you men of God?!?", which we responded yes to. He then said, pointing to the street, "Did you see that? I am a man of God!". Oh boy, he then started saying "I need help, I need help." His friend then grabbed him and said "We need to go...calm down." It was crazy! I thought he was going to try to get the money we just got or something, which I would have been willing to hand over of course, but it was totally weird. It was funny for him to claim that his walk across the busy street was his act of miracles :) We haven't seen him since, unfortunately.

Anyway, I guess I will close my Epistle home! I hope you are all doing well! I look forward to hearing from you all! I love you, and bid you safe passage until next week!

Elder Diz(Elder Tyler Robinson)