My Wonderful Family,
This week has been an interesting one. A lot of good things happened. Something that I was reminded of this week was the way you act affects the way you feel. So I did a study of Humility throughout the week. To start out I would like to give the definition of it. Dictionary.com says to be humble is to be "not proud or arrogant."
Something that has been said quite a lot over time from General authorities and Apostles that have come to speak at the M.T.C is "pride is the opposite of humility." To me pride means to be caught up with oneself, to hold yourself above one another because of something that you did or that they did. We cannot point out the flaws of others, because it is not good for our soul. Even though it may make us happy for the moment, it will not make us happy in the long run. We can not stand at the judgement bar of God and say that we have done right when we have done wrong. It does not work that way.
Happy Birthday sundae from Tucanos
Jesus Christ said in Matthew 25:
41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me."
Let us all be courteous to one another, that is my invitation to you today. We should always choose the harder right rather than the easier wrong, even if it is not what we want. Something that I have tried to do throughout my whole mission is to always have Integrity, which is doing the right thing especially when nobody is looking. Imagine the immense joy we could feel as we provide help for others. I know that it brings me joy to see that something I have done has been a blessing to someone else.
We took a little stroll down "Treasure Aisle" in Macey's before conference
As we are humble and are willing to align our will with our Father in Heaven's, we can bring about greater things than we could ever imagine. I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior. I know that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I know that as we have honesty and integrity we will be able to go to God and tell Him that we have done our best and that is all that He asks of us. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
So I had fun last week doing bullet points so I think that that is what I am going to do from now on.
So you are probably curious about the title of the email. It is true, we went into Penguin Brothers today for lunch which is just a little ice cream shop because our companionship was going to Tucanos for dinner, which is a lot of food, so we wanted to get something small. Anyway we went in and David Archuleta was there. He talked with each one of us and we had a casual conversation with him. He made jokes about horchata which is one of the ice creams there. But it sounds similar: Archuleta and Horchata. I had horchata ice cream between two oatmeal cookies which was super good.
Treasure Aisle again
We also went to Tucanos and that was also super good but super filling at the same time. We told them that it was our birthday months because we thought that they give free meals to those that it is their birthday month. That is something that they used to do at least, but what happened was they handed us a tambourine and they said "We are going to sing the Tucanos birthday song and you are going to do your best Brazilian dancing." I instantly questioned myself because missionaries aren't allowed to dance! So what happened was they started to sing and I shook the tambourine while Elder Curtis and I just bobbed our heads up and down. They then gave us some ice cream which was super delicious.
Transfers are happening on Monday and we figured out who we are going to be with. My next companion is Elder Knudsen. He is from Springville too, and actually I had met him in high school. So it is cool that I am back with him.
A cute cake at Macey's, but I didn't buy it because that face is just saying "I'm all made of sugar"
The Referral Center Missionaries got invited to the Provo Mission Zone conference! It lasted about seven hours and there was a lot of talking. Sister Hodgeman (The Mission Presidents wife) talked about having our hearts knit together as one like it says in the scriptures. She gave us three ways to become one. Those three ways are:
- have humility
- be a peacemaker
- Always speak well of one another
Elder Evan A. Schmutz of the seventy came and spoke for the Tuesday Night Devotional. Something he said was, "It is great that you are here, because you were foreordained to be here at this time." He then gave us a question to consider which was, "How am I doing with my foreordination?" Elder Schmutz also gave us two questions to ponder about while we are taking notes. Those are, "What have I learned, or what am I learning? and what will I do with what I have learned?" So it is always good to have a question in mind during something like that and especially now since it is only 14 hours and 32 minutes till conference starts.
I love you all and am so grateful for each and every one of you. I hope you all have a great conference weekend.
Love,
Elder Stevenson
No comments:
Post a Comment