Hello My Dear Best Family,
This week was crazy. We had a lot of curve balls thrown at us, which I will tell you more about later. Today I wanted to talk a little bit about pride. Elder Uchtdorf spoke in General Conference one year and gave a talk called "Pride and The Priesthood." Something he said in his talk was this:
"I believe there is a difference between being proud of certain things and being prideful. I am proud of many things. I am proud of my wife. I am proud of our children and grandchildren. I am proud of the youth of the Church, and I rejoice in their goodness. I am proud of you, my dear and faithful brethren. I am proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with you as a bearer of the holy priesthood of God."
Elder Uchtdorf also said, "Pride is a switch that turns off priesthood power. Humility is a switch that turns it on."
When we are prideful we lose the power that God gives to us. Not only that, but we also demean others by holding ourselves above them. Pride is a dangerous tool that Satan uses against us. As we are humble, we are able to uplift others, provide service, and forget about ourselves. Along with humility comes charity. Something that Paul said was that if we don't have charity we are nothing. So the way that we act, think as well as what we desire really reflects who we are. We all make mistakes but as we make those mistakes we can repent and return to the ways of Christ.
Emma at her baptism
I know that as we do this we will have happiness and we will have the help of God with us. He will always make a way for those who are humble. God truly does love when we are righteous and will do anything he can to bring us back to Him. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Alright. So we had been working on a document of people with their names and their Facebook links last week. By Sunday we had about 700-800 names and links on that document. When you think about it, it's a lot of people. We conversed about it and said that there was no way that The Denver Colorado North Mission was going to accept 700-800 people, and we had been sending the same thing to the other missions and heard from Sister Van Dam that only a tenth of the people that we gave her responded. So we decided to delete all of it and try a different method. So what we have been doing is talking to people on Facebook that are interested in a Bible or talking about Jesus Christ and when they say that they want to learn more we tell them that we have some friends that would love to talk to them and then send them to a set of missionaries that are online at that moment. That has worked out pretty well.
We finally got to the point where we were able to hand people off to Denver. So how it was working with them is that we could assign some people to the previous referral center missionaries but the rest of the people that were on the board that I sent a picture of would be handed out to different missionary companionships in the Denver North Mission. It was stressful thinking about at first but we are working through one of their online Assistants to the President, Elder Candland and he has been super excited and super supportive of what we have been doing. So because of that we decided to take all the people that we were teaching that we didn't have a certain previous referral center missionary in mind to teach them for to the Denver North Mission to hand out to their missionaries. So all the people without assigned missionary names that were on the board from the Salt Lake City South Mission, the Temple Square Mission and the Denver North Mission all went to the online missionaries in Denver. So about 55 people that we were teaching went to the Denver missionaries.
Updated contact board for Temple Square
We set up calls throughout the week to talk to Elder Mullenaux, Sister Larsen, and Sister Van Dam on Friday about the people that we had assigned to them. They all picked up and all seemed super excited to teach those that our companionship had chosen for them to teach. So we added them into all the Facebook groups and the people we had chosen seemed really excited to meet our missionary friends as well.
I have a few funny stories. We talked with a new person named Walter from Kenya and he kept asking us interesting questions after we introduced ourselves. For example, he asked me three times why I wouldn't come to Kenya and teach him there. So I kept on answering and it just wasn't enough.
Updated board for Denver
Another funny story. Every Friday night our companionship goes out to eat at some restaurant for dinner. Yesterday we went to Wendy's. It was getting a little bit late so we decided to just go through the drive through. Turns out Wendy's only takes two orders at a time. So Elder Woodruff and Elder Arndt order their food. Elder Arndt is driving so he goes to the counter, gets their cards swiped, and the man at the counter gives them their drinks, but elder Arndt starts to drive away before they got the food, so Elder Woodruff has to get out of the car, run to the counter and get the food. Then we came around again for my food, and when we come to the counter the man at the counter just starts laughing. He swiped my card and told us not to drive away before he gives us my food. It was pretty funny.
Elder Gary E. Stevenson came to The MTC Devotional on Tuesday. I was unable to shake his hand, though I wasn't expecting to either. He gave a really good talk about missionary work. He talked about the necessity of a survival kit in the wilderness. Then he talked about having our own missionary survival kit. This is what he included in the Missionary Survival Kit:
- Scriptures (Lights your fire)
- Missionary Handbook (Keeps you safe)
- Preach My Gospel (Your food and water)
This was something that was super cool because it puts into perspective how the gospel is a real necessity in our lives.
Emma Errgang who I taught when I was with Elder North actually got baptized which was super cool to hear. She seems really happy. I am grateful for the chance I had to teach her.
Well I hope that you all have a good upcoming week. I love you.
Love,
Elder Stevenson
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