So much has happened since last week that it feels like a lot longer and I can't quite think of what I'm supposed to put in the email. I've made much better friends with all the other Elders in my district. I've had an awesome time so far. I still get chocolate milk every day but in order to keep Jeremiah 4:19 from happening I have a bowl of cracked wheat every day too :) Every day is more fun still, my teachers are awesome and Sunday and Tuesday devotionals are awesome. We had an apostle's son come teach on Joseph Smith and then a different apostle came to speak on missionary work and it was so cool. One of my favorite things that I've been able to do here so far, that doesn't have to do with learning how to help others more, is gym. Every day except Sundays and Wednesdays I get to go to the gym and my favorite is to go up on the track, there are stationary bikes and ellipticals and I've just been having a blast. Although in this last week I did get sick, not too bad, but I caught a cold. Most the Elders have though, but now I'm really not sleeping well. It should start getting better though.
From Carma - Elder Gray shared a very personal story about learning to teach the lessons to people interested in the LDS church. Since it's about actual investigators and not people role playing, he asked that I respect their privacy in the blog. But this is what he learned from his experience...
I had a rougher time with our first lesson. One of her concerns was that during a hard time in her life she prayed really hard and felt nothing and now has a testimony that either God doesn't exist or if he does that God is great for some people and for others the whole idea of God just doesn't work as well. I got out of the lesson and we had a temp exchange. I was with Elder Christofferson. I just cried, a lot, for a long time. One) I had no idea how I would have helped someone with that problem and two) I cried later in the middle of class because I realized that some people don't know that God loves them. Here at the MTC I've strengthened my resolve in going on a mission. Before I went my reason was that I wanted everyone to have the opportunity to have Christ in their lives. Now it is also from last week because I want other people to feel as happy as Christ has made me feel and now I am going on a mission so I can help other people know, through the power of the Holy Ghost that their Heavenly Father loves them.
I'm not sure what else I have to say other than a spiritual thought: I am never the teacher. It is not me that teaches the investigator. Since it is only through the spirit that someone can learn and know, I have to be humble. That is connected, because if I am humble enough to understand that it is not through me but it is through the spirit and the spirit through me that someone comes unto Christ, then I can have the spirit with me in the lessons which will allow that spirit, the one Holy Ghost to testify to my investigators by touching their hearts. Moroni 10:5
Another cool scripture 1Nephi 21:14-16
Read it first and it's amazing and then realize that the comparison between us and Christ and us being described as a sucking child is because that child is helpless. Just like us without Christ. Without Christ we are helpless and he knows that. And he loves us so much that with the knowledge he has that we need him he will not forget us and leave us to die just as that infant would if the mom forgot about it. We are engraven in his hands and his walls are continually before us.
Love, Elder Gray
