Strive To Give As The Savior Gave!

What a week it has been! This week truly was a really good week. We have really been focusing our efforts on finding new investigators to teach. We have really been praying to find those who would be ready to listen to us and be ready to prepare themselves to enter into the waters of baptism. It is amazing what can happen when you just have the faith that you really will find those people! We have had some great success this week in picking up some new investigators. We are teaching some great people and some great families. I am really enjoying the area that I am in right now. The members are great as well. This week we had some interesting dinners. Last night we ate at a Jamaican families house for dinner and had some jerk pork. It was very hot and spicy! I am starting to learn to not be so picky and just eat everything! Which has been very hard for me but hopefully by the end of my mission I wont be so picky anymore. On saturday we had the baptism of one of my favorite investigators so far. His name is Aly Landa. He was 29 years old. The way that he got interested in the church was that his family and him were invited to the Draper Temple open house and felt the spirit so strong there that they wanted to go back and be sealed as a family some day. And they knew that the only way to do so was to be baptized first. So they called the missionaries. His wife was already a member just not active. So now the whole family is a very active family. The twelve year old daughter was baptized two weeks ago and now the dad was baptized on saturday. It was interesting. We were talking to Aly at the baptism interview on Friday night and we asked him, "Hey Aly, two months ago if we would have knocked on your door what would you have done?" He said, "I would have slammed the door in your guys faces so hard and possibly pullen a gun on you!" He was so serious too! What a great opportunity we have coming up here with the Oquirrh Mountain temple open house so close to all of us to invite our neighbors, our friends, members, non-members, anyone, and everyone to go to the temple and walk through it see what it is like on the inside of the temple! There is not a place in this world where you can feel the spirit stronger then the temple! I hope that all of you take this opportunity of the open house to invite someone to it and share your feelings of the church and of temple work to them.

So this week has also been a really hard one. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday i was not feeling very good. I had a really bad headache and was throwing up and was just feeling down on myself. I was kind of feeling like I can't do this mission thing! Why am I even here! I was also thinking, I got the honorable release I can be done! So I started putting a lot of thought into "my mission." And I came to one major conclusion.
That conclusion I came to was that this is where I need to be! It does not matter where you are serving your mission, it is HOW you serve your mission! When I accepted my mission call I told President Monson and the Lord that I was going to serve for two years and I am going to do just that, serve for TWO years! I was thinking in one of the sacrament meetings we attended yesterday about when Jesus Christ was on the earth he performed many mighty miracles. He healed the sick, he brought the dead back to life, he made the blind see again, he performed the atonement for each and every one of us. While he was doing all of this, NEVER ONCE DID THE SAVIOR EXPECT ANYTHING IN RETURN! We should always strive to give as the savior gave! One way we can do this is by serving a mission! In Doctrine and Covenants section 4 it says, "Now behold the field is white already to harvest.....Therefore, O ye that embark in the service of God, see that ye serve him with all your heart, might, mind and strength, that ye may stand blameless before God at the last day." The field is white and already to harvest everywhere! It does not matter where you serve but how you serve! Also in Doctrine and Covenants section 128:22 it says, "Brethren, shall we not go on in so great a cause? Go forward and not backward. Courage, brethren: and on, on to the victory!" I really like that scripture where Joseph Smith is saying why shouldn't you go on in so great a cause such as missionary work? It is such a great thing what have ye against it? Go on! On to the victory!
I know that I am supposed to be here right now! Even here in the Salt Lake City South mission! I have grown more in the last three months then I have in the last 19 years of my life. I am so grateful for the opportunity I have to be serving the lord at this time. The church is true!
Love Elder Anderson