'Tis that time of the week again! Time for me to tell y'all how I am doing. Well, it has been a great week! As you know, very busy! But inspiring!
Like Captain America
Glad you guys got my package. And glad you are enjoying! Hahaha the nicknames are fun! Generally speaking, we are supposed to call each other "Elder _____" or "Sister _____" but occasionally we do have little nicknames that we use sometimes. My nickname in Canberra was "Larsbags". Right now, my nickname to most of my zone is "Captain". Hahahaha that one carried over from Liverpool. Elder Tai is "Lieutenant" or L-T for short. Heaps of the people here think I look like Captain America, so I guess that's where it came from.
 |
| Elder Larsen and Elder B, back in Dapto. |
We had heaps of meetings this week. We had zone conference on Wednesday. That was awesome. We learned a lot about the importance of obedience, increased faith, and love. The Assistants to the Mission President trained us about Teaching Skills: Asking Questions and Listening. That was really inspired training. Many of our zone members felt it was directed to them. Honestly, President and Sister Back are incredible. Oh yeah, I made Sister Back's notebook! Hahaha, we were talking about the recitations we recite at every meeting and comp study (Specifically Jacob 5:72; our others are "Our Purpose" [PMG p.1] and D&C 4), and in Jacob 5 it uses the word "mights" plural instead of "might". What's the difference? My thoughts were that we are all given different capacities to serve, and those capacities are God-given. It is up to us to do everything we are personally able to do. It may not be the same that someone else can do, but it is enough.
I also gave a short talk about obedience, that "Obedience is better than sacrifice". It was fun calling our zone to repentance. Ha! President Back organized a game to play with the zone at lunch and that was really fun. Good stuff!
MLC (Mission Leadership Conference) was incredible too! Man, Elder O'Riordan is soooo awesome! He taught us nothing that was prepared beforehand; it was all impromptu. Some quotes that I loved that he shared: "A good teacher is a good learner and listener." "Missionaries can be busy accomplishing nothing, so use your time wisely." "Just as taught in the Doctrine and Covenants, if we Preach the Gospel without the Spirit, then it is not of God. You can exercise great power in the work as you always rely solely on the Holy Ghost." He shared so many inspiring experiences that he has every week! Man, that guy has great faith! He told us about how he goes to the rescue nights of various wards with stake presidents. And they witness miracles always! Always! What is the difference between when we have the Holy Ghost and when we don't? The power of God cannot manifest itself without it. Wow! That will be the focus of my training this week at ZTM.
Thursday we were given a special assignment by President. He called us up just as we finished service (cleaning and gutting out a house) and asked if we could take two missionaries to the clinic from Mortdale Zone. Mortdale Zone had it's zone conference that day, so those zone leaders were occupied. So that smashed our day! The missionary got the help that he needed, so that's great. It took 6 1/2 hours out of our day. Shuxxx....
 |
| President and Sister Back |
Sunday we had a missionary fireside in our ward. It was well organized, and we had a massive turnout. Have I mentioned that our ward is amazing? The fireside started with a few talks from returned mini-missionaries, then we split off into classrooms run by individual missionaries teamed up with auxilary and quorum leaders to show the members how to do missionary work. I had the young men, and the former young mens president Brother P_ (he is now the High Priest Group Leader) He is awesome! The young men are geared up to do missionary work! Also President Back came to that and spoke. He shared this analogy about missionary work.
Basically, there is this saintly woman that dies, and her nephew eventually dies and goes to heaven. He cannot find his auntie, so he talks to God, and asks where she is. He points down in hell. The nephew says "No, that can't be right. She was so good! Read her scriptures for three hours everyday, and went to church, did everything!" The reply was "Well, maybe you are right." So God calls an angel to go get auntie. Auntie is told to grab the angels legs as he flaps his wings and carries her to heaven (this angel has wings). Auntie starts to go up. People grab onto auntie's legs to get up to heaven. The angel struggles to fly. Auntie kicks the people off. And then when the load is light, the angel kicks auntie off. Nephew said "Hey, what happened there?" The reply was "That was aunties problem her whole life. She only ever cared about her own salvation." I thought it was really cool. Hopefully it inspires some to do missionary work!
 |
| Elder Abquina from Phillipines and Sister To'o, former stake pres wife. She cooks awesome samoan chop sui. |
 |
| All the people after the fireside. Hectic turn out! And that is probably only a quarter of them all in the Pic! |
 |
| The food for the fireside! Far out! |
Favorite Teaching experience? Te Auiti was great! We are now allowed to teach him more than once a week (which is great, because his baptism is in like 3 weeks). And they are so excited for our lesson on this Wednesday, The Plan of Salvation. Sister W_ was like "Oh that's my favorite!" with a massive smile on her face, when we told her and Te Auiti that that is what we will teach next. He is ready, that one! So keen to get baptised. Another thing that made me laugh was Te Auiti told his mom, referring to his baptismal service "Make sure that the Elders are there, okay? They have to come!" I don't think he knew that we pretty much have to come, and we wouldn't miss out anyways! Good stuff! He is awesome. He has great fellowship (the H_ family), and a great ward family waiting with open arms for him.
(Found this Crazy Koala video on Jarrad's camera card)
Brett rescheduled our appointment with him for this coming Tuesday, which we are looking forward to. And Toni was unavailable, so hopefully we catch them this week. We found a few new investigators, with the help of Bishop T_. He is awesome. We went with him Tuesday night for the rescue visits to a member that has been gone for some time. His partner and partner's auntie were there. We talked about the eternal nature of families (initiated by our wonderful bishop) and they are really keen to learn about family search. We have an appointment with them next Monday. Should be great!
That's pretty much my week! I included some pics from the fireside, and the first part of my haircut hahhahaha.
Love you guys!
Elder Larsen
 |
| Haircut time! |
No comments:
Post a Comment