You Can Believe That Good Things Will Come

The words of the Master help us to understand
that His will is more about doing things
as He does and would have us do.

And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God.

Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother.

And he said, All these have I kept from my youth up.

Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.

May 26, 2015

Dear Parents, Mom and Dad/Dad and Mom,

It has been a good eight days. We have been pushing forward in doing the things of the Lord.

Monday, we headed off to elders' p-day, where the elders of the zone gathered together to play sports. Elder Hansen wanted to do that, because he liked the elders here. We had dinner with a member family that day. Elder Hansen said good bye to people. We were a bit late getting home, unfortunately, because we ran into a homeless man, who wanted to keep on talking to us.

Tuesday. Elder Day and I sent Elder Hansen off; we said our good byes. Elder Hansen is now near Powhatan, but not in Powhatan. 

After sending him off, we headed to the library to complete a survey that needed to be done in preparation

for the coming of some of the General Authorities. We headed home after that to have lunch and prepare for a member to pick us up to go to our lesson to the one lady whose son was blessed by missionaries. Well, when the member arrived, he turned off his car and started to come to us. When we went back, the car would not start. So, we took him to our car and drove off to the lesson.This member shared his own conversion story and some of his wife's (his wife is the Gospel Principles teacher); the investigator absolutely loved it. We were able to discuss some of the Plan of Salvation and invited to baptism. She did not accept, but she did not turn us down either. She also promised us to read the pamphlets we had given her. We were quite excited for these developments. 

After our lesson with this woman, we headed off to the church where we met the one less active, who we were given. I cannot figure what is his story and what is, in a sense, behind him. We talked to him for a while and helped him to understand more about the Book of Mormon. He appreciated it. After that lesson, we headed back to the member's car to jump start it. It was not necessary; somehow the terminal on the battery came loose. It was easy to fix and the car worked again. Later that night, we checked up on the family whose kids love us and the father loves us, but the mother, who we did not get to have a discussion with, is not that interested. She told us that she will call when she is ready. We will have to put that family on the back-burner, unfortunately. We checked up on the less active who has been struggling with life and with coming to church. He is in pain a lot of the time, but we keep on encouraging him. He is making progress in some ways, but still struggles.

Wednesday. We tried the one new investigator who is a young engaged mother, who gave time to have us over. She was not home. We tried to do many things that day. What ended up happening is that we visited the members, including Dan the Man, in the health center, retirement home place. With the one recent convert there, we read the Book of Mormon and she got to know us. She acted as if we were new, though we had visited with her multiple times with Elder Hansen.

Thursday, we had interviews with President Wilson. After him, we went to the hospital to visit on somebody that our investigator (the one we saw on Tuesday) asked us to go see. It took a while, and somewhat of a learning experience for us, to get in to see him; we prayed with him. He did not want a blessing, though we offered. We had lunch and did some planning before we saw the one investigator, whose son was blessed by missionaries. She actually read the pamphlets; some of it stuck, some of it I am not sure if it did. She has been running into what we term "deep doctrine," or the meat of the gospel. We help avoid going into depth and focus more on the basics. (For how can you understand the meat when you cannot understand the basics? How can you understand the flower without?) (It is not that we don't want to talk about difficult subjects but gaining a testimony of the Book of Mormon and the restoration of the gospel will help. Some questions, no matter what the subject, must be put on a shelf until we are ready to understand the answers.) We encouraged her to discover her own testimony and emphasized salvation and spiritual self-reliance on God answering her prayers. We were a bit concerned on some of the things she said, but I trust the Lord that things will resolve themselves. Later that night, we checked up on the one family who needs to come to church and came at least once (up to this point; they have again come to church). I realize even more the importance of centering the family on the gospel and the principles of "The Family: A Proclamation to the World." Without these founding principles and constantly improving ourselves, the family will encounter difficulties; it does not mean the family will automatically fall apart, but it means that there will be that need for extra effort to keep things together.

Friday, we planned. We decided to look at the entire picture of the transfer; we had transfer goals and transfer goals for our investigators. We now see where we want to be and where we want our investigators and less active and recent convert members to be. It is a big push to help things to go forward and to help ourselves to have a focus. Planning was not the only thing we did, but anything else, nothing really happened. Saturday, we finished that plan and completed our progress record. We visited our investigator who is a young mother, not engaged, but with the father. We simply got to know her, know what is important to her, and how we can help her. Honesty appears to be the key. We visited with the less active who is in pain; we set up a plan to help him to get to church. We visited with the one less active who reminds me a bit of my brother. He knows where he wants to be and where he wants his family to be. To begin this, he needs to come to church.

Sunday, before we had meetings, we ensured that the member who is in pain woke up. Then, we headed to our meetings. The drama student of Ms. Mary, who can be dramatic (who is the dramatic recent convert), called us, because she is somewhere else and is afraid to go to church (for a reason) and was wondering what to do. We did what we could do under the time constraints we had due to meetings. We then had correlation; we had ward council, but we could not attend. Luckily, things in ward council were positive and constructive. Meanwhile, we took the member who is in pain to church; we had permission from some of our leaders to do this. It has been hard to set up rides, but hey, the ward, (congregation) I notice, is putting in effort, which helps us out. And our investigator, whose son was blessed, came to church. Church was great and she loved it; she thought it was very, very caring and she did not feel alone. Also, topics mentioned or talked about in church included, but not limited to: Exaltation, temples, eternal families, Adam was baptized, animals are resurrected, we came from intelligences, and your baptism did not have the priesthood authority (bluntly stated). I make mention of this, because it was very, very interesting. We were afraid of what she might think, but she loved it.

Monday, we did some finding. We talked to our investigator, whose son was blessed and who came to

church. She asked about the temples, she asked a few other questions. She has a desire to be baptized. We went over the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and encouraged her to gain a testimony and to be rooted in that. We told her we focus on the basics, so that we have solid foundation as to what occurs. She is definitely trying to understand things.  I know when she has that testimony and gains that witness from the Spirit, nothing else matters. We had another lesson that day with a new investigator. His family is the family who needs to come to church and has started coming back to church. He has gone through the lessons, but we started over to help check his understanding. We also asked him to read the Book of Mormon. I see much good coming from him, though it did not seem apparent at the time.

Elder Day and I are moving forward in the work. We are pushing forward. I am reminded of how much time I have left (not that I think about it). I am going to do all that I can to push and go forward.

All is well.

Love,

Elder S. Todd

#VirginiaRichmondMission

From the Mouth of Babes

Hosanna! Hosanna!

December 16. 2013

Dear Parents, Mom and Dad/Dad and Mom,

Well, congratulations on making it to school board president, even though it was not your intentions, Dad! That is quite odd, how it all worked out. I know it is a lot on your plate and that seems crazy of how much you have to do. Why is it always this season particular that life pushes everything at you? It makes it hard to remember the spirit of Christmas, sometimes. All I can say is to put God first and miraculously, for God is a God of miracles, things will work out.

So for Skyping, I gave my ward mission leader the telephone number of home and your cells. Hopefully, soon, you will get a call. I should let you know my schedule for that day, so if you want to do another time, it does not get hectic on my schedule and your schedule, thus causing even more frustration. So, Christmas, at 10 to 12, I will be at a recent convert's house. 12 to 3, I will be at the ward mission leader's house, the Hairs. (Which reminds me, I forgot to tell my ward mission leader, your names. Haha, oops.) 3 to 5, I will be at another recent convert family. 5 to 7:30, I will be a member's house. 7:30 until 9, I will be with Santa, also known as my landlord, having dessert. If you get a call from him, my ward mission leader, please ask about calling Grandma and Bria as well, because I forgot to mention that as well, more particularly Grandma, seeing as I knew I was going to be calling her. I did not know about Bria until now. And thanks for getting me a card to use to pay for calls.

I am excited to get the Christmas package, though I will wait until Christmas to open it. I am working really hard to get something out to people for this Christmas holiday. I am not getting anything, but I am writing something and then, hopefully, I will type it all up, or just kill my hand and write it out tenfold. Just like those of old. And yes, I did share with my companion goodies of the last package.

And with the ice storm, yeah, we did lose power, but only for a few hours. Our landlord woke us up to inform us of that, but I was fine, despite not having an electric blanket warming me up. I had bought another blanket, so that it can go on top of the electric blanket and keep the heat by, in theory, pushing it back. I was warm for the last three hours of sleep I had. 

I am seriously losing the time. Things are going by way too fast. We had some great lessons and a lot happened this week. We helped move a lady out of the ward, in the cold. I had no idea how expensive moving trucks were until now. Sheesh. Plus, moving is a lot like a game of Tetris and it is insane. I felt bad, because you could tell how stressed she was. 

One investigator, who we might be going over to Christmas, who is a husband of a recent convert, just opened up to us completely. We also have been asked a lot of questions lately, but, gratefully, the Spirit is on our side. I talked to the part member family, where the husband is deployed and the wife is Jewish, as in we were talking to the daughter about heroes from the Book of Mormon. The reason why is that the parents made an agreement to have their children exposed to both religions. 

We had the ward Christmas party, which was fun. I sat with an investigator and talked to him and other members. All they served was ham, though (Seth does not like ham). They did have other side dishes, thankfully. There was no Santa, because that is the way the bishop wanted it. 

The Primary children sang, but most of them did not sing. So, you heard hardly anything, but it was great. They had a great performance on Sunday, because one kid was extremely excited. Part of their song they had to loudly say, Hosanna, so that kid took it to heart and shouted loudly, "HOSANNA! HOSANNA!" I love little children. I remember knocking on a door and there was a mother and a kid. The mother said, "Oh, we are not interested." The kid piped up, "Why are we not interested?" And most recently, someone told us, "Oh, we are Protestants." Their kid piped up, "But, we haven't been to church in a while." 

But, back to the ward Christmas party. There were other performances and they were all good. There was even a sing along where people could also come up. Not many people in the crowd wanted to sing along. I joined and it was fun.

In our district meeting, I gave a training on goal setting and accountability. I talked and then the time came to do the role play, which involved my district in building marshmallow towers and accounting "why" for their success or failure, in not reaching the goal of how tall they wanted the tower they had set.

It has been a great week. I am particularly loving my studies at this time. I am reading "Jesus the Christ" and, soon, I will start the New Testament. I am realizing a lot. I even been watching the Bible Videos that recently came out. (I wish they would make more, but that is just me). But, also, I felt as though I should do a topical guide study on law, order, justice, and mercy. I had been thinking about law, order, justice, and mercy for quite some time, because that is something I realized I really love; which is considerably odd, having a creative mindset as well, which is free flowing. But, that is besides the point (there is a balance to it). In this study of which will take a lot of time, I have subtopics, which may or may not have sub-subtopics as well. It is quite fascinating, because this study encompasses a lot more that I also wanted to learn, which surprised me. I am really, really excited. A lot more growth is coming, which is considerably good, despite all the storms that may also encompass.

All is well.

Love,

Elder S. Todd