Letter Oct 3rd

Oct 3, 2013

Kumusta! 

If you're wondering why I am writing on a thursday and not my P-Day on Saturday its cause conference is on Saturday so we don't get a full pday this week and get to email earlier. Me and Elder N. decided to split it up to get more emails, so My time will be short today but will get to go on tomorrow, so feel free to write me emails and I can spend time replying!!

This week has been really great, and gone by really fast, I didn't even realize that it was thursday already!  I hope you had a great birthday get away mom. Let me know how it was. And I want to hear from emmett! Seriously, Elder nebeker gets 3 letters a day, if not more, so Im dying for some. let me know how you are doing.

As conference is coming up, be sure to watch all 5 sessions! I am so excited for it. My branch president told us to focus on 3 things that we want to learn focused on missionary work, and 3 things we want for our future families, and to pray about it so we can recognize it, and I encourage you to do the same, Its going to be great.

This week we had some great devotionals. On sunday, we got to watch an old one that was so good they replay it frequently here for missionaries to watch if they want. It was by elder bednar titled CHARACTER OF CHRIST and I want you to try and find it, it will seriously change your life. Its like an hour long, but you want it to be longer because it is so good. And I heard that he didn't have any notes! That was something that kind of bothered me about some other talks that we have heard, is they are so scripted, it doesn't seem personal. I think its alright to write it out, but not to be afraid to go off it. But anyway- The talk is all about having the character of christ and has influenced my scripture study a ton since hearing it. The other devotional was on tuesday night, we got to sit up front at the main campus because we had to walk so far, and listen to David s baxter I think his name was, from the 70. Hes from scotland and had a sweet accent, but talked about really cool doctrine. He basically talked about how wrong it is for people to say that we aren't christian by saying we are more christian than them haha. He talked about why we don't use a cross- which is we don't want to focus on the death of our savior, but on the resurrection- and the majority of the atonement happened in the Garden- and we don't want to focus on one symbol. He also talked about the book of mormon, and said "why would man limit what god gives us? If they found some ancient scrolls in a cave that had One of the apostles name on it, they would certainly use it" and how the "no one shall add to this" part at the end of revelations was to not add to or change Pauls revelation. And what dad always says about it being placed earlier in the bible chronologically. 

The main thing that was neat this week was learning the difference between testimony and conversion. A testimony is faith and believing and conversion is acting on what you believe to know is true. If we simply believe then we won't get anywhere- we have to act on what we know, to show Heavenly Father our faith, and become more like Christ (Hint Character of Christ). Im reading the book of mormon from the start, and realized what the first five chapters are for today. If you read them and wonder why Nephi puts those in, it is to show his conversion. He believes in Lehi's vision- and has faith but then goes and acts upon it thus his conversion, and prays to the Lord if it was true. Then when asked to go get the plates -a trial of his faith- he does so willingly and thinks of ways on his own until he has to put faith that the Lord will deliver them- and acts again and is rewarded with the plates eventually. I don't have any of my notes so its hard to explain, So I will tomorrow, but hopefully you read it and try and think of the first chapters as his conversion and watch character of christ, it will all make sense. 

If I could write everything down to be a good missionary I would give you Preach My Gospel. Stephen, Read it and study before you get to the MTC, And emmett, make sure you read it and study from it now, I promise it will be so great. 

Some other stuff: 

I heard this video is pretty funny but I cant watch it- its a guy who can talk exactly like the Apostles: "How General Authorities Eat reeeses Cups" I don't know if itll be good but you could check that out and let me know. 

THERE IS A TACO BELL IN QUEZON CITY!! (I thought Tucker would get a kick out of that, you better believe I'm getting there for happier hour haha) 

Theres a guy here that knows cousin Josh, Elder H., said he was a complete stud in High School while he was there. He wanted to see if he knew Devon or Taris? I don't know but if he could write me back about that that'd be neat. 

A cool quote I heard in a talk or somewhere was "The reason God gives us Trials is so when we don't think we can keep going, we take one more step in faith in him" So you can think about that if you are going through any trials.