Sorry I didn't send out an email last week. Ran out of time.
So let me do my best to fill you in on the last two weeks.
We got to go the temple a couple of weeks ago. It was
amazing as always. I love the Temple. No matter how you are feeling before you go
or what is going on at the time, you can always come out of the Temple full of
peace and righteous confidence and the strength of the Lord. I am SO grateful
that we have the Houston Temple in our mission and that we are able to go so
often. I'm pretty sure none of the missionaries here would be able to survive
without it. It is an irreplacable source of strength.
Two Friday's ago we had a really great power hour after
dinner. We decided to go tracking, but we weren't exactly sure where to go. We
had been having dinner at our apartment, so we decided to tract a street in one
of the areas closest to our apartment to save some miles. Sis. Hassell started
randomly moving her finger around on the map and told me to tell her when to
stop. I told her when, and her finger landed on a road. It was a really little
road, and we weren't really sure about it. Then we thought that we should
probably pray and ask God where He wants to go instead of leaving it up to
chance. We prayed and asked God to lead us to His prepared children. Then Sis.
Hassell moved her finger around again because we couldn't come up with any
better way to do it. Her finger landed on the same street. So we prayed again
and asked Heavenly Father if that was where He wanted us to go. We felt good about
it, so we drove over there and started tracting. We found so many potential
investigators. We are teaching one of them on Wednesday. One guy and his wife,
we taught last week. They weren't interested in continuing to meet, but it was
a really great discussion about the Restoration of the Gospel. They really love
God, but they were too hung up on the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. Then
there was a lady we met named Irma. She is awesome. When we knocked on her
door, she said no because it was all the same God. But she asked us where our
church building was. We told her and she said that she drives by it a lot and
has always wanted to go there to see how it feels inside -- see if the Spirit
of God is there. We invited her to come and gave her all of the information and
she was excited. At the end she told us that she has felt like something in her
heart was missing. Then this last Friday, we were on exchanges. I was
here with Hermana Woodward. We knocked on Irma's door again. She answered and
said she was sorry she hadn't come to church that week. Something had come up
and she wouldn't be able to go this week, either because she has a family
thing. But, she said, it was still in her heart to go to church. We had a
really great talk with her. She let us inside. We got to know her and ended up
talking a little about temples and eternal families and what missionaries do.
She was impressed and we are going to go teach her this week.
Last Saturday, May 31, Tim got baptized!! A member drove
Sis. Hassell and I all the way up to Oak Ridge so that we could attend his
baptism. It was so great. First of all, Megan looked great! She was so happy
and is doing so well. Tim looked great as well. He was very happy and excited
to get baptized. And he even teared up a bit during one of the talks. They are
just so awesome! And it was great to see everyone. My whole old district was
there, so that was really fun to see all of them. And it was great to see some
people in the ward. I love them so flipping much. They're just fantastic and I
miss them like crazy.
They are a couple of things I have been thinking a lot about
this week.
1. The Priesthood. So I mentioned the lesson we had with the
husband and wife who couldn't accept the Book of Mormon or Joseph Smith, no
matter how many times we told them they just had to pray about and ask God. One
of the things they kept going back to was what made Joseph different from other
pastors/preachers and their interpretation of the scriptures. We talked about
how the Priesthood was the difference, but it didn't really do anything. Ever
since that lesson, I have just kept going back to how it really is the
priesthood that makes all the difference. Joseph Smith didn't claim to be just
another preacher. He claimed to be a prophet of God, and as such he had
authority from God to do His work, to lead Christ's church, and to interpret
the scriptures. He had the priesthood. And either he was a prophet of God with
that authority, or he wasn't. And as we read the Book of Mormon and pray about
it and pray about Joseph Smith, asking God, the source of all truth, if it is
all true, we can come to know for ourselves that Joseph Smith really was a
prophet of God with that Priesthood power. And because of that, his
interpretation does matter.
2. Acting vs. being acted upon. We decide how to react to
different situations and if we are going to let those situations define us or
if we are going to define the situations. A situation either brings us closer
to God, or further from Him -- we decide. In my Book of Mormon class at BYU,
our professor talked about Alma 62:41. "But behold, because of the
exceedingly great length of the war between the Nephites and the Lamanites
many had become hardened, because of the exceedingly great length of the war;
and many were softened because of their afflictions, insomuch that they did
humble themselves before God, even in the depth of humility." They each
chose whether to let the war bring them closer to or further from God. He then
said "Boiling water hardens eggs and softens carrots." Same trial --
boiling water. Different reactions/outcomes.
I hope you all have a great week!!
Love,
Sister Sylvester
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