Sent: Monday, February 2, 2015 7:56 AM
Subject: It's Cold

 

Well it's winter again. Bummer. This is our week without a car and its 5 degrees outside. Should be a pretty fun week. At least it hasn't snowed much so we shouldn’t have to be walking in snow too much. And our ward is really supportive so we should be able to get lots of rides to the places we need to be.

We had a kind of interesting week. On Wednesday we were asked to usher for a funeral at our church building. It was an open-casket funeral which was reaaaaaaaally weird for me because that's the first time I think I've ever actually seen a dead person before. We didn't go to the actual service though because we had our district meeting while the service was going on in the chapel. I'm sure it was a good funeral service though.

This week we went with Sister Davies and her husband to the Independence Visitor's Center to go to a special program where Jeremy Guthrie was supposed to be speaking. Turns out he is speaking THIS Friday so we just ended up watching "Meet the Mormons" instead. We are going back up this Friday though so that we get to go to what we planned to be at haha. I love being at the VC. It's a pretty cool place and we only get to go if we bring investigators or recent converts so we are always looking for people willing to go.

There is this girl named Emily that we met that works in a herbal cure type shop downtown here in Belton. She plays pretty much every musical instrument ever and she was telling us about this thing called a didgeridoo that she has that is fun to play. Well she ended up bringing it in like 2 days later so we got to learn how to play the didgeridoo. It’s basically a 5 foot long hollowed out stick that sounds like a really low pitched horn. I think she said it originates from Africa.

We also went on exchanges this week which was good. We exchanged with the Grandview Elders. It's always fun going on exchanges just because you have an opportunity to learn from someone else for a bit. There's always things that we can improve on and being on exchanges makes it really easy to see what exactly we need to improve. I got to go with Elder McCurdy who actually turns out to be Elder Parry's cousin (Elder Parry was my companion in Hill Park Ward in Independence).

I was just reading through some of Psalms this morning and I found a verse that really stuck out to me in Psalms 111:10 that says "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever." I've found while I've been on my mission that knowledge and understanding is a huge part of obedience. When we come to know that our Heavenly Father loves us and wants what is best for us it becomes a lot easier to follow his commandments because we know that they aren't just some useless rules that we've been given to limit our agency. A lot of people we teach don't keep commitments like reading the scriptures, attending church. praying, etc... only because they don't understand the importance of them and the depth of relationship that they can develop with their Heavenly Father through those things. When we start to understand the love that God has for us, obeying his commandments becomes something that we do because it is the only truly intelligent thing to do.

That's pretty much it for the week. Wish me luck with this cold weather :) Hope you all have a great week. Love You!

     -Elder Nyholm