This past week has flown by and I think that this next week will go by
even faster since I have a tradeoff with the zone leaders tomorrow and one with
my boy Elder Lane on Friday! He goes home in January and he’s already requested
me as a companion. I really hope I don’t "kill" him (Serve with him
his last transfer). This last Tuesday I had a tradeoff with Elder Simmons and stayed
in Fox Run. He hits his year mark this Thursday. On Thursday we
did some mormon.org things so we could get use to that since that’s what we
will be doing once we get iPads. Anyway, we get done with that and go to bike
back home and just barely leave the parking lot when I try to hop a curb.
Something that happened that happens to all missionaries.....my bike tire popped. All we could do
was laugh about it, good thing bike tires are cheap! Last night we went to a
Baptist Manor to visit one of our members there that doesn’t get a lot of
company. Once we finished up with him we start heading out to talk with him a
little bit in the hallway and out of nowhere all of these old crazy people bombard us! One
was yelling, “Please Lord help me". One was trying to
get me to take them out of the manor, one asked me how much they paid me and
said she would double it if we would stay the night. One of them asked me to mow their lawn. It was the most hectic, crazy, and funny thing that’s
happened to me so far on my mission. I thought it was cool that the one old
lady saw Elder Nelson and me as representatives of Jesus Christ without us even
telling her and she was too old to be able to read our tags without glasses for
sure. Elder Nelson and I died laughing once we got out into the car. After we
were at the manor we headed to dinner over at the primary presidents house, and
no I didn’t call her crazy or tell her she was in the primary because she is crazy. Anyway, we get done with dinner and her husband was
about to give his children back to school blessings when he offered to give us
a blessing as well. I had been
wanting one just to kind of guide me and a boost so I was so happy he asked.
Some of the things that he said in the blessing really helped. He said that I
was "saving the world" and that I do more than I notice, he also said
that my siblings back home would be going to school teaching the gospel, being
examples, and saying how proud they were of me. Mostly encouragement things but
i really needed it and it helped a lot. He then asked me to give him a
blessing. I use to be so scared to give blessings and honestly didn’t know how
to follow the spirit well enough
in the blessings to know what to say. The one thing I have noticed that I have
gained from my mission is to know
and act on the promptings of the Spirit. A cool experience I had this week with
a prompting of the Spirit is when we went to go to a potential. We taught
him about the book of Mormon and were trying to discern his needs, all he kept saying to us
was "this book won’t give me what I’m looking for". Then after we testified to him about the book and
asked him what he is looking
for all he would
say is 1
Corinthians 7......Honestly Elder Nelson and I had no Idea what that chapter
was so we couldn’t help him. I did feel
prompted to show him a picture of the temple, testify of eternal families and
the plan of salvation. So I did and asked
him if he would like that for his wife and family someday. He looked at me with big eyes and said, “Yes”. I didn’t think anything of it, just that I freaked
him out. Once we got back into the car I looked at 1 Corinthians 7, it talked about
marriage. The Spirit just makes my job too easy, I love it and have a testimony
of the Holy Ghost. Right after dinner we
dashed over to Marcus's place and I knew he wouldn’t be able to come out and
see us but we still made an effort. He has a really bad back and bad arthritis
and it acts up when it is overcast.
It has been raining for 3 days nonstop so I just figured he would be cooped up
inside. I’ll keep y’all updated
on him when we get to meet with him. We haven’t really been able to meet with any
of our investigators these past few weeks, I don’t really know what’s going on
but we are trying our hardest still. That’s the bad thing about agency, if I
had it my way I’d be in the font all day long! "Onward, ever onward"
and "Press forward", are my motto right now. After that we went to
another less-actives house and gave them back to school blessings as well (we'll be giving a lot
this week). It was really cool to be on the other side of the blessing for the
first time in my life. I took the priesthood that I had readily available to me
in my home for granted. I’ve always been thankful for my Dad’s worthiness and
willingness to use his priesthood and all men everywhere should be striving for
that. If you’re not, I’m going to be blunt about it. You are
not fulfilling your purpose on this earth or in this church or as a father and
husband. Get worthy and be willing to serve.
This week I wanted to share a message about an experience I had Tuesday
at district meeting. Elder Nelson committed us to write in our journal
attributes that we each wanted in our future spouse, and to bring it to the
next meeting. Not physical attributes of course but what kind of person we want
in a spouse. It was really hard for me to do it and honestly took a lot of
consideration. This is eternity we are talking
about here people! Once I got my list written down and then it dawned on me why
he wanted us to write them down. "If I’m expecting to marry a person
with all of these
attributes, I have to be worthy of it myself and live up to the standards I
have set for my wife." Why should she deserve less than what I wanted? My
challenge for y'all this
week is to write
down either those attributes you love in your spouse or the ones that you want
in in your future spouse. Then to take serious consideration of where you stand
in meeting those standards. I promise you and testify as a representative of
our Lord Jesus Christ that if you set appropriate, good and eternal goals for
your spouse and try your hardest to achieve being worthy of a person like that,
that you will become closer to your Savior and will be more like Him. When we
try and look at Christ like attributes, it is sometimes hard to think you can achieve that
(even though we can). By doing this you
take a look at what potential you think you have, it gives you a goal and
incentive to achieve that goal, and I would hope that the things you wrote down
would be things that Christ himself would have had as an attribute. I love this
gospel, I love Jesus Christ, I love my Heavenly Father, and I love y'all and the support you
give me. All is Well
Elder Welch
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