YSA Dinner

Hello!

Honestly not a whole ton happened this week but I’ll try to make this interesting and cool. This week was busy with lots of meetings, calling people, planning things, etc. Usually we have a funny hectic thing always happen to us every day. Example we had to find lots of car information for all of the senior couple’s cars, the assistant’s car, the Ostler’s cars, and our car. At first we thought it would be a piece of cake. We found out where to look in each car in order to find the info and got through everyone pretty fast.. Until we got to our car. It was all in Korean!! We basically learned Korean for 20 minutes until we were able to gather the information needed haha. One of my comps is Korean but he’s a failure and doesn’t know how to speak his language haha. I call him a fake Korean. Just kidding he’s the greatest, but I guess it would’ve helped a bit:)

We were able to teach Eric again. He’s still doing pretty solid. He read the pamphlet and he had good questions about it. He’s really smart so things were clicking quickly which is awesome. One hard thing sometimes being a missionary is feeling like you explain something really well but when you ask the investigator about the concept you just explained they just go off in a total different direction haha. We taught about the apostasy, restoration, and Book of Mormon and he asked if we had read the book and prayed like it invites us to do in Moroni. We were all able to testify to him and it was really cool. I asked him what he would do if he got an answer and his eyes got all wide and said “Oh dang! I’d be freaked out!!” Haha he explained to us kinda jokingly that if he knows it’s true he will have to start living a better life and would have no excuses! True I guess haha. He went on to say though that it would mean he would need to be baptized and join the church! He wouldn’t commit to a date, but he committed to at least start preparing. He said he would do the things necessary to know if the message is true or not. As I said last week he’s looking for purpose in his life and I know there’s nothing that could fulfill his search better than the message we get to share every day as a missionary.

We had an office meeting and President was able to tell us some cool stuff! We found out that my last area will be turning into a stake! I’m super excited for them! The people there work so hard and they’ve been dreaming of becoming a stake for years. Apparently the district president just started crying hearing the news. It’s so humbling to see people working so hard to build God’s kingdom here in this awesome country. Some spots here are really coming from scratch so it’s cool to see how hard some are willing to work in order for things to progress. So that was really sweet news!

Saturday during P day we went to the missionary recovery center to pick up a missionary from our mission who had surgery. We walked in and the couple missionaries there running the MRC are American. I asked Elder Peel where he was from and he said “Sandy, Utah!” I asked where in Sandy and he said above the library haha. Found out we live like 2 minutes away from each other, he’s in the stake below us. I asked if he knew the Odoms (elder odoms grandma/grandpa) and they’re their next door neighbors! Haha it was super crazy! It all came together, I totally had forgotten I was supposed to keep an eye out for them. I remember you guys telling me about them before I left. Anyways it was fun to talk with them! I think they sent a picture to ode’s grandparents maybe you’ve seen it by now haha. We hadn’t had breakfast yet so Sister Peel gave us cinnamon toast crunch, toast with homemade jam, chocolate milk, etc. I’ve been super lucky so far in this new position haha!

That night we had an activity with the YSA where we ate dinner then shared a message to them. One member here just got back from her mission in temple square so she knows what things are effective for missionaries and what we need help with. She was able to help us plan the activity and it was a big success! We kinda went over Elder Eyring’s recent talk and talked about His love for us and what we can do to help others feel His love and know His plan too. A few of them brought nonmember friends so it turned out perfect! After we finished it was about 8:30 and we realized if we were to head home we’d get there at about nine. On top of that we didn’t really have a P day because we were runnin around doing office stuff. So I kinda thought we were just gonna head home and get there at 9 and finish doing laundry and stuff. But as we got in the car we all decided that we should run to our area and talk to as many people as we could for 25 minutes since there were four of us! We dropped off Elder Ahn and Elder Adawag then went and parked and Elder Webster and I also started talking to people. In 25 minutes the other two taught a lesson and got two return appointments while we got two return appointments and found some people who used to listen to missionaries a year ago! They were really excited to see us and said they’ve been keeping an eye out for elders for awhile now. It was cool because literally the whole week we were having the hardest time finding people for some reason! Just in those 25 minutes we had lots of great success, the spirit really helped all of us realize almost at once we should run over to the area. We got home at 9:28 due to no traffic! It all worked out and I’ll never forget that!

This week in personal study I read some cool things about consecration. Being consecrated is being willing to give everything you have to God for His eternal purposes. In order to make it to the celestial kingdom we must be able to live its laws if called to do so. If we don’t love living the gospel in this life, why would we love it in the next life? This is a time for us to grow and eventually truly love living the laws that God has placed before us. They’re the only way to be truly happy! Living our lives as God wants us to live them gives helps us realize what we can become with His help rather than trying to do it our own way. We will refine our character and find more confidence in ourselves! One thing that stood out to me in my studying was when the speaker said “when it costs us but little to give, the treasure laid up in heaven is a small one.” We must remember that when we truly sacrifice something, God sees is and is proud of us more than we know. Sometimes nobody else will see your diligence except for God. But He has promised to repay us in eternity a thousand fold for our works. That’s a really cool blessing!! I invite you to think of ways you can give a little more to Him who has given you all that you have! The only thing we can really offer Him in order to show our love is our time and choices. As we continue to constantly seek to do what He would have us do I know that we will help lots of people return to Him.

Have a great week!

Elder Reber :)

These look like pictures from Palawon to us. One day Park will be around to explain each great picture. Until then, we will just love seeing his smiley face! 

So more pictures ended up downloading. Looks like he is back in the big city!