Convinced -- Conviction

Hello! 

 

It's been a great week! I miss Elder T, he was such a good buddy, and such a good companion.  I got to hang out with him for a couple minutes at the new missionary/ trainers meeting.  You know what's great about serving with people? You get to keep seeing them! And then it's even better, because you love them AND you miss them!  Speaking of which, my old buddy Elder C is with me today.  He got permission to come down to Bremerton and drop off something for us.  So we're emailing together in the same library we did last year!  It's great. 

 

My new companion Elder B is cool, he's a great missionary, and way funny.  We caught on to each others humor way fast, so we've just been having a blast.  It's funny, I didn't realize that we missionaries have our own humor, until last transfer, when we were talking to all these new missionaries, who didn't think we were funny...   I'm nervous for going home, no one will laugh at my jokes!  Fortunately I'll continue to laugh at my own jokes.   haha.

 

Guess what?!? One of our new boys is only 18 years old!  That's crazy!  He's 2 years younger than me, and I still feel like a child.  He's great though, definitely wouldn't know he was 18 until he tells you.  Although a lot of the 18 year olds really do look like deacons/teachers. No joke. they look way young.

 

We've been working as hard as we possibly can, and trying to be perfectly obedient, so that we can set good examples for our baby boys.  I really think their first couple transfers will impact the rest of their missions, so we're trying to make them stellar! 

 

Only a couple minutes left, maybe I'll share something I've studied recently?

 

Eh, not enough time.  Just a quick thought though.  So, in the Book of Mormon, we hear the phrase "convince" a lot.  (2 ne 25:18, 26:12, hel 5:19 etc)

and in Lonas' head, he was like "wait a minute- I thought we weren't out here to 'convince' people, we're here to "invite" right?  Yeah thats true.  Because I was reading it wrong I think.  I feel like in my head, I was implying "convince (against their will)" which is silly. 

 

"a Man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still" right?

 

But I was thinking about what it means to be convinced of something? well, it means to have a thorough conviction.  In that sense, we definitely ARE out here to convince anyone and everyone who will listen to us, who has a sincere heart and real intent.  We want them to be convinced in the same sense that we are convinced, that Jesus is the Christ and his Gospel has been restored :)  It's so great to be convinced of that.  I'm so grateful I am.  and how can we convince people?

shoot out of time.  But it talks about it in Hel 5:18.