"Very fun, very busy, very good place to be a missionary."

July 15, 2013

Dear Dear Dear,

I'm in Lakewood! Very fun, very busy, very good place to be a missionary.  My companions are great!  Me and Chris just fell right into the swing of being companions again.  But it's even better than last year. We are 15 months more experienced, we've learned how to be more efficient and effective missionaries.  We are laser focused on our purpose- and we have a blast doing it.  

Our two boys are Elder H and Elder M.  H is an 18 year old new missionary we're training. He's a baller, so I'm excited to learn some more from him.

Elder M is Samoan, and from Australia.  Chris trained him last transfer, and now we are follow up training him.  He's sooo funny.  Back home he was in a rap crew, and did like underground freestyle rap battles and stuff.  He is WAY good. So we do a lot of freestyle rapping throughout the day.  I'm getting better :)  

Christensen is going home after this transfer, so we are working really, really hard, and helping him finish strong. Please keep us in your prayers.  Please pray that we can find the family that we're looking for.

Oh, by the way, I don't remember if I included this in my last email or not, but guess who my District Leader is?   Elder S!  My boy from like 3 or 4 transfers ago!

He was a good boy, I figured he would be district leader pretty soon, but I didn't guess I would be Zone Leader of his district! I went to his District meeting on Wednesday, and was very impressed, he is a great missionary.  It reminded me that the caliber of a missionary is not determined by how long you've been in the mission field. There are great missionaries with a lot of experience under their belt, and great missionaries who are still learning the ropes.  That's not what it's all about :)  

Ok, enough small talk, lets get back to the scriptures.

so I'm continuing my Book of Mormon reading, where I'm going through at approximately the rate of 1 chapter a day. realistically a little bit slower, but around there, and I'm up to Alma 59.  The problem is that at this rate, when I finish, I won't have enough time to go through it again, which I really want to before I go home.  So I started another project, where I do 3 pages a day, so if I read 4 pages the last week, I'll finish the week I go home.  It's fun, and makes it easier to draw connections to different books and stories.  

So I was reading 1 Nephi 10:6, where we learn that the nature of man, in our temporal state, is 

a) Fallen

b) Lost

which struck me as significant, because we know that the nature of God is that he is 

a) Just 

b) Merciful.

so we are Lost and Fallen. Physically Fallen, because of our separation from God, and Lost because we wander from the path spiritually.

What I realized this morning is that characteristics of the nature of God and OUR nature go together.  It is the Justice of God which redeems all men from the fall, in bringing us back into his presence to be judged.  It is the Mercy of God which allows the demands of justice to be swung in our favor, where we can be restored for the good we have done, and forgiven for the bad.  It is through his Mercy that we can be "found" so to speak.  

Only 1 min left, so I better wrap this up.  No time to include other scripture references, or explain more. hope that makes sense.

Love

Lonas!