First off, we started the week strong with MLC on Tuesday. It was a really long meeting and lasted from 9:00 a.m. to about 3:30 p.m., but really the only part that mattered was the first hour and a half. To be honest, I didn’t really pay that much attention to the rest afterwards. Elder Brian K. Taylor of the Seventy came and gave a training about being bold and giving both the blessings of obedience and the negative results of disobedience. He used Doctrine & Covenants 33:1 a lot and even had a real life sword to get his point across. Needless to say, he made a big impact on all of us. I just wish I would’ve heard that training 21 months ago because now I feel like I’ve been doing missionary work all wrong. We even got a sword ourselves to use in our Combined District Meeting, so we got to have a lot of fun with it.
We did a lot of service throughout the week, things like weeding a garden and building a chicken coop. We built the coop on Saturday before going to one of our ward’s Cinco De Mayo parties, which was an event you’d have to be at to truly appreciate. Not because the chips and salsa were special at all, but because of our new friend Josh. Josh was visiting his sister that lived in the ward. He’s from somewhere in the southeast United States. Josh stopped attending church a while back, and since it was a holiday, Josh had had a few drinks. After talking to him for a while about how he believes there’re more than one Savior and a pretty entertaining game of pickup basketball with members of the ward, we decided it would be best to walk Josh home. The whole way back he was giving us a pep talk about how we need to make sure and do something meaningful with our lives and how the church has truth, but not all of the truth. He was very adamant about us searching for more truth. He kept using the logic of “Do we know who killed Tupac? No, so we don’t know everything and we need to keep searching. Don’t stop flipping searching!” (Disclaimer: He didn’t actually use “flipping”, I just figured it’d be best not to use his actual words). That whole experience was an adventure, and I will cherish it forever as I continue to look for who actually killed Tupac.
To wrap it all up, we got our transfer calls on Sunday night. Sadly, I’m getting transferred out of Saratoga Springs, and out of Utah County completely. I’m heading up to Riverton, which will most likely be my last area since it’s the start of my second to last transfer. I’m pretty pumped about transfers, but a lot of other missionaries aren’t. President Killpack is shaking a lot of things up, whitewashing a lot, moving people around, and a lot of people aren’t real happy about their new companions. But oh well, life goes on and we continue serving the Lord, not ourselves. I’ve been reading a lot in the New Testament, and the early apostles, especially Peter and Paul, suffered a lot for the sake of spreading the gospel. Those two considered themselves lucky to suffer for the Lord, and while I don’t think I’m quite there yet, and I’m not really suffering that much, I still like to think that I’m getting there. I hope everyone tries to get to that point, because anything we suffer for the Lord is only a token sacrifice to Him who suffered everything for us. Think about that this week. I hope y’all are able to be a bit more Christ-like, cause I’m trying to be myself and I need some accountability buddies. That’s all I’ve got for this week, enjoy the extended edition and God bless!!
Elder Orchard
“Hearken to the voice of the Lord your God, whose word is quick and powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword” -D&C 33:1
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