Happy Memorial Day

Hey y’all! I know you were probably scared when you didn’t get an email yesterday, but its okay, there’s no need to panic. Our p-day was changed to Tuesday this week due to an opportunity to attend the temple this morning. Such a blessing! I wish I could go back more often, but unfortunately thats not my calling right now. I’m really looking forward to going whenever I want to when I come back after my mission though!

This week was pretty decent. We’ve been doing a lot of service and trying to meet with leadership as much as we can. It was really nice yesterday with it being Memorial Day since a lot of people were home. We’re still working on finding people to teach, but they’ll come along. I’ve got a good feeling about this week, I think we’re going to find a lot of success and hopefully I’ll have too much to write about next week! Something really surreal did happen this week. We had mission president interviews with President Killpack. With my departure date coming up and his departure date coming up even sooner, most of the time was spent talking about what’s going to happen this next transfer, what’s going to happen after the mission, and just stuff like that. I’ll admit, it made me a bit homesick. August will be here before I know it. But there’s work to do! Minds and hearts to prepare and ears to hear the word of the Lord!

I have to apologize, I’ve been awful at taking pictures lately. I’ve been throwing myself into the scriptures. I picked up somewhere in the middle of 1st Nephi and am trying to finish the Book of Mormon two more times before I finish my mission. On top of that, I want to try and read the last half of the Doctrine and Covenants so that I can say I’ve read the entire standard works. A part of that is due to my prideful side (which I wish I didn’t have, but I’m only human), however I just want to be able to have experience reading all of God’s word to his children. One of the foundational lessons I’ve learned is just how much I took for granted before the mission, especially the scriptures. The Book of Mormon isn’t something that I can afford to take for granted, and even though it about bores me to death reading some parts of the Bible and I have a general idea of most of the stuff in the Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price, they are all just as essential. Gosh I wish I had a whole lot more time to study. But guess who does...yes you don’t try to justify it. Well, those of you who aren’t missionaries, which is like half of you. All you Elders and Sisters, just do your best with the time you have. As for the rest of you that actually have time, spend some of it reading your scriptures, whether you’re LDS or not. I can’t really followup with you, so just do your best and give it a shot. Well, I’ll talk to y’all next week!

Elder Orchard