February 9, 2015
Well it sounds like you had an interesting week of bad luck, luckily my
week was much better than yours. It seems that you’ve had lots of
breakdowns since I’ve been gone. I am going to come home to all sorts of
new stuff. Speaking of new stuff, did you decide if you are going paint
my room? Bonus…we finally taught a lesson after a few weeks with none (I will
explain more in the questions). Well
onto the questions.
1. How was your week? What were
the highs & lows? This week has been a pretty
awesome. First things first…we finally had a lesson—YaY!!! I know
that is not a lot, but that is the most we’ve had in a few weeks. It’s
all thanks to our WML going out with for a couple of hours on Saturday instead
of having our weekly meeting. We we were able to get in with a single LA
woman that came to church the week before.
We thought she would be a good
person to visit and it worked out great. We also saw another less active
guy. We did not really have lesson with
him, but we just stopped by and said hello and chatted for a bit. Another
high was I finished reading True to the
Faith. Now I am reading Jesus
the Christ and actually enjoying it (and I’m able to stay awake J). Glade
to hear that your talk went well and that you’ve also been studying about
Peter. I forgot to mention last week a
few other things about Peter. So first of all, I found a cool definition
in the BD about him and a thought from a chapter in the NT that I read. BD part: Peter was one of the
greatest of men. It is true that the New Testament recounts some mortal
weaknesses, but it also illustrates that Peter was one of the greatest of men.
It is true that the New Testament recounts some mortal weaknesses, but it also
illustrates that he overcame them and was made strong by his faith in Jesus
Christ. The Lord honored Peter by selecting him to hold the keys of the kingdom
on earth (Matt. 16:13–18), and it was
upon the holy mount that Peter received these keys from the Savior, Moses, and
Elias (Elijah) (Matt. 17:1–12). Peter was the chief Apostle of
his day; and after the death, Resurrection, and Ascension of the Savior, it was
Peter who called the Church together and acted in the office of his calling as
the one who possessed the keys of the priesthood (Acts 1:2). It was through Peter’s ministry that
the gospel was first opened up to the Gentiles (Acts 10–11). As I studied and pondered that information I
was especially touched by the first few sentences because it talks about him
overcoming his weakness and eventually becoming the chief apostle. The
Lord saw Peter’s potential. Yet, when I
was reading the story about him denying Christ it gave me greater light about
the Atonement. At the last supper they
all wondered who it would be that would deny Christ and none of them thought
they would be the one. Peter thinks
nothing of it until the cock crows and then reality hit and he feels sorrowful.
As I’ve had the opportunity to work with people and evaluate my own life I feel
like that can sometimes be us. We tend
to think, oh nothing bad is going to happen to us, we won’t ever lose our faith
or deny our beliefs. We are living our
life on the straight and narrow, but then Satan has a way of getting a hold of
us. We get caught up in worldly things
and peer pressure as Peter did and then we deny the things we know are
true.
One last thing that happened this week that was really cool. So we were
walking around last night and we got a phone call from one of the University
sisters and she said, Thank You!!! I wondered why she was saying
that. Then she proceeded to tell us that a member of their branch told
them they saw us walking around somewhere recently. I guess wanted to that person wanted to "break
a commandment" (not sure what they wanted to do). But when that
person saw us the thought came that they shouldn’t do that. So the moral
of that story is that “angels do bear us up” and the days that we think we are just
aimlessly walking around can have a big impact on someone else.
3. Have you been on exchanges
lately? No, I am going on Wednesday and here in State
College.
4. Did you see a gas station that
burned down last Tuesday on Atherton? Yes,
sort of. I was at the library and I
heard the fire engines leaving to respond. We were downtown for most of
it and when we rode the bus back home we saw them still cleaning it up a
bit. There weren’t any more flames, but they were still spraying it a
bit. We pass it every day on the bus so it was pretty crazy. They
had tons of fire engines there. There were 3 fire companies and 2 more
were on standby. They had at least 8-10 trucks there.
5. Looks like your weather has been
pretty dry this week, but just cold. How are things? Are you
surviving? I saw the letter that you sent to gpa and he laughed about the
lasting memory he’s made on you. Good times!!! Yes, he has
made a lasting impression on me. I
thought it would be funny to send it to grandpa. I was going to write
about it in the email but then I remembered that there are other people that
read this besides you so I opted to send him a letter J. Yeah, the weather has not been too bad
this weekend, it was in the 40s but cloudy so it was a nice little heat
wave. However, we’ve also had our share of cold. Mother Nature
can't make up her mind and seems to have a vendetta against the east.
Nothing like you temps at home though.
7. Any mission news? We have zone training on Wednesday. I kind of get the vibe that maybe
we’ll get iPads, but I have no idea. Things have been implied that it
could be that but no one really says much. So I don’t know if it is a
secret or what. I will know more next week. The reason everything
seems fishy is because the day and time randomly changed and even the
location. Now it is here in State College and before it was in Altoona.
I am not getting my hopes up. So we will see what happens.
8. How are things going with the
teaching?
a.
Any new investigators? No
b. Who are the less actives you’re teaching? We are
teaching a less active named CC.
She has been inactive for about 15 years, but the WML visited with her a few
weeks ago and got her to come to church last week. She is one of the
people we saw on Saturday with our WML. Other than that we really aren’tteaching
a whole lot. We have a lot of people we are trying to see and hope to see
so we will see what happens.
c. Any new leads/opportunities? Hopefully
this upcoming Wednesday our WML is having someone over. He invited his neighbor to meet with us and
she said we could have a lesson then. So she maybe a new prospect. Pray that things will work out so we can
teach her.
9. How are things with the
members? Who have you connected with and who do you like to spend time
with? Things are going well. I’ve really
connected with the D family, he is
our WML. They’re a pretty cool family. He’s a young guy with a baby
that was born a few weeks before Thanksgiving. Also another family is the
B family. They are pretty funny
and cool. His mission president was the Cottrells in our stake that taught
my mission prep class.
10. Any good mealtime stories? We had another greenie dinner. One of the new missionaries in Bellefonte
just finished his training so Sis. V wanted
to throw a greenie dinner for him. Unfortunately, I did not get any
pictures. All of the missionaries in the district were there so I should
be able to get some pictures from others. We had tree frog something or
another. We also had some rolls stuffed
with something kind of like a pot pie. I think the frog stuff was spinach
tortellini. It was all really good.
11. Any stories that will make me laugh? So yesterday for sacrament meeting the talks were from Pres. Eyring’s talk Continuing Revelation. The guy
that was speaking is pretty funny and to preface this he is a theater major…so
he’s dramatic. He shared a funny story
about when he was sitting in his family’s new car waiting for his wife in the store. They had lots of stuff going on in their life…he
had just quit a job to go to grad school and a bunch of other stuff. He
said he felt hopeless. So he decided to lay the chair back and he started
to pray asking what he should do with his life. He finally sat back up and
as he did the car alarm and all of that
jazz starts to go off. He was startled
and was like whoa…what kind of sign is this?
Anyway, it was pretty funny and he gave a really good talk.
12. Give me something for the journal…a random memory? So the Chinese sister that is a Temple Square missionary came to the
greenie dinner. She was not really
digging the food. She had been eating a little bit, but then when Sis. V was not paying attention she said to me…do you
want mine and then she dumped it in my bowl. Luckily, I liked it and ate
it for her.
14. What are the 3 coolest things about State College? Penn State is what makes State College, hence the reason why the town is called
State College. Another thing is you can drive 10 minutes out of State
College and you will run into cornfields and farmland. Originally, Penn State
was an ag school like Utah State was when it first started. Also, there
are Amish people around here. Not really in our area, they are more north
in the Bellefonte boundaries.
15. What are 5 positive things from the week? 1) I did not freeze. 2) We finally were able to have one lesson. 3)
I finished True to the Faith.
Well, there’s my week. As you can see it was a pretty decent week. Love you
Elder Muir
Elder Muir
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