Scriptures and Airplanes

My freshman year is officially over and in about 8 hours I will be at the airport getting ready to fly to Germany!! We've known about this trip for about a year now so it doesn't feel real yet that we're actually going. I'm so excited! We're going to tour tons of cities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, visit a concentration camp, go on an Alpine coaster down the Swiss Alps, visit a few castles, watch a Bundesliga game, tour Bayern Munich's stadium, and of course, play soccer! I'm a little bummed that I won't be able to play, but I can train and that will be cool.

Pictures that someone from the ward he is serving in posted on Facebook!

He shared a story this week that I want to start out with because I really liked it. "So to start of the week we had DDM, I taught about the importance of scriptures and what they mean to us and what they mean to our Father in Heaven. We did this activity that I love to do at FHE's when younger kids are present but old enough to understand... so we are going on a trip, we board an air plain. me and my companion are seated in front and pretend to be pilots, saying things like, "welcome aboard the B-12 passenger cruiser, today we will be taking a beautiful trip from Johannesburg to Durban, the flight should last about an hour and should be a nice flight. I am you captain, along side me co captain.... and if you have any questions please ask one of our stewardess. *deedoo Attention passengers, we have just been cleared for take off and will be moving down the runway, please note that the seat belt sign is on and we should remain seated until we reach a cruising altitude of 15000 ft, when you see the light turn off you are free to move about the cabin. And so on and so forth, then uh oh we make crashing and blinking noises. We come on the radio and say please stay calm the seat belt sign is on and we would like all passengers to remain seated... later we start screaming and have them start screaming as we plummet to our death. right before we hit the ground we say freeze. Now right down in 2 min what you would tell your family right now. These are your last words, what would you say? Then when we collect them all we ask if these are important to them, they say yes. So we crumple and mash them up.... we ask them how they feel. They say bad. we then say exactly. That is how our heavenly father feels, He has given us scriptures, His last words to us, what He wants us to know!  What do we do with them? Leave them on a shelf never to be read?  How would you feel knowing that your family got your note and didn't even bother to read it, or they read the first line and decided it was "boring" If you asked me, I would be pissed! So let us not do the same to God, let us read His counsel, His direction, His love." It's so important to love and cherish the scriptures and to treat them as God's words to us, because that's of course what they are.

"Bought a six pack of coke for a shirt and a cinch bag"

So I was pretty sad when I realized that we would be in Europe for mother's day, not only because I wouldn't get to spend the day with my mom but because I wouldn't be able to skype him! But he's skyping on Saturday morning for some reason, so I'll be able to do a google hangout with his family and be able to talk to him :) I'm so excited! Tomorrow will be awesome for so many reasons haha.

All of his planners so far.

Put a picture on his handbook

"pap and chicken at kfc, if I eat out this is usually what I get because its cheap, 27Rand. and if we eat at someones house this is usually what we eat as well, pap and chicken haha."

"What else, oh ya, so remember Nelson and his wife.  They are expecting any day, in fact I believe she is in the hospital right now. we are excited to teach them and they said that they were planing to get married on the 29th of May, so woot woot, we will see though with having a baby if it is possible to get it done so soon.

We met a new couple that we are teaching, they have been married for 4 years so we are praying they progress, sadly they didnt keep all our commitments but they did do one thing I asked. I told them that before bed, every single day they should pray together, holding hands. It is said a family that prays together, stays together. I believe it, and I think God does too. so I told them to do that because God expects them to stay together much longer than just four years. so that made me happy that they are doing that.

We have another great investigator, her name is Bolelang, she is about 26 or something and has come to church twice, thats like two more times then any other investigator!!!!"

"We got to play some cricket and softball the other day, we passed some kids playing and watched for a while then slowly crept closer until we were playing, now we are going to go play softball every Wednesday for a bit. Elder Woodland loves it because he played baseball back home so he has a blast. I like it too...."

"I heard something that I thought was so true, its something like this If there is no opposition, we are doing something wrong, we are not progressing, we are sitting on the fence. It is true. Life is not easy, and guess what... Good! If you were given everything you ever wanted and needed in life, would you ever learn anything?!?!? NO! When do we learn the most in our lives? when we are going through trials and hardship that's when we really grow and become all the better because of it. So life is tough, I say good. Lets learn and lets become better. That means you are moving in the right direction. If things are hard that means God is molding you into something greater. If you want to give up, don't!  You are almost there, I know it! If you want to cry, well me too but take another step anyways. Its all part of his plan and we can take comfort in that because would our Father In Heaven give us something that hurts us or breaks us????? NO! ya it may sting but in the end we have grown and found so much more joy from it. There is opposition in all things and without it we would never truly know joy, you know you are happy now because you are not sad. if you have never been sad then you would never know if you are really happy, you would be nothing.." I loved this!!!

Part of his email to his mission president: "This was a pretty good week. We were finally able to get a list of the members in our area so we can start working with them and we have been able to make contact with about half of the people on the list. (even though I feel half our members are missing from the list) so we are super excited to start meeting with a part member family, a less active family with a missionary in Zimbabwe and more members to hopefully get some help in the area.

It was a long process of finding the name in the branch list, finding their gps coordinates and then trying to get a hold of them but a couple hours latter we now have somewhere to start.

We also went through the area book and picked out all the former investigators we felt were worth calling or visiting again. we hope to get one or two promising investigators that way as well.

We are very excited for this week. we sent some great companionship goals from, waking up exactly on time, to how we are going to be teaching.

We have also been focusing on teaching about the temples early in our visits with investigators and it is amazing how well it seems to always work. People love the concept of being sealed forever and helping their ancestors who didnt have a chance here.

Our whole district seems to be moving in a upward direction which is a huge blessings with up to 10 baptisms expected/ hoped for in the next two months."

"Awesome letter from Amber!" (His older sister)

"went to some caves, so the people that originally moved into the cave went there because they were being hunted by canabils so they lived in caves, some people still live there! no electricity!"

left to right, Elder Thorsen, Vanwinkle, North, Adlard

"so the caves were closing in like 5 min so we were to late to see it but we kept talking to gogo and we eventually got her to let us go and she gave us a 50 percent discount!!!! Blessings on blessings on blessings"

"My awesome way overpriced tie"