July 7th, 2014 - July 4th and other fun days!

Hey Everyone! 

Another week has come and gone, and with it some new crazy experiences happened! Of course the most exciting day this week was the 4th of July, but the 5th and 6th were also pretty cool and the 2nd and 3rd weren't that far behind ;) Basically... it's just been an awesome week. But, like last week I'm going to start with my studies since nobody has complained about it yet, and I quite like it. 

So, for this week my studies were a little bit more varied than last week - I spent a bit more time in the Book of Mormon dissecting Moroni 7-10 (chapter 9 not so much, but the others were really good), plus listening to Dr. Madsen's lecture on the sermon on the mount - which is pretty dang good. So, a few scriptures from Moroni first: (turn to Moroni or else my +'s won't make sense...)

• Moroni 7:3 + Mormon states here that this chapter is addressed to the people of the church and points out what our hope should lead to - entering into the rest of the Lord
• Moroni 7:6-8 + These verses stood out to me in that it teaches clearly the principle that our intent and the desires of our heart matter - a lot - when it comes to the blessings the Lord is able to offer to us and how that will play out in the judgement 
• Moroni 7:12-13 +  Pretty simple... things that are Good = of God things that are evil aren't
• Moroni 7:28 + A dang good verse about the role Christ plays in our eternal salvation
• Moroni 7:30-31 + Explains the office angels hold, and I also found the statement that "the office of their ministry is to... prepare the way among the children of men, by declaring the word of Christ unto the chosen vessels of the Lord, that they may bear testimony of him." interesting as it's pretty clearly stated that prophets - the chosen vessels of the Lord - are there to bear testimony of Christ which word they receive by revelation (Galations 1:12).
• Moroni 7:44 + Faith, hope, and charity are all related... but that could get deep, so I'll leave it there.
• Moroni 8:3 + I don't have time to put pluses on all of these :(
• Moroni 8:10-12
• Moroni 8:24-26
• Moroni 9:6
• Moroni 10:22
• Moroni 10:32-33

So yeah... Moroni 7 is my favorite chapter in the Book of Mormon, but it takes a ton of effort to apply and learn to live so I'm definitely still working on that one! Well, time to move on to a quick review of the highlights of this week! 

First, is Taylor's baptism! She's a 15 year old who we've been teaching since I got here that the Young Women have just done a fantastic job fellowshipping and helping her come closer to Heavenly Father. It's been awesome to see the impact that they have as they've helped her get to activities and encouraged her to do all those things that you learn in young women's (I don't even know the half of them...), but it's been awesome! We had a pretty easy job - teach a few lessons and help her keep reading the Book of Mormon - since the young women did awesome work with the hard job of getting people to church and making friends there that encourage them to come back. So, there's a couple photos attached on here, one is her and brother Greenwood (the fellow she asked to baptize her) the other is us and the sisters since we've been teaming up to teach her lately. Anyways, that was definitely the highlight of this week! 

Aside from that, we've had a few fun service opportunities this week - like helping move some bouncehouses around, scraping up some linoleum for a sister in the ward, helping trim a couple trees for one of our investigators, moving stuff around for a member who hurt his ankle playing basketball with us earlier this week..., and then unloading chairs and tables after the ward party on Friday. So yeah... we did quite a bit of service, but it was a blast! On the 4th of July we had a ward party from 10-2 where we got to play some volleyball, eat food, and socialize and it was pretty great. Later that day we had dinner with some awesome families who were willing to spend their 4th of July with missionaries, so instead of trying to find somewhere to watch fireworks we went and played wiffleball and apples to apples with them which was a blast. 

That's all I got for this week! Have a fantastic week! Love y'all!

'Til Next Time,

Elder Jordan Nielson