Things are going swimmingly up here in Idaho Falls! I would like to begin this week's email by listing the absurd/hilarious things that I have heard children say in the past week:
"The temple is God's home... the churches are more like his hotels probably."
Primary teacher: "Who is our prophet today?"
6 year old child: "Not Obama."
"At general conference we hear from Henry B. Frying"
"Jesus wants us to be together forever like pb&j."
( After seeing a picture of Elder M. Russell Ballard: ) "Is that Elsa?"
9 year old: "I wish I was 10..."
Me: "Why is that?"
9 year old: "Because mom said I can wear DEODORANT."
*he raised both fists in the air and waves them around as the last line was said.*
As you can see, there were some adventures this week. One of my favorite adventures was being able to witness Eric get baptized! Eric lives in our stake, but had been going to church and being taught by some other missionaries by where his girlfriend lived, so we didn't get to be involved with a lot of his teaching, but it's crazy because I knew him way beforehand from an exchange I went on MONTHS ago where I got to teach him one of his first lessons - about the plan of salvation. It was soooo cool to see how far he has come since that time I first met him.
ALSO. A couple of big-wigs from the MTC came to our mission this week - Brother Shane Littlefield and Brother Wave. They're in charge of the training that missionaries receive not only in the MTC but throughout their mission. They held an 8-hour meeting with about 50 missionaries in the mission and it was AMAZING. They just focused on some core, key, basic things from Preach My Gospel that all of us had seemed to have forgotten or not really implemented as well as we could have and it was seriously so refreshing and so fun to just role-play, practice teaching, set goals, and have discussion on doing my favorite thing - talking about Jesus. :)
This weekend Ericka is getting baptized! I'm so pumped for her and we just found out that her husband who quit smoking a few months ago is cleared by the Bishop to baptize her!!! They just got married several months ago when she found out that she wanted to learn about the lds church and get baptized. They're so cute and I'll send a million pictures next week about it, hopefully.
Today I want to bear my testimony about the restoration of Jesus Christ's original church through the prophet Joesph Smith. This element of what I believe is torn apart and attacked ALL the time and it makes me so sad. No matter what people claim about Joseph Smith or ANY of the latter-day prophets, I know this is Christ's church. It doesn't really matter if any of what people claim about Joseph Smith is true or not - maybe some of it is. BUT, I know that Joseph Smith saw God and Jesus Christ and I know that Christ's priesthood power was restored and that The Book of Mormon was translated by that power. Because I know that, nothing else matters, even if it is true, because God's power is on the earth. Christ's church is here. That is true, too! Yes, imperfect and lame people may be members and even leaders of the church. In fact, I'm sure that they are... I know a few, and I'm one of them myself. But the ONLY thing that matters is believing in Christ's atonement and believing that Christ's restored church is here. It is STILL being restored. That's why we don't understand a lot of why things are the way they are in this church - because this true and living church is being restored every day... and because maybe we're not meant to understand.
That being said.... I love you all so much!
Sister Mc
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