Week #6

Last Tuesday Elder Bednar came to talk to us. It was pretty awesome. We got four apostles in a row and I'm hoping for a fifth tonight.  So Elder Bednar and his wife pretty much proved to me that a sense of humor is part of perfection. She spoke first and poked a little fun at him, then, during the beginning of his talk she actually got up and squezzed in front of him to get at the microphone to tease him about his age because of something he said and made him blush in front of the whole MTC. It was awesome. He said some funny stuff too, but I can't really remember specifically what now, and I was busy writing down the stuff that was more important than the jokes. Anyways, he talked about doctrine, principles and applications. Doctrines being what answers the question why, principles what, and applications how. He didn't really give any super specific examples, because the point of the talk was that we put in the effort to learn, rather than just being handed all the answers. so yeah. One good example is home teaching. Lot's of people try silly things to enforce the principle of home teaching, such as baking a cake on the first of the month for your home teachers. If they come early, they get good cake, if they come on the last of the month it is moldy. That's just a gimmicky application and won't really improve home teaching at all. It'd be more effective to get the biggest, ugliest, scariest guy in the ward (preferably an ex-marine) and put him in front of the Elders quorum to say that everyone had better do their home teaching, or he'll come get them.  Even then it would be useless. What would happen when he moved out of the ward, or died, or left for any other reason? Not home teaching. The answer is in the doctrine; the men must learn why they do it, and truly believe it for the home teaching to happen. There are a few hings it could be brought back to, but the most obvious would be our baptismal covenants, or the oath and covenant of the priesthood. To fulfill either, home teaching must be done. To have the motivation to do it, one must thoroughly understand and believe that. You can do a lot of good things in your life, and even know why you did them, but if you don't truly believe them, if you don't truly become those things, then it won't do you any good.  Not to say the applications are useless though. They are the action, they are the doing, but the base lies in the doctrines. If there's no real reason to do it, it won't get done.

 

We also had the opportunity to meet with Daniel again. It didn't go as well as last week. I think it was because we went in with too much of a plan, we didn't leave ourselves as much room to change things up according to the Spirit.  Apparently we weren't as clear as we thought, and apparently we misunderstood him a little bit. He said he wasn't really looking for God and he asked us why we were really there. We told him basically that we had experienced the joy that the gospel can bring and that we love him and want him to have it too, and that he may not be looking for God, but he is looking for something, looking for more meaning, and we're there to show him that that search leads to God. He thanked us for our concern. He actually did read the Book of Mormon a little, but not what we left for him. He ended up reading the first chapter in Ether, which is okay. He did get some stuff about prayer out of it, and we talked abot that a little. He said he'd keep reading, and we asked if he had any questions or anything we could direct him to in the scriptures, and I felt prompted to also leave the option of freely choosing himself what he'd read, without any direction from us, and he chose that one. I trust that he'll come across something that will help him, that we can discuss and make some progress with next time. So yeah, I'll let you know what happens next week.

 

Until then, adios.