Goodbye Motown

Hi everyone! Happy Monday!

This week was awesome. Transfers are tomorrow, and I'm being transferred to Union City! I'm super excited, but it's definitely been hard saying goodbye to all the amazing people that I met here.

We had a really prosperous week! We went over to help do some spackling for a member's ceiling, and were able to teach Diego and Andrea about the Gospel! They had a lot of questions and were super awesome about it. They came to church this week.

Felipe also finally came to church! He called us on Monday night super excited about the fact that he had gotten the time off and he came this week and seemed to really like it! It was hard saying goodbye to him after almost 6 months of teaching him.

We went and said goodbye to Jenny today. She brought her friend Rita over to learn about the Gospel and learn English. Rita was very interested in both, and Jenny is super elect. She got us commemorative Chick-fil-A and brought her kids in to say a prayer with us. She said she'd love to have us at their family's house in Ecuador should we ever end up down that way. We may have to take her up on that.

It's really weird to picture leaving Morristown and not being with Elder Rasband since we've been working together for 4 and a half months. We pretty much finish each other's sandwiches at this point. He's a great guy, and we're going to have a lot of fun hanging out after the mission. I'm just super used to going day-to-day here in Morristown so a change of surroundings is going to be crazy.

I've learned a lot here. I've learned how to trust in the Spirit more. I've learned to work harder, and that I've still got pretty of room to go. I've especially learned a lot about faith and obedience.

I had a hard time understanding faith before. I could define it. I could quote scriptures about it. I could tell you about it's importance and the power that it has. However, I feel as though this transfer, the concept of faith has really clicked for me, especially with obedience. I was told that never actually got around to explaining that, so here you go:

It is said that faith is belief. That is true. However, faith is true belief. It is said that faith is action. I think that is true also, in that true belief leads to action. Let me illustrate that briefly:

Imagine I'm sitting at home with a friend.

I tell my friend that there's enough money to change their life up for grabs on the front porch outside. First come first sirve, no strings attached.

I ask if they believe me. They say you do.

I would say that they're lying. Why? Because they're still sitting there talking to me. The answer is in their actions.

If they truly believed that the money was out there, they would be sprinting out the door to go grab it. Perhaps they don't believe that the money is there. Perhaps they believe that it's not enough to truly help them. Perhaps they believe that someone else will get it first. Whatever the case is, they don't believe that going out to find it is worth their time. They lack faith in my statement. They don't truly believe it, no matter what they tell me with words.

The same is true with God's promised blessings and his commandments. When we hear the commandments and promised blessings (reading your scriptures will bring you significant blessings), we can say that we believe that. However, if we're not reading our scriptures, we say with our actions that we don't believe it's worth our time. If we truly believed that the blessings were real, and significant enough to impact our lives, we would be doing it.

I urge us all to think about what things we say we have faith in, and then analyze if our actions say the same. I bear testimony that the blessings connected to the commandments are real, and they are significant. I share my testimony of that in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

I love you all and hope you have a great week!

See you in Union City!