Dear Mom,
First of all, thank you
for telling me about Chloe. I can't lie to you and say that I didn't cry the
minute I saw the pictures. It honestly makes me both sad and mad that I can't
be there right now with the rest of you guys, but I know in my heart that it's
the right thing for me to do, to be here serving the Lord. I hope the packages
that you guys are sending me aren't getting "hopelessly lost in the
mail", as the rest of the missionaries say about theirs. My companion and
I have been finding and downloading a lot of Church Videos, in order to help
the flow of the branch more. I even explained to President Riggins that we're
not focusing nearly as much as we ought to be on finding and baptizing as we
are on re-structuring the branch, and rescuing less active members. A set of
the videos that we found to be useful both for us and for others in the future
is the 12 Steps to Change. Obviously, the primary function of this list of
videos is to help people recover from addictions, but another look at it helped
the two of us see that it's just the Repentance Process, only extremely more...
Potent. Obviously, something that I've been doing a lot of overlooking lately
is how often we (even though we're missionaries) need to repent. Despite the
fact that at this time, we're representatives of Jesus Christ, we're still
humans. We still make mistakes, and I personally have found that this time that
we have as the representatives of His Church makes it surprisingly easier to
ask for His forgiveness.
Something that's peeved
me since the beginning of my mission is probably something that has peeved a
lot of other missionaries, I would think. What I'm talking about is how life
doesn't slow down or stop while we're out here in the mission field. In the
back of my head, I tended to think that not too much was going to happen while
I was gone, and that I would end up coming back home after 2 years to find
everything pretty much the same. After I heard about all of the changes that
have happened (both good and bad), it threw me for quite the loop. However, it
helped me learn that changes will occur in your life (regardless of your
say-so), and you will have little to no control over them. That's just life. To
say that I haven't thought before that some of these changes aren't fair would
make me a liar. However, it also makes me soon realize that I am questioning my
own free agency, and I am also questioning the will of God. Even though some of
these changes appear to be irrational and unnecessary, there's no reason to
believe that God has abandoned us because of them. Think about it. Though Jesus
Christ was "perfect", he too questioned the will of His father, by
asking, "My god, why hast thou forsaken me?" Being a missionary gives
us time to carefully analyze what we teach, in addition to how we teach it.
President Riggins showed me the comparison between Matthew 5, and the Book of
Mormon equivalent in 3 Nephi. As he speaks to the Jews (as well as the other
followers and listeners), he invites them to "be ye therefore perfect,
even as your Father, which is in Heaven, is perfect." Yet, in 3 Nephi, he
invites those here in the Americas
Con Sinceridad y Amor,
Elder Conner Duane
"Poderoso" Parke
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