Dear Home,
It's great to hear that you're all doing well. =) Elder Sheffield and I have been doing alright, too. Of course, we haven't been doing anything as fun as soccer matches or surprise parties, but we've been having some fun talking about the fun things we would do at home. Elder Sheffield is a really good strategist when it comes to playing games. I probably wouldn't do well in a game of monopoly against him. Then again, he's a very nice, polite, good and kind person, so he probably wouldn't defeat me too ruthlessly. But he'd still play to win. After all, it's only a game.
With the missionary transfers coming and going, we now have a new District Leader, Elder Lovelace (I hope that's how his name is spelled). I've never met him, but I've talked with him a few times on the phone already, and it sounds like he's a very fun-loving, diligent missionary with a positive attitude. I can't wait to meet him face to face, but I'll probably have to wait a few weeks before that happens.
A strange change in the way we do things out here in the mission field: We now only have Zone Conferences every /other/ transfer, so we won't have the next Zone Conference until almost two months from now. What does that mean for us? Well, it might mean another delay before Elder Sheffield and I get whatever mail has been sent to the mission office for us, but another change is that now we're having some big meeting for all the leaders, which meeting will take place in Winnipeg, so the leaders plan on bringing mail with them when they come back. Not long after that (or so I'm told), Elder Sheffield and I will be heading down to Prince Albert to share a District Meeting with them in person. In all likelihood, we'll get our mail then. At maximum, that'll be three or four weeks from now, rather than next week, which would've been the case if we were still having Zone Conferences every transfer.
I hope that wasn't too confusing for all of you. The main point is that I'll probably meet Elder Lovelace face to face in a few weeks. =) I'm looking forward to that. It'll be nice to be able to put a face to the name and voice.
Running low on things to talk about and having not taken very good notes on what I've been up to this past week, I'll just ramble on about how my studies have gone the past few mornings. I've decided a short time ago that I'd like a stronger conviction that Thomas S. Monson is a prophet. So, following the scriptural advice that 'Ye shall know them by their fruits', I decided to read a few of the words of our modern prophet, and test that against the already proven word of God. I read out of the May 2009 Ensign, which listed the talks we heard in the last General Conference I attended before leaving on my Mission. President Monson (during the Priesthood Session) spoke about Being Your Best Self, and he offered three suggestions: Study Diligently, Pray Fervently, and Live Righteously. I took notes.
One thing a prophet does is make prophecies, which are promises or warnings concerning that which is going to happen. Thomas S. Monson promised that as we study the scriptures diligently, our ability to recieve the guidance of the Holy Ghost in all that we do will increase. (I'm paraphrasing. I don't have my notes with me. For more information, I recommend that you study this talk for yourself. It starts on page 67 of the May 2009 Ensign. I think most of what I'm talking about comes from page 68.) I believe that. And I believed it even more when I started taking notes.
See, I started writing down my favorite quotes from that talk, particularly the quotes that included If/Then statements. When I write or speak a quote, I try to get the quote absolutely perfect, right down to the spelling, so I found myself frequently looking back and forth from the Ensign magazine to the paper I was writing on, trying to make sure my notes were all correct. As I came to a word whose spelling I had not yet memorized at that time, I felt the impression that it was spelt a certain way. I paused and checked the Ensign to confirm my feelings, and found that they were correct; 'I' does come before 'E', even in a word like Priesthood. But I learned a lot more from that experience than just how to spell a word. I also received evidence that President Monson is a prophet of God, or at least that he knows what he's talking about when it comes to studying God's word and receiving His spirit. As I read the words of the prophet and took notes, I found that I was 'Studying Diligently' and then, as I was in the act of doing so, I found that something, perhaps the Holy Spirit, was giving me promptings to help me along the way. Because I studied the scriptures diligently, I found that my ability to receive guidance from the Holy Ghost was increasing, thus fulfilling President Monson's prophecy.
Of course, that one experience isn't enough to prove that President Monson is a prophet, but it helped to increase my faith a little. So I'll keep studying, and as God's words, given through His servant, the prophet, continue to ring true, I will continue to receive further evidence that Thomas S. Monson is a prophet, until I know for myself, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the counsel we receive from President Monson
May we all gain this conviction, so that when General Conference comes again this October, the words we hear will have special meaning to us as then we will know that we are hearing a prophet of God.
I love you all and I look forward to meeting you again when my time in Canada is over.
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