Letter 10-30-2012

Boo! (again)

Halloween is so big around here... I guess I've never really caught the spirit of Halloween much. I think I like Christmas better :) The wards are all doing their Trunk or Treats. It's been really fun to be able to get a little bit of financial help from our ward mission leaders to finance some candy to trunk or treat out of the back of our bikes. The members get a kick out of it as well. It's been a great way to meet and become close with a lot of the people in the ward!

We had the opportunity to listen to a general authority last week, Elder Evans of the 70 (which is why P-day was Monday last week). The missionary ladder goes: President Monson, Elder Holland and Oaks, Elder Evans. It was so awesome to hear a servant of the Lord speak about what the brethren's and the Lord's vision, not only for the new missions in this valley, but for all the missions in the world. Some random notes I wrote down:

- "this isn't doctrine, but I believe mission presidents and missionaries made promises in the preexistence to serve together"
- "you are part of something remarkable"
- Signs of the Times stated: "The Lord is hastening the work", "there will be an increasing pattern of missionaries speaking in their home language"
- thought: missions are enjoyable because you are able to make connections, make a web, talk with people all the time.- thought: being a missionary is just being a person. God created us as social beings who share what is important to us and listen to what is important to others. A missionary is just a person with a something unique that they would like to share. A mission is an extended time to create an eternal web of contacts that will extend into the eternities.
- thought: leadership in the church is weird. Generally leadership is thought of as one person who is in charge of others. A true leader flips that chart upside-down. A leader goes below everyone else and serves them. Jesus Christ is the ultimate leader who descended below all to pick every single person up.

To kind of summarize what he actually talked about (at least as far as I understood): Missionary work all boils down to having positive interactions with everyone that you meet. The greatest missionaries are the ones that weave the largest social web to "catch" all the potential investigators through the referral process. The commitment was to ask for referrals in every single teaching situation (which is any interaction in which a restored truth is brought up).

It was beautiful to gain a glimpse into the vision of what the Lord would have missionary work be. We're created for it. It's pretty cool.

Small world story: We stopped by a members house that lives down the street from us. Turns out she's Josh Hall's sister. We are having dinner with them on Sunday and Josh is coming. I guess he's moved over here now, but I'm sure you'll get updates and pictures from him come the end of this week.

Other than that, we're continuing to work with Kaylee and Caleb. We also were able to meet with a 20-year-old named Alec. He's super cool and has a lot of questions, and accepted a baptism date for the middle of November. Things are picking up and it's really, really exciting to see. Hoorah for Israel.

-Elder Chandler

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Spiritual thought: extended application of the dispensation pattern

I read Alma 12 today. Yesterday I did some Preach My Gospel study on the point "Heavenly Father Reveals His Gospel in Every Dispensation" and drew out a dispensations chart. It was interesting to see exactly what the cause of each apostasy was and apply that to the direction we're headed right now. ex: Adam's dispensation, apostasy caused by Cain, Master Mahan, secret combinations. Whole world "baptized". Noah, apostasy in Sodom and Gomorrah, sodomy, just the cities destroyed. Abraham, apostasy into Egyptian captivity, caused by idolatry. Caused grief but no destruction, and were delivered by Moses later. What kind of apostasy are we headed towards right now? What branch are we heading down? Maybe the gentiles will repent and we'll just all be translated :)

Anyways, that's not really what I wanted to talk about. It was in that line of thinking I read Alma 12 in, and it was really interesting. The Lord's pattern for establishing a dispensation, as stated in Alma 12:27-32:

1) Heavenly Father recognizes man's fallen state and desires to help them (Moses 1:39)
2) He manifests himself unto man through divine intervention, literally giving them physical evidence he is there
3) Man communes with Heavenly Father through prayer, which becomes instinctual after #2 (BD Prayer)
4) Heavenly Father answers prayers and reveals the Plan of Salvation
5) Heavenly Father reveals commandments to help people obey the PoS
6) The Doctrine of Christ is set forth to help people "overcome" the Plan of Salvation

First interesting thing: What's the gospel discussion pattern? Restoration, PoS, DoC.
Second: The pattern for individual conversion is the same as the dispensations pattern is the same as the purpose of earth pattern
garden -> worldliness -> millennium
prophet -> apostasy -> prophet
born -> sin -> repent

Third, to compound on everything else: All patterns and doctrines used in any of these cases can run down or up the line. The scope doesn't matter. It's important to try different scopes on different doctrines to fully understand exactly all the implications stated by one solitary statement.

Added comment kind of in spite: Forget dualism. It's bigger than that, Isaiah.

Letter 10-22-2012

Dear everyone!

I heard through the grapevine that Amy got in a car crash. She's fine but the neon isn't, right? :(

This has been a pretty eventful week. It started a bit slow but things picked up immensely by the end of the week! I love this work.

Last week at church was pretty busy - a nine-year-old girl came with her grandma and has interest in meeting with us. She was at church again this last Sunday, so we're hoping to set up lessons really soon! (as soon as the parents give their permission) There was also a 19 year old who has tried to take the discussions before but his mom shot him down. Now he's over 18 and set on getting baptized. We're just waiting for a time to be able to set up a time with him and we'll be set. He also was at church this week.

We also have been following up fairly regularly with a great active member family in our area, the Chamberlains. They're a hoot to be around. The dad actually gave me the sketchbook I've been doing a bit of work in during down time before bed. Their oldest daughter, Alyssa, has a good friend that she invited to read the Book of Mormon. He got through 1 Nephi and agreed to meet with us. I think he was a bit scared at first but he realized really soon that we're not that scary. Maybe it's that I laugh a lot. In any case we had a great lesson and put him on baptism date for the 17th of November. He's awesome. We're hoping to get a lot of ward fellowship in the big group of priests in his ward that occupy quite a few different high points on that high-school social ladder of things. I can't wait to see him get baptized.

We also had zone conference this week. It was all about the Book of Mormon. It really solidifies my love for the Book of Mormon and the stories inside. I love sharing with investigators the personality of the prophets in the BoM, the ideas on Christ it gives, the idea that it's a book written 3000 to 1400 years ago for our day. I feast on it a lot now, yum.

Other than that we just keep on trudging. I don't think it's really trudging though. More like trucking. Soon we'll be speeding I think.

--Elder Chandler

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Thought: Heavenly Father

I just thought this idea in Hebrews 12 was cool so I'll share:

"For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye @#!*% , and not sons. Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?"

I just really like the idea of planes in the gospel. Certain things just aren't passable without unseen changes that we don't know of. Spirit prison and paradise. Three kingdoms. I picture it like a graph that looks like an upside down L but with the edge curved. The graph shoots up real fast, but then it hits an asymptote which it can not pass ever in infinity Yet God deals with inifinites like finites. He gives a little "push" that puts us on a whole new plane, graph, on which we can again shoot up and grow. God's ways aren't our ways. Even so, because of the perfect plan and test he has set up for us here, we get glimpses of eternal principles through our finite lives.

Fun stuff.

Letter 10-16-2012

Hello everyone--

This has probably been the best week of my mission thus far, no joke. I don't think you know how good and fun a mission can be until you're with a companion that you hit off with well.

We've been going around this week pre-fast Sunday dropping off 21-day promises to everyone we can possibly get to, trying to get this area of the mission back on its feet. Our area is the most stagnant, least-transient area in the whole mission, easily. That's something we're not going to be able to change. It makes it really hard for us as missionaries to find anyone when we have a record of literally every house and their interest/activity in the church. The receptiveness just isn't there. Not that it doesn't mean we aren't still residential tracting for an hour a day and talking to everyone we see, but it does mean the most efficient way we'll be able to get into houses is through two different avenues. This is true in all areas, but especially in the residental-all-houses area I'm in right now.

1) The members. While the non-transiency is bad for missionary contacting, it's great for member missionary work. All the members know all their neighbors, all the neighbors are invited to all ward and stake activities, and just in general everyone is pretty friendly with everyone else. This makes our relationship with members paramount to our success in the area. We need their support, and any set of missionaries here that doesn't have it will not have much success.

2) The Lord. This is where 21-day promise comes in. We have all the members read scriptures and pray for a specific list for names twice a day as a family as well as start with a fast. After 21 days it is promised that one of the people they've been praying for will take the missionary discussions; it's a promise from Elder Ballard just for the Salt Lake Valley Let's get a Lord in with the Elders and the member's efforts to prune the vineyard here.

Through these two avenues we're able to change the hearts of people who have been set in their ways for YEARS. We've already seen some blessings from the members doing this promise - on Sunday we more or less picked up two new investigators on date and a couple really good potentials.

The Lord makes things work. Sorry I'm on somewhat of a time-crunch today for email. I promise next week will be better.

Elder Chandler

Letter 10-09-2012

Big week-

Conference weekend! It's really cool to get to listen to conference as a missionary, especially when such a big announcement goes out about missionary work! I hope everyone got to see that first person. The Spirit was so strong. I with many others just wanted to whoop for joy :) Honestly I'm not sure that I would have gone at 18. I needed college. There's no way to know whether it's for you except to get a spiritual witness for yourself. My feeling is I probably would have been told to stick with my one year in heritage, but I'm sure it's different for others. I hope many get on the hump of this wave of missionary work though. What are the brethren going to do with a "number of full-time missionaries" chart that looks like this?
-------000===
past:next year:future

Missionary work also got a plug with President Monson saying that "No injunction is more important than this!". I very much enjoyed Elder Ballard's talk. He's a great speaker. Elder Oaks' talk on children was phenomenal. I think it helps clear up a lot when you hear an apostle of the Lord call homosexual relations a "social experiment" that the consequences haven't been found yet. The stats there were really nice. Also interesting was the three-time repetition of the story of Peter's acknowledgement of the Christ and "feed my sheep". I find it especially interesting that Peter denied thrice, then agreed thrice, and the modern prophets mention the story thrice. "Three is a magic number"? :)

I guess if there's one thing in conference that I noticed, it was the vision of the brethren. Maybe it was just me, but I felt that there's something greater stirring under all of this. They see something ahead and have a vision of how to achieve it. It's the same with these new SLC missions. The brethren have started a kind of "pet project". We're the bees, and need to give our 1/12 of a teaspoon to contribute in order to give the whole, healthy pound. We need to devote all of our lives to this 1/12, and when the time comes to go we've left our mark and contributed to the vision. That vision is one of 18 and 19 year old missionaries, it's one of every single member reconciliating towards the will of God, it's one of each person having a testimony and being converted. Elder Bednar's concluding statements are particularly insightful; we need you with a testimony and converted, with oil in your lamps. Is it coincidence he uses a story that typifies the second coming? Doubt it. That's kinda where it's all leading up to.

My favorite line from all of conference was in the priesthood session during Elder Christofferson's talk. "We can't save you on Sunday when the rest of the week you're a witness of the crucifixion of your own soul." See this way too much around here.

Transfers also happen this week. I'm actually staying in this area, while Elder Slade is getting shipped off to the Taylorsville North Stake. Is that the Lewis family home stake? Anyways, I'm going to be with Elder Jackson now, who served in the stake north of me and was in our district. He's really cool - this is going to be a great six weeks. Learned a lot about myself from Elder Slade, but it'll be nice to actually get to be with someone I would interact a lot with anyways. He also has a year of experience, so he'll be one of the most senior missionaries that I'll ever have most likely. Super excited.

I've picked up drawing/sketching as a small hobby. One of the members gave me a sketch pad and I've been using it during Elder Slade's numerous doctor's appointments (he did end up breaking a bone in his wrist). I took pictures of what I've drawn. You won't be very surprised to see what they are once you send the SD card over. Also, my ankle is up to 90% and has been that way for a while. Apparently sprains don't get back to normal for months, and I feel it every once in a while, but for now at least I can slip on my bball shoes with their innate ankle support and do just about anything I could before. I think I might have lost a bit on my vertical though :(

Housekeeping note that P-Day will be on Monday the 22nd of Oct instead of the 23rd that week because of a general authority visit to the mission. Don't know who yet.

--Elder Chandler

Spiritual thought for the week: the Rock

As I've been thinking about the story in Matthew, where Peter by revelation declares Jesus is the Christ, I've thought of what exactly the term "rock" means. I came up with three kind of deals:
1) Revelation from the Holy Ghost
2) Jesus Christ
and
3) Specifically, the revelation that Jesus is the Christ

As I think about this more, I believe whenever the term rock is used in scripture it refers to the third thing. While you could simplify it by stating it's just "revelation", or just "Jesus Christ", I don't know if that's exactly what the term encompasses. It's given me an interesting insight into just how important that revelation that Jesus is the Christ is to each of our testimonies. I actually have a flowchart written in my study journal, but I can't really explain or draw that so I'll just end here. Our personal knowledge of Christ is what everything is built on. It's what makes it so important to have a first-hand witness of Christ in each dispensation. Between Elder Bednar's talk on personal conversion and testimony, and there was another talk only on pretty much this subject, I think GC covered this pretty well too.

Til next week.

Email from Brother Larsen--

Dear Elder,

Thank you for coming to our home with Kailee for conference.  Here are some charts that I think you and your parents will enjoy.  They can print them at Kinkos for about $8.

Thanks again, and I hope you have an incredibly enjoyable mission.

Bro Larsen
http://www.TenGenChart.com

Elder Sighting 10-6-1012

"Your son seems to be doing great!"

Letter 10-2-2012

Boo! 

Everyone around here already has all their Halloween decor up so I'm trying to get in the Spirit as well. (get it? ha) I kind of want to pick up some candy and be a part of all the wards Trunk-or-treats this month out of the back of the "trunks" of our bikes. Wouldn't that be funny? I bet we'd meet people and get referrals too! Now just to convince the mission office to pay for it... 

We have four people on-date right now for baptism in October. Kaylee, Jose, Jordyn, and Damon. Kaylee is a super cool 10 year old whose parents have been inactive for quite some time now. The dad's an RM... but at least he's supportive in getting her UP for church, right? Apparently in the past he hasn't done that so maybe we're doing something right this time. 

We spoke in Kaylee's ward this last Sunday. I really enjoy speaking in sacrament meeting now. I've been working on making a conscious effort to speak a little bit slower and make sure to punctuate my sentences in real life and not just in writing. When I speak (and a lot of people that is) I tend to connect everything with an "and", which makes everything you say a run-on and in some cases makes it hard to understand (especially when trying to communicate with my companion and such!). Anyways, I really enjoyed speaking on the purposes and differences in the new mission, the challenges of serving in Salt Lake (how much do all of you other elders get OVERexposure to the church?), and the really cool 21-day promise that has been extended for this area. It's still a little scary but when you pray and the spirit is able to help your utterance it helps a lot. I got a lot of complements. Gotta make sure to pray every night to thank Heavenly Father for the blessings of serving in this area so full of member support. 

Jordyn and Damon are 12 and 10. Jordyn is a really fun little girl with some challenging things that have happened in the last couple months, while Damon is super peppy and has a ton of enthusiasm for learning. They're base knowledge is almost nothing though, which is somewhat intriguing considering they've had the missionary discussions twice before us. They dropped them for lack of parent support, but we're hoping to duplicate our success with Kaylee into their household and get something rolling for consistent church attendance. We'll see - I'm kind of doubtful they'll stay on their date for the 27th, but I pray the Lord will prepare them to reach their goal. 

Funny compe story for the week - I know Elder Slade's favorite kind of jam is raspberry. He always comments when the members feed us rolls (which is a lot of the time, with meat and potatoes) with jam on what kind of jam it is. If it's raspberry he always is super happy and complements a ton. Anyways, whenever he buys jam he buys a kind called "Razzleberry". Sometimes he has a bit of trouble with spelling, so I kindly asked him the other day what kind of jam he had got from Walmart. He responded, "raspberry". I said something about it looking a bit dark for raspberry, and he just looked and looked at the jar. He kept going "hm"! It was pretty amusing. Maybe he'll pick up raspberry next time. 

While I'm on Walmart-- I get to talk a lot about what you do for Walmart, dad. Bentonville is a hot topic for discussion over the dinner table, and the stuff you're doing always comes up. You still are on private brand labeling, no? Every time I go there on P-Day I find something new and repackaged. This week it was the chips. Last week it was the Detergents. The week before it was the pink lemonade. I've been taking pictures of anything I see with new packaging. It's pretty fun and reminds me of home. I like the colors. 

Otherwise things are going well. Transfers are coming up this next week. Again, who knows what's going to happen? I'm really scared. I kinda don't want to do leadership or training yet. And I don't want to be transferred. We'll see. The Lord provides. 

--Elder Chandler

The thought this week is short. Just a recap of last week.

We taught a lesson to Jim on Thursday. He's actually super sincere. He wants to honestly know more about the church. Problem is, he's got so much brainwashing for his current religion that his problems turn insane.

The problem wasn't what I thought it was. He has a problem with the conception of the Godhead in general. Easier to place and answer, but harder to convince of a difference. He's marginalizes the three separate beings at the baptism somehow into one thing as well as the appearance of TWO personages during the Joseph Smith vision (which he believes happened still).

So I read Talmage's Articles of Faith (woops not in mission library don't tell), especially chapter 2 on the Godhead. What a great blessing it is to know the true nature of the Godhead, and how many doctrines this extends! That we can be like our Heavenly Father in the future. That our life on earth is a perfect pre-test for future progression, with fathers and bodies and everything. It gives us something to look forward to, rather than something to fear and feel incapable to understand. What peace a true knowledge of the separateness yet oneness in purpose of the Godhead is to us.

BTW- I just read through Articles of Faith (twice) by Talmage this last week (yeah I book it through things). Talmage is my favorite gospel author. Alyssa sent me my Religion 121-122 packets from college and they have a fair amount of McConkie quotes in the back, but some of it just doesn't ring all the way for me. I much prefer Talmage and Skousen's direct interpretations and their true use of Theology as a science.