Dear Family,
Well well well. I am not getting transfered to Reno. I am staying in the greenvalley zone. I am getting transfered to the Anthem area. I have the inspirada, summerville?, and somethin or other ward. There's three of them though. But I know inspirada well because I went to a meeting with them and they have an excellent Ward Mission plan. They are serious about working with the missionaries and understand the need for members doing the finding and NOT missionaries. The fact that that area is pretty much a bunch of gated communities makes it pretty much essential that the members work with the missionaries.
Elder Sparks is still my zone leader... and OPE! HE just got his girlfriends ring size in an e-mail. They are probably going to get married in December... on the 19th. Yes he has that ridiculously planned out. I cannot even include a hundredth part.
Elder Adjei is getting transfered and he is training. My grandfather is dying this transfer. Thats gonna be sad. But hey, I still have the birthwright! That was in jeopardy if I went to Reno because I'd be considered dead. But I still have it! Woot! Ok, Elder Lovell, calm down, you're a little intense with these things.
Well we cleaned out our teaching pool mostly. Had a baptism about 2 weeks ago. Her name is Chelsea. She is solid. She even came to the fun run this last weekend and I think ran a 5K. Yeah, she's going to be "twinkled." Kathy... she needs to be rebuked. I wish I was going to stay just so I could do the rebuking. She is putting the secular things of the world above Eternal Life. What the! But she is still really really nice. She just needs to really put in some sincere honest effort to get an answer. And its not like she doesnt know how for heavens sake! She almost a Ph.D. Sure she's working on a dissertation for college... but thats besides the point. If she got baptized she would get the spirit and therefore have more inspiration to do it correctly.
Hmmmm.... what else is happening in this zone of note. The ward mission work is going great! Wow, the Legacy ward just has this awesome ward mission leader! He is getting things done! In fact he and the full-time missionaries are going to teach a lesson this week on the importance of members inviting people into their houses to recieve the missionaries. I would like to maybe take a few minutes and encourage members of the Lovell family (and others if they read this) to take on this new inspired approach. Basically the missionaries no longer want to tract out your referals. Member homes are a stake for the spirit. They are the most basic conduit of where the love of the Lord can be most palpable. I encourage members of our family spread throughout the world to invite people into their homes to feel the spirit. You do not have to make them recieve the missionaries on the first visit. Just maybe have them start coming over for dinner a couple of nights a month. Then tell them later "We had the missionaries over a while back for dinner and man they shared some great things with us that made us feel great and gave us strength throughout our week, do you mind if they show up to the next dinner appointment we have together? They are really nice people and I think we'd have a great time!" So Lovell family, will you try that over the next 4 months? Pray for someone you can invite in your homes to feel of the spirit and eventually recieve the missionaries? We'll do a follow up later - in four months.
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Finally, for my short little discourse of the week. In the 10th chapter of Preach My Gospel - "Teaching Skills" there is a section about Listening. Oh! Wonderful section. I wish people would do it more in this mission. Its something many struggle with. But I dont wish to touch on that section as a whole today, rather, focus on a question that Elder Holland asks us as missionaries to ask our investigators. "What do you Cherish?" "what do you hold dear?"
Be careful what you say. Seriously. It has taken me a long time to realize this. For the short time I have been on my mission I have learned this key lesson in a rather trialsome way. When we as members, of our faith or even others, are asked what we cherish, perhaps our first response will be: Prophets, modern day revelation, the spirit, the scriptures - Book of Mormon or Bible. These are all extremely important. Some of which, if they were taken away, the very structure of the church would collapse and even be useless.
Those who know me well, have heard of my trials with dyslexia. They were tough. As I look back and see how I was able to help others with those experiences, I realized how central the scriptures, esspecially the Book of Mormon was, in helping me get through that process. In my testimony, I often said "it was the power of the Book of Mormon that healed me." And I spoke of its truth and divinity. Now before you think I am going down a radically rebellious path, I would like to make something very clear. I do not discredit or lessen the power that comes from drinking from the pages of the Book of Mormon. In fact I testify to everyone, member or not, that if you read and pray about the Book of Mormon, you will feel the power of it effect your life tremendously and YOU WILL GET AN ANSWER THAT IT IS TRUE. However, the purpose of this discourse is to cite where the power of the Book of Mormon comes from. Perhaps all too often, we mistake the keystone of our religion for the keystone of our salvation, as I did. My testimony should not have been that "The Book of Mormon healed me." Because frankly, it did not. It was a conduit for healing. A catalyst for faith and works. But my healer came from my master, Jesus Christ. I testify that he is the keystone of our SALVATION. He is our Master, King, SAVIOR, and Teacher. My mission is not to bring you or anyone else to the LDS church. My mission is to represent Him and bring people to Him.
All my life, I have searched for that one thing that I could do to obtain happiness in this life and Eternal Life in the life to come. Surely the Book of Mormon is an excellent source for that nutrition, as it says almost those exact same words in its introduction. However, the Central, Core, Heart, Life, of everything we do. The way we obtain peace in this life and Eternal Life in the life to come, is through our Master. He's not secondary, He does not make up the difference, He is the difference, He is the church, He is the law. He is the way, the light, and the life, and whosoever believeth in Him shall never perish, but shall have everlasting life. I testify of His divine existance, and that He suffered for you and me. I testify that because I have seen the effects of it as surely as I can see the sunshine and feel the heat from its rays. How I ove and cherish Him. That we all may put Him in the center of our every belief, thought, motive, and action (D&C 6:36) is my humble prayer, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
April 30
Dearest Family,
Well, Mom, Elizabeth, Chloe, and Olivia pretty much have the most recent and accurate portion of summary of which I will recount to the rest of you. But first let us start with some items of bussiness.
I would like to congratulate Elizabeth on the numerous e-mailed pictures of the two finest nieces in the world. Also Erik, for two really excellent e-mails. And dad for the letter I recieved this morning via mom. I understand there is another letter that I have recieved along with dad's but was pretty much wrenched out of the door to write e-mails this morning and still have not had a chance to read the entirety of Dad's letter, nor even look at the sender of the phantom letter. However, those will be taken care of, pronto. (The way english people use "pronto" is stupid by the way. They have no idea what that means. Dumb. (Yes I just used it the dumb way.))
This week has been fantastic. Let me pull out my planner to give you a clear account on the record of this my people. Hold on... one sec... Ok now I just have to unbotton the planner, hold on... Lets see.... week 1... and... tuesday.... wait no... wednesday... aha! Apparently we didnt do anything that morning. But thats a little understandable because I had language study so there isnt much to do from then until lunch, so I think we took lunch and then went out and started at 12:00. Ok, we stopped at Sister Holden's house, but she wasnt awake, her maid or someone answered the door and said she was lying down. We then visited kim Melville. She is French! Wonderful woman. She has some different ideas about health. She believes that if you drink H202 (in other words adding an oxygen supplement to your water :p), then you will never get cancer and apparently it cured her arthritis. She thinks the pharmesutical (sp?) companies dont want to tell you the truth about medications and self-cure solutions because then they would go out of bussiness if you permanently cured yourself!!! Other than than that she is very spiritual. But less active I think.
Lets see, asiude from her it was pretty uneventful until dinner and then we met with the owens.... I have to wrack my brains here and remember who they are... OH YES! Brother owens is the assistant district attorney. He put OJ away. He is a pretty serious individual but says some really sarcastic things and sometimes its hard to tell if he is really joking or not. Nice family, we challenged them to think of people they could invite into their homes to feel of the spirit there. Apparently brother owens has been trying... in fact, tracting people in his area because he knows missionaries cant tract in the gated communities and he says people there are just too stiff necked. So we challenged them to pray about someone they could invite and also promised them that someone would come to mind.
Lets see... what were some cool highlights of this week. OH yeah! I inherited a baptism in this area. We will be holding a baptismal service this week for Brother Richard Lopez. Great, fantastically faithful man! Wow. He has cancer and could die so he is getting the baptism done as fast as he can. He comes to church and asks so many questions and the thing is, he can remember enough about what he has learned that we can delve deeper into more of the culture of Mormonism. Tell him how the mission is set up, talk to him more specifically on how prophets recieve inspiration and he understands and ACCEPTS it all! Oh man, wonderful wonderful person. Hopefully, we find out that the cancer is treatable and that he wont pass. But if he does, he KNOWS exactly what he is doing. Its going to be a wonderful service.
In the Sevenhills ward, we have a wonderful ward mission leader named Brother Lee. Hilarious person. At first I saw him when I was with the Zone Leaders at the stake mission meeting, and I didnt think that highly of him. He seemed really bored with his assignment and not wanting to talk too much. But then, now that I am in his ward, he is fantastic. We are setting up a great plan with him to have a missionary cook-off type thing every month to create that opportunity for members to always have something they can invite a friend to. That way its never too awkward for them to bring someone to church or what have you. He is fantastic. It seems like our personalities kind of clicked and we are just so sarcastic and are usually just cracking up all the time. This brings me to a favor to ask. Sister Lee says she has an inactive sister from her family in OUR stake as in YOUR stake, mom and dad. She lives in the Paradise Hills ward. She was wondering if maybe you could visit her or find someone we know from the ward to visit her and her family. Her name is Susy Barlow, her husband is Jim Barlow and they have a son named Connor. They live on 198 Ridge Crossing. Sister Lee's family was converted when she was younger but only she and her mom remained active. Her sister, Susy always calls Brother Lee when she needs a blessing and knows the gospel is true but just "doesnt have time for church." So if you could visit them or have someone else visit them, that would be fantastic!
Two days ago, Saturday, was my favorite day of this week! We went to Brother Mooseman's (an excommunicated member) house to help him paint the roof so that he wouldn't get fined by the HOA, but found out he was in the hospital because he wasnt getting oxygen to his lungs. We still helped his wife paint the roof, but then made plans to see him in the hospital sunday. After that service gig, we went to Brother Lee's house again to help him with his pool (dont worry we didnt not jump or fall in. BUT HE DID HA!) That took a couple of hours and then they gave us lunch. After them we went and visited some members and then went down to our dinner appointment. We were a little early for the appointment so we parked the car and walked around the neighborhood searching for people to street contact. We saw some hispanic people working outside of a person's home and asked them if they needed help. They agreed. So in our shirt and ties we began shovelin' rock and dirt! It was fantastic! The workers said they had seen missionaries before but never had a chance to talk because they had such busy work schedules. So before we left for our dinner appointment we left them with our number and told us to call them again and agreed to teach a lesson next time while we helped them shovel rock. FANTASTIC!
One fun fact as I border my spiritual moment... Sister Hepburn (Who I will tell you more about in this next upcoming paragraph) Has a son named Riecher. Yes, as in William T. Riecher. So when he answered the door and told me his name, I said "do you know who you are named after? A famous spaceship captian!" and sister Hepburn (his mom) said "YES! I am so glad you said that! We are trying to tell him that! He hates it though, its so disapointing. When he gets into late high school, and early college he'll realize how cool that is." (true that!) She said also that she asked her husband to give him a baby blessing to "bodly go where no man has gone before" HAHAHA! Oh loved it. Thought you would too. No? Ok.
So now, for the spiritual finalle. We're teaching a girl named samantha. Probably in her mid-twenties. She is in a bad lot in life. Her parents didnt raise her very well. She was allowed to do whatever she wanted with no consequences and frankly they just didnt really care about her. So we have been working with her a lot just to plant that seed of faith. She feels like God is dissapointed with her and also she doesnt know if she trusts God. She wonders why God didnt keep her brother from commiting suicide. Why didnt He give him the strength. She has been suicidal too and has been feeling like whenever she tries something, she fails miserably no matter how much work she puts behind it. And she does try. She REALLY tries. But since she has shown the faith in continually meeting with us, her countenance has begun to change. She is happier and she also has a job! She started her own bussiness of dog grooming! Fantastic. And she has a direction to go. Anywho, while we were talking with her we discussed more of her concerns about God not wanting to help her because she doesnt think she has sufficient faith. She thinks she cant have any doubts if she wants an answer. (Boy I have fallen into that trap a lot.) So Sister Hepburn (mentioned above) was with us and pretty much recited Alma 32. Faith being like a little seed. If planted it will grow. Fantastic! The were able to talk girl - to - girl for a little bit. Then I told her about how worthy men carry the priesthood and if she'd like a blessing for faith and comfort, we could give it to her. She seemed willling but kind of sarcastically said "Well what would that blessing entail?" and I said "Well, lets put it this way, if Jesus Christ were here right now, what would you ask Him for?" She said.... "Well... thats a hard and really good question............... I would ask that I could be reborn. Not just your form of spiritual rebirth, but physical re-comming out of the womb. Because if I were to be reborn your way, I'd still have my felonies, all the bad things people will think about me etc." For a moment there was silence. Then I said "It seems like you want physical proof of your 'rebirth' and maybe things being right between you and God isn't just quite enough. Is that what you're saying?" and she said yes. And so I promised her as a representative of Jesus Christ that if she did what we told her and continued to meet with us, she would see those changes and her faith would grow. It was sweet! I felt scared. I couldnt believe I felt confident enough to say it. But I did. Then we gave her a blessing. And Elder Smethurst promised her those exact things in the blessing. It made me cry. Gosh dang it. But she was funny she said "God kind of intimidates me."
So that was a great experience. Aside from that all. I miss Elder Sparks and Elder Adjei, but this new companionship is going pretty well. Anyway sister Neider just called so we might have to leave here a little early. I love you all so much! Remember to make your family mission plans.
With much love,
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