Chapter 44: Ward Activities

This picture made me laugh. The light gray strap is the strap of Elder Anderson's missionary bag. The nice crisp black strap is from the bag of a missionary who is just beginning his mission!

Elder Anderson and his companion were blessed to be able to make their own pens at a Church member's home on a Pday. Elder Anderson made a beautiful olive wood pen.

4/27/2021

Today was a good day. After five weeks of having been here we finally made it through our entire member list, which means that we’ve contacted every member of our ward. Not having to split an area is really nice, usually we would go through our entire list in a couple of weeks, it’s just refreshing to be able to talk to so many people and to feel like we have such a large area to work with.

4/28/2021

Today I got to go on exchanges with my District Leader, Elder Edwards. Our day was pretty much a massive study session. All of the appointments that we had other than digging holes for planting trees in a riverbed (which means that our holes were like, 60% rock and the worst place ever to dig), all of our other appointments fell through and so Elder Edwards and I had a study session for like, two hours where we talked about Christ’s Atonement. Elder Edwards is a really smart guy and I really benefited from our studies.

4/29/2021

Today we had combined district council and swapped back companions. After our council Elder Aguirre and I headed back to Cedaredge and tried to make do with the small remaining amount of time that we had to teach an absurd number of lessons. Fortunately it all worked out and we were able to get back, but we were a lot closer to breaking curfew than we would have liked.

4/30/2021

Today was an amazing day, we watched the Book of Mormon video on 1 Nephi 8, talking about the tree of life, and Cybele understood it perfectly. We talked to her about how the path that the people walked that led to the tree was the covenant path, and that baptism would help her receive that fruit that brings joy. She was very excited about it, and we were very happy that she enjoyed it so much. We also got to do a lot of service today, one of the service projects we did was at an animal shelter, and the workers were amazed that the animals who seemed scared of other humans or males would be friendly to Elder Aguirre and I, and want to interact with us.

5/1/2021

Today was a great day! Brother Taylor found someone for us to teach, and led us to the house of a woman who cleans other houses. She’s a hispanic woman and was very excited to see us, and even more excited that I would speak Spanish with her. My Spanish isn’t very good, my ability to speak comes solely from the Book of Mormon and so while I struggle to speak normal words certain phrases like, “Repent ye, or an awful hell awaits you, yea, even a lake of anguish and inextinguishable suffering” those phrases come much more naturally to me, but fortunately I was able to get by with what little Spanish I know and avoided calling her to repentance in the first twenty seconds of having known her.

5/2/2021

Today was a lot of fun, our Ward had an early Cinco de Maio activity that we got to attend, and we were very grateful for it. We were able to get a lot of food, but we were also able to meet a lot of people in a very short amount of time, which was very useful, we lamented, because the end of the transfer is this week and we still have yet to meet some families that are considered to be “active members”. We met a few nonmembers at the Ward activity, which is why we were really excited to go, and Elder Aguirre destroyed the pinata, which withstood all of the blows of the children, so he instantly won a place in their heart. It was a very fun activity.

Today for a spiritual thought I wanted to share the definition of "Atonement" as it's given in the Bible dictionary:

The word describes the setting “at one” of those who have been estranged and denotes the reconciliation of man to God. Sin is the cause of the estrangement, and therefore the purpose of atonement is to correct or overcome the consequences of sin.

The purpose of the Atonement is to allow us to be at one with God, even as Christ is one with the Father. It was His love for each one of us and this ultimate goal that gave Him the strength to make the greatest sacrifice ever made.