Elder Nathan S Moser: E'rebody is Coming to Church These Days

This weather though.

Everything this week was cancelled due to "freezing rain." Zone Conference was cancelled and moved back twice, church got out an hour early last week, and nobody had school for the entire week. It was pretty funny, because even though the weather was pretty bad, everyone was losing their minds. Before the storm even hit, everything was shut down. So it was a week of just rolling with it.

We had some awesome things happen this last week! About 2 weeks ago, we were tracting out in the boonies and we knocked into a young 9 year old kid named Donny. This past week, we met with him again, and Donny is the coolest little kid ever! His family life is really broken and both of his parents are making poor life decisions, but he just has so much hope. We've been teaching him with permission from his mom, and it is so much fun. Everything that we share with him is just amazing to him. When we showed him the picture of the First Vision, he just sat there staring and said "woooahhh!" We invited his family to come to yesterday's church service with us, but only Donny wanted to go. So we picked him up with a member of the ward and brought him. He was amazed by everything.

Pointing up towards the ceiling speakers in the chapel: "Are all those speakers??"

"yep."

Whispered: "Wooooaaaaahhh!"

Donny's mom is apparently a less active member, and so he's actually met missionaries from several years ago. But now he wants to get baptized, and we are super excited for him! Teaching a kid with such difficult circumstances but with such a happy attitude has been really humbling. All of us really do have a lot to be grateful for!

Our other investigators are doing well, but it is becoming easier for us to see who has a real desire. Singh hasn't been very good at keeping his appointments, so we are leaving the ball in his court. One of our other investigators in 11th ward, Ryan, told us that he doesn't really care if Joseph Smith was a prophet. We can't tell if he means that, or if he's just being a 13 year old. Either way, we're leaving it up to him too.

Let me walk you through our Friday, because that was a fun day. Keep in mind, this was after being cancelled twice due to icey roads.

8:30 am: The Spanish Elders from Moses Lake total their car in front of the Stake Center.

9:00 pm: Inspiring zone conference stuff happens

4:00 pm: We find out that we are not road tripping to Yakima to exchange with the AP's: Instead, they are both staying in our area. However, we had made a special effort to have nothing planned for that day so that we could go down to them. #communicationskills.

The exchange started the next day. I was with one of my favorites, Elder Taele. He is so cool. However, we accidentally karate kicked my USB while switching seats in Becky, and now 2 transfers of mission pics are gone. Uncool. But I'm pretty sure I have those pictures backed up, so no worries. It took a lot for me to convince him that he wasn't the scum of the earth for doing that. But, other than that incident, we had a great time and met some really cool people, even though our plans were super impromptu. It was great!

Our whole week was like that. Just flying by the seat of our pants, or however that saying goes. What does that even mean? Anyway, yeah. Crazy. And now. Elder Poloncic and I are like the Taxi Service because we don't have enough cars for everyone to do their shopping and stuff on P-day.

During Zone Conference, President Lewis shared the video of an Interview with Aaron Ralston, the guy that got his arm crushed by a boulder and had to cut it off after 5 days to free himself. The discription of how he did it was pretty gruesome, but President Lewis made an interesting point about how our desires shape our priorities. It couldn't have been easy for him to cut his arm off right after it happened, but after days of no progress, he realized that his desire to live and see his son again greatly outweighed his desire to have a right arm. His arm wasn't a bad thing by itself -- but it was holding him back, and would have led to his death. Our lives are the same way. Are our priorities in order? Are you letting your "right arm offend thee?" What do you need to change in order to actually reach your potential and fulfill your true desires? Christ can help us cut those things away from us that are holding us back. Even though it may be hard, the desire for spiritual life will always be better than it's alternative. :)

Love you all!

Peace and blessings,

Elder Moser