Message--23 September 2012
Dear
Family & Friends,
This
past week has been one in which we have been greatly blessed in multiple
ways. Monday and Tuesday were Mission
Conference days. On Monday the missionaries
(including senior couples) in the Buffalo and Rochester Zones met together in
the chapel in Batavia with Elder Anthony Perkins and his wife and also
President and Sister Christianson. Elder
Perkins, of the First Quorum of 70, was assigned President Packer to do several
mission tours in a row, with our mission being the next to last one. On Tuesday we met together with the missionaries
in the Palmyra North and Palmyra South Zones in the Palmyra Stake Center with
Elder & Sister Perkins and President and Sister Christianson. We attended both days because we had been
assigned to provide lunch and snacks for the morning and afternoon breaks for
all who attended. We were blessed to
hear a lot of the instruction that was given by Elder Perkins, Sister Perkins,
Sister Christianson, and President Christianson, and then again by Elder
Perkins. We missed some of the
instruction while we set out the snacks for the morning break; then again while
set up the lunch and cleaned up after the lunch. We had good help from some of the senior
couples to get the lunch made and set out.
We missed a few minutes again to put out the snacks for the afternoon
break. The instruction was basically the
same both days, but there were some differences in the Tuesday meeting. Elder Perkins began the meeting both days to
prepare us for the instruction we would receive during the rest of the day by
sharing a concept taught by Elder Bednar.
Elder Perkins said Elder Bednar had said he wished we could change the
way we refer to our meetings from the usual Sacrament Meeting, Priesthood
Meeting, Relief Society Meeting, and etc. and start using the phrase “Revelatory
Experience”. That is what should happen
any time we meet together to receive instruction. In order for that to happen we each need to read
our scriptures daily during the week, and pray and ponder and determine some
questions for which we would like to receive answers, and write them down. Then pray before going to the “Revelatory
Experience” for the Holy Spirit to reveal to us the answers to our questions. Then we need to pay attention and listen for
the Spirit to reveal to us the answers for the questions we have written. Elder Perkins then invited all of us to take
a few minutes and write two questions for which we would like to have answers;
one question related to our proselyting work and one related to our personal
lives. At the end of the day Elder
Perkins asked us to raise our hands if we had received answers to our
questions; almost everyone raised their hands.
He then said if we did yet receive our answers that we should continue
praying and pondering and listening and the answer would come in the Lord’s
wisdom and timing. At the end of the
meetings about 20 minutes or so was allowed for the missionaries to share their
testimonies. Several of the missionaries
stated in their testimonies that they had received answers early in the day
others ahd received answers later. Another
concept Elder Perkins taught also came from Elder Bednar in an address he gave
last Christmas Day in a sacrament service in the Provo MTC on Christmas day in
2011. Among other things he taught was
that while we are met together to be taught we should listen for what the Holy
Spirit teaches us personally. If we try
to write down everything that is being taught that is like writing the Large
Plates of Nephi. We will have spent our
time and effort recording a history of what took place, but missing what the
Spirit could have taught us. When we do
this type of note taking we usually do not remember what we wrote, nor do we
ever go back and read them, and usually we cannot find where we wrote the notes. We should instead record the Small Plates,
the things taught by the Spirit, that will be of eternal worth to us. The focus of the instruction both days was on
how to effectively teach the commandments to investigators in ways that will
help them to accept the invitation to live the commandment. We should teach the what, why, and how, of
the commandment with our witness of the why and also a witness of the promised
blessings for keeping the commandment.
He used the law of tithing as the example. The other point of emphasis was on how making
and keeping commitments opens the way for receiving the witness of the Holy
Ghost to know the truth and power of the commandments; and how they can bless
us and lead us to receiving the blessings that will help bring us to Heavenly
Father and the Savior. Both days of
instruction were very helpful and strengthening to the missionaries and to us
personally. Sister Jensen was totally
exhausted after several days of planning and doing the work to help provide the
food for these two meetings; but she is faithful and diligent to complete
whatever she is assigned to do; she is awesome example of obedience and
service.
Wednesday
we spent the day catching up on the things which we did not get done while we
were out of the office all day Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday evening we attended the Site
Training meeting at the Hill Cumorah.
Sister Hatch and Sister Madsen used their training time to let us see
the first half of Elder Bednar’s 2011 Christmas Day address in the Provo
MTC. We arrived home about 10pm and were
very tired but grateful for the blessings and experiences and opportunities of
the previous three days.
Thursday
after we left the mission office we drove to Geneseo and had some dinner; then
went to the chapel to get things ready for our first night of our Institute class
for the fall semester. We only had two
young men attend the class. Brother Don
Gammon came and provided the instruction for the class. Don teaches two Thursdays a month and we
teach the other weeks when he cannot attend.
Don is the Western New York Regional CES Coordinator; he covers the area
from Buffalo to the Finger Lakes area and then North to the Watertown area; so
he does a lot of traveling to these other areas. He is a good teacher and is very helpful to
us. We are going to study the New
Testament this year and we are going to teach the lessons using the harmonized
method. This means we take each of the
events of the life of Christ, beginning with his birth and before, and then
going through the rest of the events in his life in chronological order. This means we examine what each of the books
of Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John had to say, if anything, about each event. We will cover the rest of the books of the
New Testament in the next semester beginning in January 2013. We are looking forward to learning the New
Testament using this method. We are
still trying to make connections with a few more LDS students who are attending
the Geneseo College to invite them to attend Institute.
Friday
we were able to mostly get caught up on all of our mission office
responsibilities. There were two vehicle
accidents the week before which I am still trying to follow up on to get
approval from the insurance to have the vehicles repaired. The lady in the insurance office assigned to
take care of these two accidents made an interesting comment. She told me she would love to have one day in
which all the missionaries in the church were not allowed to drive their
vehicles so all the insurance agents could maybe get caught up on the accidents
they already have to take care of; before any new ones were reported. I think there is a message in this comment
for all missionaries to be obedient and careful to help reduce the number of
accidents that occur.
Saturday
the 22nd of September, we drove to the Joseph Smith Farm in Palmyra
to meet with President and Sister Christianson and the AP’s and four other
missionaries and two other senior couples.
You may remember that September 22, 1827 was the night Joseph Smith had
Emma go with him in a borrowed wagon at midnight to receive the gold plates
from Moroni; so this was the 185th anniversary of that event. President Christianson had offered to take
anyone who wished to go with him on a walk from the Joseph Smith Farm to the
Hill Cumorah. We suppose Joseph would
have taken the most direct route a wagon could travel to get to the Hill. Since there was some rain Saturday morning,
so the fields and woods were very wet.
Also most of the property between the Farm and the Hill are now private
property; and because Highway 21 now has so much traffic and the road is narrow
and the speed limit is 55mph, we chose to take a different route that was a
little longer walk, but much safer for the group. Before we left we had prayer together, and in
the prayer we petioned that the rain would not hamper our time together; our
prayer was answered; there was a little mist for a few minutes now and then but
no serious rain. From the Farm we went south
down Stafford Road then left on a road which went over to Route 21 just south
of the Hill Cumorah property, this was about a 3 mile walk. The President showed us along the way where
Porter Rockwell had lived, and also where the school house was in which Oliver
Cowdery had taught school before serving as the scribe for Joseph to help with
the translation of the Book of Mormon. An LDS family now lives in this old rock
building that was built about the same time as the Martin Harris home. When we reached the Hill we stopped for a short
rest and a drink of water. The President
then took us on some trails along the west side of the Hill and pointed out some
places which had church history importance.
The Hill Cumorah is a drumlin which is a ridge on the east side of where
an ice flow had carved out a small valley between two ridges. We then went along a trail just inside the
edge of the trees on which Bob Parrott has put in some signs to inform people
of the various kinds of trees which are in the original forest on the south
portion of the Hill. The North part of
the Hill was completely bare from the 1830’s until the late 1930’s when Willard
Bean was able to help the church purchase all the property of the Hill Cumorah. When the church owned the property Willard
was able to obtain from the Forest Service 70,000 trees for free. He was able to find help, which included some
missionaries, to assist him in planting the trees on the part of the Hill which
was bare. The more southern part of the
Hill has had some of the same old forest trees that were there when Moroni
first met Joseph Smith on the Hill. This means some of these old trees were
present when Moroni came to teach Joseph Smith. We
then circled back along the Hill through the old forest and the President pointed
out some interesting things about the old forest. He also shared with us some thoughts he had
about how hard and lonely it must have been for Mormon and Moroni to watch all
of their Nephite people be destroyed before their eyes. Then Moroni ran for his life and wandered
around alone for over 35 years, before he placed the gold plates in the box on
the west side of the Hill, not far from the top. How happy and delighted Moroni must have been
to finally, in 1823-1827, show Joseph where the plates were and instruct him on
all that he was to do in the coming years.
After the translation was complete, Moroni then met him and took the
plates back to keep them safe until the time is right to have the sealed
portion of the plates made available to us.
We had a great four hours together, and I learned a lot. Saturday evening I worked on preparing a talk
for our sacrament service on Sunday.
Bishop Powell had asked me to speak on the topic of how to prepare for
sacrament meeting.
Today
we attended church in Geneseo and I gave the message the Spirit prompted me to
prepare and deliver. It was a good
meeting. I learned later after High
Priest Group Meeting from Brother Rob Baldwin, first counselor in the
Bishopric, that he had promised a person in the ward earlier in the week that
if they would attend sacrament meeting that they would a receive a message
especially for them through the Spirit.
This person told Rob after the sacrament meeting today that they had
indeed received the very message about the sacrament for which they had been
seeking. So Elder Bednar’s instruction
is correct if we prepare and listen we will have a revelatory experience;
including having the Spirit help the person doing the speaking to prepare and deliver
what others need to learn from the message given. This was indeed a great learning experience
for me.
This
afternoon we went for a little ride and took a few pictures on the video camera
of the soybean fields and some other vegetable farm scenes. We also took some video of a few of the maple
trees which are beginning to show a little red.
The temperature was cooler than it has been; it was in the 60’s when we
started and in the 50’s by the time we arrived back home in less than one
hour. Fall is in the air here.
We
express our love for each of you and hope and pray all is well with you and
your families. May you be blessed in all
the ways that will benefit you and help you to live in harmony with the
teachings of the Savior. We share our
witness that Heavenly Father and the Savior live and love us and will help us
if we ask in faith; and then obey what the Holy Spirit tells us to do.
Love,
Mom
& Dad, Grandma & Grandpa, Maxine & Richard
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