Ty's Mission: First Week in Columbia MO and teaching Heber C Kimball's granddaughter

My first week here in Columbia has been pretty good. It has been a bit of adjustment to not having a car and riding bikes and walking, but I actually like the amount of excercise we get. On average we have been walking 8 or more miles per day which is good for my mind and body, plus we don't have to do car inspections for zone conference!

It has also been a little bit rough adjusting to the bus schedule. Planning around that appears to be difficult, and quite a bit of time gets wasted waiting for the bus which makes me agitated. But I like the area and the ward members a lot. We have excellent ward misionaries and ward mission leader. They always makes sure that we have people to come to our appointments which is really nice because none of our other ward mission leaders ever did that. The ward council seems to be pretty on the ball with missionary work. We just need to find more people to teach.

One person we did find though was a lady named Kathy, who is the great-great (either that or great-great-great) granddaughter of Heber C. Kimball! She proved it to us with her geneology book she has. We found her just walking up the street last thursday, and she has a baptismal date for July 9th. Her father fell away from the church and grew up Methodist though she lived in salt lake city for 20 years. She has a smoking problem and has no teeth , but other than that she already believes the book of mormon is true and joseph smith to be a prophet before we even taught her! Really cool. We are meeting with her again today.

I found an article called "A Great Work Was Done in That Land" that I am going to share with her after I read it. It talks all about Heber C. Kimball's mission to England with Orson Hyde and how thousands were converted.

Columbia is pretty awesome! It is not even summer yet (not until end of June) and it is already super humid. Yesterday we played soccer and I had to lay down int he shade for a while because of heat exhaustion. Unfortunately the shade doesn't do a whole lot!

The place is also a little bit more hilly which is pleasing to the eye, not so much for the legs! I am a little sore. I do enjoy going down hills though. That's one good thing about hills but of course there is opposition in life and so once you go down, on the way back you must go up. I look ridiculous wearing my glasses and this funny outfit on a bike as well. We do a lot of walking too. Elder Russon has a Fitbit and so it keeps track of how many steps we take/how many miles we go/calories we burn. We have been going 8-10 miles a day on foot.

This week I was reading a a cool talk called "The Challening and Testifying Missionary" by Alvin D. Dyer, who was an assistant to the council of the twelve clear back in 1961!

I wish I could send you some quotes from it,

so i will have to paraphrase, but he said a lot of great things that I think he is right about when it comes to missionary work.

The talk is all about teaching by the spirit and using the talent the lords has given us. He explains that the talent the Lord has given us is to challenge people to repent and be baptized and to testify of the truths of the gospel. He explains that missionaries "hide the talent which [the Lord] has given to them" and instead they just expect that teaching the gospel and indoctrinating people will bring people into the church. But people who become indoctrinated will more than likely fall away because they don't have a spiritual witness! He explains that the cause for there being less people baptized into the church, for one, has to do with missionaries not challenging people to baptism enough! When I heard that the new key indicator would be the amount of people being challenged to baptism I was really excited because it confirmed to me that what I had read days before was true! Elder Dyer says that there should not be a day go by that we don't invite somebody to baptism, and that if he were to be a young missionary again, he would invite every person he talked to. Now of course that is way easier said than done. It can be awkward inviting people to baptism that you just met on the street.

The other thing that I thought Elder Dyer brought up a good point is that missionaries DO NOT TESTIFY ENOUGH! They are good at just "teaching", just rehearsing the doctrines of the lessons, but when they just do that the spirit cannot testify to them. Also, as soon as we see those we teach feel the spirit, then is the time we need to invite them to be baptized, and they should be baptized very soon until they loose the feeling of that manifestation! I feel like what I need and what every missionary in this mission needs is to become the challenging and testifying missionary as Elder Dyer described.

I am curious about your thoughts on this, and I would highly recommend reading his talk. It's not on lds.org I don't think. I got it from Elder McMullan. I am not sure where he got it.

Do you remember the time the missionaries did the 21 DAY PROMISE with us. Well, I would like to extend that same challenge to all of you are willing to do it.

Create a list of nonmember and less active people. Hold a fast.

Pray for them individually every morning and night individually and collectively.

By the end of the 21 days someone on your list will be willing to hear from the missionaries IF you do your part and reach out to these people and share your testimony with them. Sharing your testimony with them will be the key so they can feel the spirit.

What do you all say? Will you do it. I have actually been doing this with several families in the past two areas I have been serving.

I learned some good things I learned from a really good talk by Julie B. Beck about "Teaching the Doctrine of the Family." It talks all about the centralitiy of the Family to the plan of salvation. Really, that is the whole purpose of the plan, so that not just ourselves can be exalted but in families. I learned from that talk which I HIGHLY RECCOMEND that the rising generation and I'm sure even some of the older generation does not understand full the doctrine of the family.

When the angel Moroni appeared to Joseph smith he repeated the scripture from Malachi multiple times because it was obviously really important.

"I will reveal unto you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, and he shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers....were it not so, the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming."

The hebrew word in the verse for "turn" actually signifies "bind, or seal together." So the Book of Mormon does indeed teach eternal families (see 3 Nephi 25). In fact, each of the standard works has that verse in some fashion.

Sister Beck explains that "the fathers" mentioned in the book are Adam, Noah, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." These are the fathers we are to turn to. The children is obviously us, and all who are the seed of abraham, because through him "all the nations of the earth would be blessed." In Abraham 1, it explains that Abraham needed to find a new place of residence and that there was greater happiness for him to "move out of the house." The greater happiness was not just moving out of the house and delaying marriage, but looking to start an ETERNAL family. It says in verse 2 that he "sought for the blessings of THE FATHERS, to be A FATHER OF MANY NATIONS. Who were Abraham's father's: Adam, Noah, Seth,etc. In other words, eternal families has been a thing SINCE THE BEGINNING.

As we can see, Abraham understood his purpose in forming an eternal family. And of course he married Sarai. Eventually after many years this couple was blessed with a child named Isaac. Isaac eventually needed to look for a wife too and so they sent a servant to fetch Rebekah. Rebekah wasn't just any woman, she was a woman who understood the doctrine of eternal families.

"The story of Isaac and Rebekah is pivotal. Everything depended upon a man and a woman who understood their place in the plan and their responsibilities to form an eternaly family, to bear children, and to teach them."

She left everything she had and left immediately to be wed to Isaac. Later in Gen 2 we read of her understanding of families in verse 46 where she is troubled because of her 2 sons, 1 of them sold his birthright and married OUTSIDE of the covenant (see Gen 26:34). Her hopes of an eternal family was now dependent on Jacob marrying INSIDE of the covenant. She says: I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth; if Jacob take a wife of the daugthers of Heth, such as these which are of the daughters of the land, what good shall my life do to me

? Luckily Jacob married a "beautiful and well-favoured" woman (Gen 29:17). Not to mention he had Leah as a wife before Rachel because Laban tricked him. Jacob and Leah also had many kids together and also Bilhah and Zilpah-> before Rachel which is how we have some of the 12 tribes of israel of course. Rachel eventually bore Joseph! Yay Joseph! I am amazed at how incredibly patient she had to be before she could have her own. She also was envious which goes along well with this month's charity topic: envieth not.

So having posterity was obviously really important. It also shows that plural marriage doesn't have to be all that hard to explain to people when they make fun of Mormons for practiving polygamy in the past. But most of all, I love these stories because it shows how in order for them to obtain the blessings of abraham which are to have eternal increase, they needed to marry inside the covenant.

"In a lot of ways [The Rising Generation] is similar to Abraham. They are living in a land that is full of idolatry and wickedness, and they need to mentally take themselves out of that land into the land where the Lord can bless them to receive the covenants." They also need to understand what the whole purpose of life is: to raise an eternal family and to make and keep sacred covenants to qualify for eternal life. And thank Jesus Christ who makes all of this possible! I know that this doctrine of the family is true! I hope we all remember to emphasize the importance of this in all that we are doing. "The family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children." (Read the Family Proclamation to the World)

https://www.lds.org/ensign/2011/03/teaching-the-doctrine-of-the-family?lang=eng : Teaching the Doctrine of the Family by Julie B. Beck

https://www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation?lang=eng : The Family: A Proclamation to the World