Hey. I'm glad you got my letter. (Feb 6, so no blog post)
it was a pretty good week. We had zone conference on Tuesday. There were some great trainings about leaving commitment invitations and setting better expectations with those we teach. Towards the last session we were talking about the doctrine of christ and how "all things must be gathered in one." Sometimes in the gospel we treat things as checklists or separate doctrinal principles from one another. But with the doctrine of Christ, as Elder Bednar puts it, "all things must be gathered in one or there is no spiritual power." President Bateman then drew on the chalkboard a cycle with faith->repentance->baptism->holy ghost-> endure to the end-> He showed that if we center Christ around living the doctrine of Christ in our life then the progression of our lives are like a cycle whose circumference keeps getting larger and larger because each time our faith expands which leads to greater repentance, keeping of covenants, feeling the spirit, enduring to the end. Contrastly, if we take Christ out of the center (so kind of imagine christ written in the middle of that cycle) then the complete opposite effect happens.The faith and repentance, keeping of covenants, etc. keeps getting infintesimally smaller kind of like a black whole or whirlpool that sucks us in. This diagram (if you can imagine it based on my great imagery ) represents dwindling in unbelief. So if we look beyond the mark this will happen and life just is terrible. That's why I know it is really important that we rely on Christ.
Well I felt a little upset at myself listening to that because for some reason I felt like I was dwindling in unbelief (It might have been because I forgot to take my medication that day and so I had a hard time feeling the spirit). Well, I went into the restroom after zone conference to be alone, and I prayed that Heavenly father would send help for me and that I could talk to President Bateman about how I was feeling. Well almost immediately as I was walking down the hall, President Bateman approached me almost as if the spirit already told him to go look for me. I told him how I felt. He helped me understand that I wasn't dwindling in unblief and that I was doing a really good job. He also brought up how he had called you (DAD) and how you told him how much you loved me as your son. I don't have time to go into more detail but it was a sweet experience. I am so blessed to have President Bateman as my mission president.
Also, I can't recall a time in my life where I have had a prayer answered that immediately! It gave me the assurance I needed to keep enduring.
This week has been good. We got all 0s with our key indicators. We were really surpirsed that Nani and Cora both were sick and couldn't make it to church.
We had a great opportunity to teach the young men 3rd hour at church yesterday. We trained them a little bit from the preach my gospel dvds of how to fellowship and things they can be doing now to prepare for a mission. I was praying that at least one of the young men would be motivated to act. It felt really good to share my testimony to the young men and to reflect on my growing up years in priesthood quorums. Kaleb Bunker approached us afterwards and asked us what our advice would be of how to share the gospel with a friend of his at school whose grandparents recently died. We stopped by at his house later in the evening and gave him the complete set. member missionary work at its finest! I was really proud of him for stepping up. Also, there is one other potential nonmember who was present in our discussion sunday. His name is Carson, and accepted an invitation from one of the young women to come to church to hear her piano solo which was amazing. So we are working with the youth the most right now, which is the best I think because they will affect generations. WE have another youth investigator who is 15 named Evan. He has a great relationship with our WML who is next door so we have high hopes for him! He has a great heart, but just got involved with the wrong crowd. We were unable to have a lesson this week but the good news is he expressed more interest to have another meeting with us. We have found some service ideas for him to do and he has even been taking the initiative of looking for service opportuities like we encouraged him to do. He called our WML up the other day and asked if he could borrow a chain saw to cut up a broken tree branch on the neighbors lawn. Such a good kid. I hope we can make an even greater impact in his life.
Love you.
Elder Soutas
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