First
of all, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for your emails, DearElders, and
letters! I get so much, the elders in my district are successfully
rolling their eyes every time they hand me a letter. Every. Single. Day.
So congratulations on that! :)
Second of all, this week has been flat out awesome. I cannot even describe it. But I will try!!
One
of our teachers, Brother Featherstone (remember that our teachers are
recently returned missionaries) had a game for us. Uh oh. He herds us
out into the hallway and we see that he has made a giant V on the floor
with tape. He tells us that we each have to walk with one foot on either
side of the V until we couldn't go any further. Oookkkkk.... But don't
worry! He didn't make the sisters try too hard, especially since we were all
wearing straight skirts. But the elders he made go the whole way. And in
his defense, he did make sure to tell them to stop going any further if
we were going to rip our clothes. Anyhoo, he goes down the line of
elders and they each try it. One elder, two elder, but then the THIRD
elder. He starts walking. And walking. Then he staggers a little and we
hear a POP. In a flash, he jumps up, pins his legs together, and leans
on the wall. He had ripped his pants from crotch to knee! Everyone,
including himself, was laughing harder than we thought we could. We had
to wheel out one of the chairs so he could sit in it and cover his lap
with his suit coat, because he couldn't walk. He was a great sport about
it. His companion and another elder ran to get him a change of pants,
and when they got back, they wheeled him to an empty classroom to
change. So funny.
The second thing I wanted to
share with you was an awesome teaching experience. We teach in the TRC,
which basically means we teach volunteers, who may or may not be
members. For me and Sister Stromness, it is a little awkward because we
always get stuck with the recent RMs who end up teaching us. Cool. Back
in the classroom we have no idea what to do. Bro. Featherstone comes in
and mentions how he knows one of the RMs we taught. He offered us to
teach him, as himself, to get comfortable with teaching members. Ok,
cool. S. Stromness and I start separately studying to see what we could
teach him. I open to a page in Preach My Gospel and see a pic of Christ
and a thought pops into my head that why not do 'strengthening a
personal relationship with Jesus Christ'? Ok, cool. So we discuss how to
do that and come up with prayer and scripture study. Bro. Featherstone
comes back in and sits down. We chat with him for a bit and then offer a
prayer. After 'Amen' he turns to us and says, "Ok, sorry, I know you
have something prepared, but I was wondering if you could help me with
something. You know I have been home for five months and I have found
that my scripture study and prayer have been lacking and not the same as
before on my mission. How can I fix this?" *sly look at Sister Stromness*
"Well, Bro. Ben, interesting you should ask!" Hahaha so we proceed to
teach him the lesson we had already prepared. Because it applied. Then
another thought popped into my head. "Ben, do you ever study and pray as
if you were still teaching investigators, but from the point of view
that YOU are the investigator?" His eyes get really wide and red and he
becomes really focused as I explain how to do that. At the end of the
lesson, after the role-playing is over, he tells us that he actually had
never thought of that before! We actually helped him! We had even
surprised him with how well we taught with the spirit! And this is all
shocking to me, because he is going to be a general authority some day
soon and he knows almost everything. Seriously. So it was interesting
that those thoughts that popped into my head were specifically the
answers to the prayer he had said the night before to Heavenly Father. I
love this. I love teaching people and listening to the spirit to help
them solve their problems. Ben (Bro. Featherstone) was not the only
person we helped this week while listening to the spirit.
Last
but not least, I want to give you a summary of one devotional we had
this week by Elder Larry R Lawrence of the Seventy through my eyes.
Satan has NO power over you. He can try, oh he can try. But he is not
able to read your thoughts. He has NO power to read your thoughts. He is
not able to do that. He only knows the things he does know from your
words, facial expressions, and actions. And he takes notes. Then he has
four tactics he uses against us: direct temptation, lies and deception,
contention, and discouragement. Real original, right? But why should we
fear? We can literally say, "Get thee hence, Satan" and he will flee. He
has absolutely NO power over us. How did Christ live His life so
perfectly? Besides the fact that He is the Son of God? He had a mortal
life, the same as others, so he had to have been tempted more than what
it says in the scriptures, right? But what I realized is this: Christ
understood that Satan has no power. He understood the tactics Satan
uses. He understood how to simply overcome him. If we remember these
things, we can live as Christ did. Yes, we will still be tempted, but we
can have more confidence living in this world and teaching our children
to be safer from evil if we remember these things.
I love you all, and I pray for you every night!
Love,
Sister Smyly Crawford
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