Wednesday, November 8, 2017

John 7:17

(Aldste Cummings)
Hey all!

This week was pretty interesting. We did a lot of work meeting folks and finding some more on the streets of Skövde. A few highlights that I can think of include:

1. I was on splits with Elder Helm from Borås. He accidentally called someone in our contacts who told us she wasn't interested a few weeks ago. She didn't pick up the phone but she did send a text saying that if we ever contacted her again she would call the police. That was kinda funny.

2. Elder Martineau and I made a deal that if he ate a teaspoon of wasabi then I would eat the rest of our jar of low-quality bread and butter pickles by the end of the day (there was about a pound of pickles left). So he ate the wasabi and had a terrible experience with it. So then I had to eat the rest of the pickles which was a different kind of pain. The wasabi was a quick intense pain. The pickles were a long, mentally and emotionally draining process. I was literally dreading putting more pickles in my mouth by the end of it. A lose-lose really.

3. It was Elder Martineau's birthday on Saturday! He turned 20. So we made banana bread and lit some candles and then got sushi later in the day.

The scripture I chose this week is something that we've been emphasizing lately with our investigators and something that I have seen in my own life. The Savior teaches us a very logical concept: We learn truth by first acting in faith and experiencing how it effects us in our lives. Or to put it more crudely: You can't knock it 'till you've tried it.

I've had countless conversations with people who try to convince me that the Book of Mormon isn't true. I listen to what they have to say and then ask them if they've read it. And the answer always is that they haven't. The truly sad part, however, is when they refuse to read it. How can you possibly know if something is true or false if you haven't taken the time to learn about it or apply it in your life?

The gospel may seem a little backwards to people who expect to know if something is true before they act on it. But like Alma teaches in Alma 32, that requires no faith. The Lord requires us to have faith in Him and take the first few steps, then we can know by our own experience that the doctrine is true.

Love,

Äldste Cummings




No comments:

Post a Comment