The Priesthood

Well this week was definitely interesting. This was the case because for the most part I found myself with a fever for three days straight. Not an insanely bad one, don't worry I am still alive. But my pillow and I did have a lot of time to get to know each other. But even with this I can still say that I learned so much and that this week was an absolutely amazing week.

Now I don't have too much time to share all the reasons why but I would like to share one story. But first a little doctrine.

Many ask what makes our church different from plenty other Christian churches. Many churches have the same teachings as you what makes yours more true. The factor is this, it is a question of authority in the doctrines that are shared. When a boy of fourteen asked the question "Which church do I join." Heavenly Father responded immediately in appearing to the boy with his son Jesus Christ and telling him that none of the churches on the Earth at that time held his authority. They taught some true doctrines but many others were lost or changed through a period called apostasy that started not too long after the 12 Apostles were killed and had continued all the way up to the 1820s. This lack of authority was in no fault their own, but because of this apostasy of the past they were rendered incapable of restoring all of the true doctrines that were originally taught and therefore unable to have God's authority. It was necessary that God reinstate the true doctrines and thus following, his authority. Which he did through calling, Joseph Smith, this young boy, to be his Prophet and to bring about the fullness of his gospel. This Restoration of the teachings included many things, such as Baptisms by immersions, which many churches at the time had begun to practice again. However the difference here was not only the act reinstated but the authority that made it a covenant was restored through the sending of John the Baptist, the same who baptized Jesus, to give the keys of the Aaronic Priesthood, or the power and authority of God needed to baptize to Joseph Smith, who then gave it to others. Which was then followed by a visit by Peter, James and John, of the twelve Apostles, conferring the Melchizedek Priesthood, which is what I would like to speak on today.

The Melchizedek Priesthood is the Power and Authority given by God to worthy men to give sacred ordinances, such as marriage for eternity, as well as the conferring of blessings to the sick and afflicted, whether in body or in spirit. I can testify with all my heart that this power is truly on this Earth. For this week I saw it in action. As I was lying sick for many hours my companion asked if I would like a blessing of this priesthood. I said yes and the Elders were able to come and give me a blessing. During which blessing I was promised that within a days time I would find all the strength I needed to continue to do the work I needed to. Immediately my fever broke and true to the words which had been blessed on my head I received all the strength I needed within a days time and was able to help a family in need pack away their belongings as they moved. I am so grateful for the wonderful moment I had to see and feel the reality of this authority that God once again gave to man. I am so grateful to be able to share these truths to those around me who are in need. Who's souls do hunger for God. I love this work that I am doing and am so grateful to be here testifying of it.

I love you all and I pray for each and every one of you. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Field Trip

Once again it has been another amazing week here at the MTC.  Elder LaRose and I got roommates on Wednesday and that has been a change.  For the first bit it was just us in the room and that was great.  We double stacked the mattresses and kept it all nice and clean.  With four people in a room it is a little harder to do that.  The new missionaries are Korean speaking, so we have completely different schedules.  We only see them when we get up in the morning and when we go down at night.

Another exciting thing that happened Saturday night was that we got to go off campus to the hospital!  Elder LaRose has some kind of infection in his finger so the MTC drove us to the hospital to get a diagnosis.  That was actually a lot of fun.  Missionaries at the MTC are just about never allowed to leave.  After the visit with the doctor we went over to Walgreen to fill a prescription...and maybe to buy some candy too.  I now have an enormous bag of Reeses and an occasional stomach ache.  His finger is doing great.

The topic of our sacrament meeting this Sunday was "recognizing the spirit."  As such, I spent a lot of time pondering this topic.  After a while two things occurred to me.  Number One: as with all things in the gospel, we grow "line upon line, precept upon precept" (D&C 98:12) in learning to recognize the Holy Ghost.  Just as with faith, humility, charity, and obedience, there are no profound moments of revelation that whip us around 180 and cause lasting change.  We grow step by step.  Recognizing the Spirit is the same way.  It is a process that can take a lifetime or more to master.  Number Two: recognition comes from consistently repeated actions and observations.  Just like a stop sign the Holy Ghost is a real thing.  I think it is safe to say that we don't remember the first time we saw a stop sign or when we understood what it meant, but over time we learned to recognize the stop signs and the behavior that is appropriate in response to one.  Recognizing the Holy Ghost is the same way.  We must always be watching for it.  Just like with stop signs, even if you know what they are you can still miss them if you don't pay attention.  Learning to recognize the Spirit comes from trying to recognize it.  Preach My Gospel has a (by no means all inclusive) list of 28 different ways the Spirit can be felt on pages 95 and 96.  In the past I have spent days consciously watching for these 28 ways and I have never once had a day that all 28 were not felt at some point.

As promised I am sending a picture this week.  This is the district of Hmong missionaries in front of the Provo Temple.  My companion is the one behind me in the pink tie.  On the top row (left to right) we've got Elder Keisker, Elder Thomas, Elder LaRose, Elder Ferguson, and Elder Davis.  On the bottom is Elder Bauer, Elder Harper, me, Elder Vang, and Elder Vang.  Those two are both native speakers and are leaving us for the mission field this week.  We are going to miss them.  Having someone who knows the language in class helps a lot.  We are the largest group of Hmong to come through the MTC by six.

Email time is up this week.  I love you all.  Thank you for the emails and letters you've been sending me!

-Elder Jared Cummings

A good one

Dear friends and family:

This week has been a pretty good one. Elder Storm and I are still going strong. I'm trying not to focus on how soon I'm going home, but it gets harder and harder because almost every missionary I talk to mentions it. :) I'm trying to get as emotionally attached as possible to our new goal: five baptisms this transfer. We know that this goal is inspired of God, and nothing is going to stop us from accomplishing it!

Abigaile came to church again last week. That makes five times that she has come to church. This time, she brought her brother with her as well. Unfortunately, she had a terrible time at church, because she felt sick. She ended up going to the bathroom, throwing up there, and then going home. We stopped by later to talk with her, but she looked terrible. We're going to try to see her again tonight and get her set with a date for this Saturday.

Maxime and his sons did not come to church this morning, because of an unfortunate problem that he had with his car. But we stopped by in the evening to teach him and his family, and he's still excited to be baptized and to join the church. He told us, 'you can just consider that this is my church from now on. I'm not going to be going to any other churches.' Unfortunately, we also found out that he and his wife are not actually married, although they have been living together for the last nine years. So now we are trying to get them married so that he and their sons can be baptized. This is made more complicated by the fact that his wife doesn't really like us that much, but she is the one who wanted to get married all of those nine years so that she could be baptized into her own church. Now Maxime is changing his mind and he wants to be married, just so that he can be baptized. And to make matters worse, he is going out of town today again for work. He doesn't know when he'll be back, but it won't be for several more days.

Those are are two most solid investigators for right now. We have a few other, less-solid investigators we are working with, but they didn't come to church and so the ones that we haven't dropped are on probation until we can find out what happened and why they didn't come.

Thanks,

Elder Slade

Who's the Italian

This past week my district has been upping the ante with how often we try to speak in Italian. We've begun to recognize that the fastest way to learn the language is simply to speak it, so we've developed a few strategies to help us with that. One of them includes a game that was recommended to us by a member of our branch presidency. It's called "Who's the Italian?".

Basically, we as a district draw from a hat to decide who will be the Italian, but no one is supposed to know what you draw. The person who draws and becomes the Italian can't use English for the whole day, and everyone is trying to pretend to be the Italian so that they can win. Because at the end we all vote on who we think the Italian was and the winner gets a prize. So this ensures that we all are trying our bests to speak the language and it's pretty effective I might add!

On Sundays everyone in the zone has to write a talk about that week's sacrament meeting topic and on the day of two of us are randomly chosen to speak. I spoke last week on repentance and this week our topic was The Atonement. I was puzzled for a while about what I would say considering the two topics are so closely related, and seeing as I gave my repentance talk the Sunday before, I couldn't just rely on that one. As I studied the Atonement in preparation for this talk, I began to realize that the Atonement is so much more than a solution to spiritual death, so much more than an enabler for repentance (though, if this were all it were we would still have endless reason to rejoice). I found in Preach My Gospel that the Atonement of Jesus Christ has the power to make right "all that is unfair about this life". That's a pretty profound thought. Everything unfair that we experience in this life can be made right by the power of the Atonement, whether in this life or the next. For some blessings come soon, some take years, and others don't come until the resurrection, but if we have faith and endure to the end, then those blessings will most certainly come.

This simple fact has strengthened my testimony of the Atonement a lot. With a power such as this so infinitely available to us throughout our lives, can we really ever say that "life isn't fair"? I believe the only truly unfair life this world has ever seen is the life of Jesus Christ, who suffered everything and was guilty of nothing. We cannot say the same; in comparison we are each guilty of a great many of things, and yet our lives will never be as hard as his was. For he suffered everything that we will ever suffer, everything that anyone ever has suffered, and everything that ever will be suffered. Because his Atonement is sufficient to cover it all. I bare testimony to this in the sacred name of Jesus Christ, amen.

until next time,

Anziano Wilkinson

A blur

These past two weeks have been a blur. The fact that we have P-days in the middle of the week means it feels like we have two weekends a week, which is pretty sweet if I say so myself! I feel like I've known my district and zone for months and like I've always known my companion (but maybe that's just because we are with each other 24/7). I can't complain though, I love my zone, district, and especially mia collega (my companion)!

               This week held a nice surprise in that I got to sit with Jared at Choir practice. This is significant because I can count on one hand how many times we've encountered each other so far at the MTC. Anyway, we got to catch up and it was really great! (He's doing well Donna, no worries!)

               This week we committed our first simpatizante (investigator) to baptism; the spirit was way strong in that lesson and it so amazing to see. Mia Collega Anziano Blackwell and I have committed our second investigator to read the Book of Mormon and pray. It is amazing that one can learn to love a person so quickly. My companion and I feel quite emotionally involved already with Luca (Lucas) and I'm hoping we can continue to help him draw closer to Christ!

               Some amazing scriptures I have read lately have been from the end of Ether and the end of Moroni. Moroni adds his own words into both books and they pertain a lot to hope, faith and charity. It says a lot about what he was going though, living as the last Nephite basically in exile and on the run for the rest of his life. It says a lot about what he was struggling with, hope in particular, since he had little to have hope in this life. His testimony of hope is very powerful and strengthens me as I face eminent arrival in Italy where I will have to learn super quickly. I have found from Moroni's words that we must have hope for better things to come, not in this life but the next. We must hope for eternal life, life with God, or else we will face despair (the opposite of hope) frequently in this life. I can attest to the truth of that, I know it's true; there is great happiness and surety in hope for salvation and eternal life, as well as the possibility for exaltation of others. Particularly when you’re aligning you life closely with God will. Hope in anything other than these things is bound to spoil. We must have hope in the Savior and his Atonement, His redeeming and exalting power, we must have hope that we can qualify for it.

I hope you guys are doing well! I love to hear from you all!

-Anziano Wilkinson

 The group picture is my district with Fratello Duersch, our teacher, third from the right and my companion on the far left

Week Two

Well, it is pretty hard for me to grasp, but I have already been here for twelve days!  Time has really been flying, I can tell you that much.  My Hmong is coming along great.  I am able to teach SIMPLE lessons with no notes or too much language preparation.  I really find it amazing how quickly I'm learning.  I don't know where I will be at the end of these nine weeks, but I want to say it will much better than I had reason to hope for when I entered the MTC.

This week didn't come with as many funny Hmong moments (I guess that is a good thing), but we did have some other "fun" things happen.  My companion and I were locked out of our dorm room for example and I officially have lost my first sock in the laundry.  Some fun mission experiences right there!

Two of the other Elders in my district (a group of missionaries learning the same language) are native Hmong speakers and we will be seeing them off next week.  It is sad to see such great walking dictionaries leave us, but it is for the best.  They are nervous to go out into the mission field though.  Most Hmong speakers cannot read and write their own language, and that goes for these guys too.  They have picked it up faster than the rest of us--as expected--but they still don't feel very strong with the written language. Here they do sacrament service speaking assignments here is they have all the missionaries in the zone (a group of districts) prepare a talk on the same topic and then in Sacrament Meeting they announce who the speakers will be.  They called both John Vangs to speak this last week, so we spent much of sacrament meeting listening to the Elders Vang teach and testify about baptism.  They both did a great job.  We are really going to miss them.

We got Paj Vmw to commit to be baptized this last week!  That was a neat experience.  We did it just in time too.  Our first "investigator" became another one of our language instructors the very next day.  We start teaching our second investigator today and our third investigator tomorrow.  I will definitely let you know how that goes.  Teaching in Hmong has been my favorite part of the MTC experience so far.  On a side note, we figured out that Paj Vwm translates to crazy flower.  That made all us Elders smile.  Paj Vwm really does not fit that description.

I've been pondering a few scriptures this week that I have found to be insightful.  I may not quote these right, I'm going off of memory, but two are from 1 Corinthians and I think the references are 6:20, "Wherefore you have been bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's", and 7:23 "You have been bought with a price, be ye not the servants of men".  It has had be thinking about all the times I don't act to glorify God, all the times that I serve myself, me being very much a man.  How many times have I served the wrong master?  This has had me wanting to be more committed to getting outside myself and my own desires and really working on self mastery.

The next verses come from Mather 6:25-30.  I'm not going to quote all of these, but there is one verse that reads something along the lines of "Wherefore if God so clothes the grass of the fields which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven, how much more will he provide for you, of ye of little faith?"  This verse has given me peace when I have felt undue stress with the rate at which I have to learn here and just wondering if things will work out.  All it has taken is some thinking about "do I really believe this" and I have been back in a good peaceful mindset.

The last thing I want to share comes from the Old Testament.  I don't think I will get the reference right, so I will just give the background.  The verse I have in mind is from the story of Moses and the burning bush.  In this chapter God declares to Moses that his (Jehovah's) name is "I AM THAT I AM."  It took me a while to come to conclusions about why that was so significant.  There are four other references to that name, "I AM," one in the New Testament and three in the Doctrine and Covenants.  It occurred to me after a half-hour or so that Christ is the only one who can declare His existence by virtue of His existence.  All of us to not exist of our own power, only Christ does.  Only Christ was saved by His own power.  He is that He is and that is unique to Him. 

Well, I have to get going.  Thank you to all of you who wrote back to me!  It was nice to hear from you.  I promise that I (might) send some pictures next week so you can see what the other Hmong Elders look like.

love,

Elder Jared Cummings

Ramming Speed

Dear friends and family:

So, last night I found out that Elder Storm and I are staying together for another transfer! (My last transfer!) It's really odd to think that there's only one transfer left on my mission. I remember celebrating my one-month mark in the MTC and thinking, 'that took forever. I've still got a long, long time to go.'

I'm very excited for my last transfer here with Elder Storm. He is a little bit upset that he is staying in Miami for another transfer, because it means that he will be here for another transfer after that as well. But I don't mind, I love Miami!

This week Maxime and his kids came to church again. He was gone for most of the week, because of his job, driving a truck throughout the United States, and when he got back we only had time to teach him one quick lesson (reviewing the restoration) before we had to return home on Saturday night. He came to church on Sunday, but then was too busy for us to see him that night. And yesterday he left again for several days. He and his sons have a date for this Saturday, but it's not going to happen unless he returns from his trip very early in the week, and so we have time to teach him all of the lessons and get him interviewed. Either way, we are going to make sure that they become Mormons! And sooner, rather than later!

Other than that, almost all of our investigators dropped off this week again, so we are back to the drawing board for that. But the North Miami Beach elders sent us two referrals that we are excited to follow-up on tomorrow.

We have made a goal for this last transfer of baptizing five people. Our first transfer together, we didn't find anybody to be baptized; but our second transfer, we baptized 2.5 people. So this transfer I'll finish strong and we'll find, teach, and baptize another five. Maxime and his sons will be three, so we only really need to find two other prepared souls.

For those of you who don't already know: My parents received another daughter from the foster adopt system. Her name is Neveah. (Heaven spelled backwards, with the two vowels flip-flopped.) That makes in total: three siblings that I have now that I didn't have at the beginning of my mission, who I have never personally met. For one of them, Liv, we are going to the temple to be sealed as a family in the week or two after I get back.

Thanks,

Elder Slade