The Grind won't stop in Baton Rouge

 (Elder Cummings)

That's right. I've been temporarily reassigned to serve as a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the Louisiana Baton Rouge Mission! This is because of Covid restrictions that I won't start my mission in Taiwan. However, Taiwan's borders are open so it is only a matter of getting a Visa. What a tender mercy that is. Many missionaries have been reassigned not only because of Visa's but mainly because the countries they're going to have closed their borders in response to Covid. What a tender mercy Taiwan has dealt with Covid so well that they have had less than 500 cases the whole pandemic, despite being "across the pond" from China. I can't wait for my opportunity to serve and teach people in Taiwan. However, I am so excited to go to Louisiana in a couple weeks; it'll be a great opportunity for me to get better at teaching people interested in the Gospel of Jesus Christ in my native language, and then "transfer" my skills to Mandarin and not doing both at the same time.

This week has been fairly regular, many other missionaries in my district have gotten reassignments, from Washington, to Florida, to Texas, to DC, North Carolina, to Cali, etc. However, we're growing really close as a district and have a lot of fun together, even though it is over zoom and almost all the time we see each other is during a class. I've spent most of the week with my good friends Elder Vines and Elder Fagergren, just swapping whose house we spend the day on zoom and studying scriptures and our mission languages. Vines is learning French, Fagergren's learning Japanese, and I'm learning Mandarin, so it's a lot of fun.

The spiritual thought comes from something I learned for myself while preparing for a lesson Elder Liang and I had to teach. The person we were teaching had never believed in a God, and wasn't comfortable saying he believed in one. Because of that, we would eventually need to teach him about our Savior Jesus Christ and if there is a God, why do we need a Savior? I figured a question he had would be if God is all powerful, then why can't He just forgive us when we repent of our sins? Why does there need to be someone else in the middle? I really thought about it and asked my good friend Elder Fagergren, and also studied some scriptures. I didn't really have an answer for that question at first, and I still don't have a perfect answer but this is what I have thought and been taught on why we need a Savior...

God is perfect. God is just. Because God is both of these things, when we sin there must be a punishment. If there was no punishment for breaking the law there would be no justice. If God did not punish those who broke divine laws, He would not be just, He would not be perfect and "God would cease to be God" Alma 42:17-18...

17 Now, how could a man repent except he should sin? How could he sin if there was no law? How could there be a law save there was a punishment?

18 Now, there was a punishment affixed, and a just law given, which brought remorse of conscience unto man.

Because we sin, there is a punishment. If we repented and therefore received no punishment, that is not just either. There must be some remedy made for when we sin. That is why we need a Savior. Jesus Christ has taken that punishment. He has taken ALL the punishment for ALL our sins. "And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind...he will take upon him death...the Son of God suffereth according to the flesh that he might take upon him the sins of his people, that he might blot out their transgressions according to the power of his deliverance"(Alma 7:11-13). Now I'm not saying we do not receive punishment when we sin, I'm saying when we REPENT we no longer suffer that punishment because our Savior already has. He willingly offered His life and willingly suffered everything, so we don't have to. Now I don't understand the divine mechanism that allows that to happen, but I do know it is through the Savior and His Atonement that we are made clean and that we have hope. I know it is through Christ and only through Christ, that we can be forgiven, obtain mercy, and no longer suffer the punishments and pains from our sins when we turn to Him and sincerely repent. In the name of our Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.

...

Some photos...

This is my awesome looking Mandarin Bible

We were feeling a change of scenery, something a little more...exotic...welcome to Sabah Borneo, Malaysia everyone...

The State War

 (Elder Slade)

To the best friends and family a person can hope for!

Another week gone! One highlight this week was that we found two people. We were playing 3 flags with a person we were teaching and two other kids joined. Then we said if one of us missionaries won, we would share a message after. Suffice it to say, we won, and we started teaching them and they said we could keep doing that! I thought it was pretty clever.

I'm getting along pretty great with my companions! They are pretty funny and we have had quite a blast. I don't remember too much of what we say, but we get some pretty weird conversations. During our free time, we have started a state war, where we give all the states super powers or weaknesses according to what's interesting to them. Then two random states battle, and we debate who wins. It gets pretty interesting. I'll let you know which state comes out on top. For example we gave Idaho high speed potato launchers, and potato strength. I great combination in my opinion.

I've recently been recently reflecting on being prepared. It's not just a gospel principle, but also a practical principle that makes life easier. As we put in the effort to prepare for the future, the future will be easier. Just as Jesus Christ prepared for his ministry for 30 years, we too need to prepare for times when we may need to teach others, or when hard times may come. I love all of you! Keep on being the best!

Pictures:

1 and 3: Beautiful Idaho Sunsets

2. A quick selfie. Elder Thompson didn't get the memo

August 11, 2020

 (Elder Petersen)

Hey Y'all hope everyone is doing well!

So there have been a few interesting things that have happened in the last few weeks the first of which happened was Wednesday the 29th of July. In which I moved from Providence Utah to Franklin Idaho. My new companions name is Elder Haacke he is from Amarillo TX he is pretty great. We live in a pretty nice apartment with awesome landlords whose names are the Tondini family. Other then transfers the past few weeks have been pretty boring but this upcoming week is going to be pretty hectic because we are having zone conference on Wednesday as well as service tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday. So our week is super packed until Saturday and Sunday hit but hopefully throughout the week we will be able to set up as many appointments as we can to fill up those days so that we will be able to have a gloriously filled week in which we won't have to worry about being bored. But it is getting a bit late for me so I am going to end this here and I will talk to y'all later!

Another week, another grind

(Elder Cummings)

你们好！

Grind time has not stopped.

Because both my classes are in the afternoon and evening and so is my companion study, I wake up at 6:30, exercise, shower, eat, read scriptures until about 8:30-9ish, and then I'm studying up on that Chinese until 1. Every. Day. It's awesome. I've started to think in chinese sometimes without meaning too and I've said 谢谢(xie xie, thank you) multiple times instead of saying it in English, completely on accident. What's really weird is sometimes just these random chinese "words" come into my head and I look them up and they're not actually words, I'm just mashing up some characters in my brain or something. Don't know if that's a good or bad thing.

Elder Liang is still a beast and it is SUCH a blessing to have a companion who already knows so much Chinese. After taking Mandarin in high school, I have some basics so we've been able to study some stuff ahead of the class and it pushes us both I think.

One day this week during class we were doing some role play with some basic chinese phrases. I was paired up with Elder Welker. The guy is hilarious. Anyway, in our very broken Chinese he invited me to read the Book of Mormon. I said I was willing too. After a good number of seconds of him trying to figure out what to say, he just invited me to get baptized. For some reason we both thought it was absolutely hilarious I really can't tell you why. Now that I'm typing this out I realize it won't sound that funny to most of you... but I was laughing so hard.

Anyway my spiritual thought is actually not mine, but my good friend Elder Chen's. Elder Chen is my good friend Elder Fagergren's companion. They're both in the advanced language program, Fagergren for Japanese and Chen for Mandarin. Anyway, I was just listening in on them talk over zoom and Elder Chen was talking about our ability to choose for ourselves and things like that. He talked about how many of his friends have unfortunately done "bad stuff" because many of them believe that as long as they believe in God and Christ then they are saved. Then Elder Chen said something that really stuck me and I wrote it down. He said "My dumb actions will never overpower my personal accountability". Elder Chen probably doesn't even know I was there listening, but I loved it and it made an impression on me. I do not wish to criticize anybody's beliefs or faith but just testify of what I believe...

From one of my favorite talks, by Brad R Wilcox, he relates the Atonement of Jesus Christ to practicing piano. I will do my best to explain this. Think of God as the teacher, Christ as the parent, and you as the player. The parents pay the teacher: Christ has paid for our sins by suffering them and giving His life for them. Do we ever pay our parents back? no we can't, we don't pay our parents who then pay for the lesson. Our parents don't demand Payment, they demand Practice. Christ does not demand Perfection, He demands Practice. When we mess up learning a song... LEARNING a song, does the teacher stop teaching? does the parent stop paying? No they don't, if that was the case we would NEVER learn the song. When we make a mistake in our lives and choose the wrong, all that is asked of us to keep practicing. If not we would never learn how to be Christ-like.

However, In NO way does our practicing repay our parents. In NO way does our repenting and living a Christ-like life fulfill our debt to Christ for atoning for each and every one of us. But for paying for our lessons, our parents can demand us to practice, and by seeing our growth and improvement they are happy, they have joy, they are proud. They have gotten what they wanted: they have not gotten each lesson paid back in cash and in full, they got a piano player. They paid each and every lesson, hoping that we would choose to practice and become a piano player. By paying for our sins, Christ demands practice and by seeing OUR growth and OUR improvement He is joyful and happy for us and proud of us. He hasn't gotten the pain he suffered for us taken away, like it never happened. He got a disciple. He suffered, each and every sin, every anguish, pain, suffering, affliction, hoping that we would choose to practice and become a disciple, His disciple.

I hope that make sense, and I hope you can apply that perspective to your life and see how it can change your life like it has mine. Please reach out to me and email me if you have any questions, or just want to talk, I'm always down to talk. Stay safe and healthy everyone, 再见！

Pictures:

1) my amazing view from where I sit every day. So beautiful

2) my cool looking tag

3) I like to call him my other companion: Elder Liu has taught me much about Chinese vocab and grammar through pre-recorded video. Too bad he will never have a chance learn from me the way I am learning from him

4) a day in the life...(ft. Elder Fagergren) VOLUME UP

Today is the yesterday of tomorrow

(Elder Slade)

To the best friends and family a person can hope for,

I'm in my new area! I am in Ammon North, which is just east of Idaho Falls. It's a walking area, and let me tell you, walking all day in 95 degree heat, is rough. I've been sweating a lot! I don't understand, I thought Idaho was supposed to be cold. But, it's been fun, a good change of pace from my last area, where we lived 20 minutes away from our area. My two new companions are Elder Thompson, from South Carolina who was reassigned from Ghana Africa, and Elder Snow, from California who was reassigned from Micronesia/Guam. So far we've been getting along great! We get talking about a lot of weird stuff. I'll just say, we've had some very interesting discussions...

One of the people we're teaching is a single father named Moses, and he is awesome! He accepts everything we teach him, and he is preparing for baptism on August 22nd. What a stud! We're teaching quite a few more people, but not too many that are progressing. We're going to really work on finding and setting up expectations this week.

I was pretty sad to leave some of the people in Sugar City. There are such amazing people there, and I love them, they really helped me grow and supported me there. Leaving them made me think of all of you. Thank you so much for supporting me on coming out on my mission. Thanks for being such great friends! I love you guys. If you can endure 6 months of lame potato puns, then you are good people in my opinion. You guys are spudtacular! I Idaho-pe you all are doing well. The title comes from a really confusing conversation I had with Elder Baron before I left

Pictures:

1. My new companions, Elder Thompson on the left, Elder Snow in the middle

2. The Boughs, the converts we taught

3. The Hirschis, some of the sweetest people ever (both  because of their name and their personality)

4. Sister Hansen and us. She is one of the nicest people I've ever met.

July 28th, 2020

(Elder Petersen)

Hey y'all how ya been? So this week has been interesting the main focus on that being that yesterday Sunday we got transfer news that will take place Wednesday. I will tell you for all of you who have served missions and or are currently serving missions yall would understand how stressful transfer news night can be. But for those who have not yet had the opportunity to serve a mission for whatever reason they are stressful. This is because when you add approaching those days you are in almost constant thought on what is going to happen. I bring this up because as of this Wednesday I will officially be in my as I will be referring to it my third area. Because even though I will have now moved around the mission four times now I have served in only three different areas. My new area is going to be Franklin Idaho which means that I am going back to serve in the state of Idaho. I am super excited for this so I will talk to y'all more about it next week when I know more about what the area looks like.

The MTC Grind

(Elder Cummings)

你们好！

(that means "hello ya'll")

First half-week of online Missionary Training Center(MTC) has been done, and it has been tons of fun! We wake up and exercise and get our personal and companion study done, have some workshops and classes, and then with free time I study some more Mandarin so it's awesome. My virtual companion, Elder Liang, is a Mandarin wizard! The man has Taiwanese parents so he speaks and understands so much of it already. On top of that he's from Texas as well. On top of that he has a black belt in Taekwondo and is training in Judo. On top of that, he is a beast at the cello, he's been playing it for many many moons. On top of THAT, I did not know any of that until I squeezed it out of him; he is super humble in that way.

It's been amazing already and I think I'm only on day 4 of 9 weeks of training. I've just been smothering myself in Mandarin hoping to immerse myself as much as possible while I am home. It's an awesome, beautiful language, you'll see more why when I do my little spiritual message. My good friend Elder Ryan Fagergren has come over some and we've done some classes together and studied together. He's learning Japanese and going to the Japan Sapporo mission like a beast. He also says while Mandarin Chinese sounds like singing, Japanese is rap so if you're in to that kind of stuff take up some Jap(I don't personally care for rap so yet another reason why Mandarin is awesome).

We had a chance to do some service today and helped somebody move a bunch of their stuff out of a storage place into a condo. It was so much fun. Elder Fagergren and I pull up and there is like 3 other sets of missionaries helping too. As in-training missionaries still, we both felt we needed to earn these experienced Sister's and Elder's respect, so when everything was full and the time came to move everything to the condo and there was a grill still there with no room to pack it...Elder Fagergren and I offered to walk it to the house while everyone drove there. Definitely was not needed, but it was worth it: we earned their respect.

Anyway I have a cool thought/discovery and a testimony to go along with it. So Chinese doesn't really have words. Chinese characters carry meaning and putting them in combinations with other characters allows you to translate it into an English word. A good example of this is the word prophet in Mandarin: 先知(xīan zhī). Now you don't need to know how to say it to understand this.. 先( xīan )means "first, foremost, or beginning," something along those lines. 知 comes from the phrase 知道(zhī dào) which means "to know". put together you get 先知: prophet. Which taken character by character roughly means "first to know". This was awesome to me, because it's an amazing example of the purpose of prophets in our lives. Prophets are there to warn us and protect us from dangers of our day. As a prophet, Noah, warned the people of the earth to repent of their wickedness and the flood that would come. In the Book of Mormon, Lehi warned the people of Jerusalem of it's impending destruction and warned them to repent. Prophet's are our watchmen; they are called of God to guide and direct His children on the earth. They have been called in ancient times, and they have been called in modern times. President Russel M Nelson is the prophet of our day. I know he has been called of God because I have felt the Holy Ghost's confirming witness in my heart that he is a prophet of God. Listen to the prophets, past and present, and you will not be led astray. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Cummings长老