Guys,
I got a letter from everyone of you! Thanks so much, seriously. All of you who have ever served a mission know how wonderful it is to hear from your family. I don't have words to describe my love for you all. Just know that you are the most famous family in this mission b/c I talk about you all so much :). Things here are so wonderful. The weather is money right now....well it was, it just started snowing again unfortunately but that's better than last year when it was too cold to snow. I have had such a crazy week. Our district is only 4 and we cover a pretty big area so we're always running around. I guess the highlight of my week other than the sacrament, was on Saturday. I was on an exchange with my zone leader that I have know for a very long time and we had a good amount of lessons set up. It started off with our lesson with our Jehovah's Witness friend Pavel. He brought a friend this time who I had never met before so I was interested to see how everything would pan out. Unfortunately our lesson did not start with a prayer b/c they wouldn't let us pray (as usual) b/c they believe that we don't pray to the same God. So we started and weren't able to continue with our lesson plan at all. With out that crucial prayer in the beginning, it is SOOOOO difficult to have the spirit in the lesson. I again received a stronger testimony that only those who truly humble themselves will enter into the kingdom of God. It was really interesting in a few lessons this week, we had a pretty good amount of really "hard" lessons. They were with people who have studied the bible for years and know a lot more than I do so they would ask questions that were kinda controversial and really hard to answer. But with all of these learned men none of them really wanted to find the truth, or so I felt. It reminded me of a student of Socrates, or someone to that extent....I forgot who, who had a student who was "ever learning" and wanted to know what Socrates does to get so smart, so Socrates took him to a lake of some sort and took the student and pushed and held his head underwater till the point where the student almost drowned and then finally brought his head out of the water. (I only heard this story from someone else so don't quote me....but it illustrates a great point) When the student caught his breath he said " What the heck was that for?!!" and the response was in the form of a question, "when your head was under water, how bad did you want to breathe? what were you willing to do for just one breath of air?" the answer was " I would do anything, the only thing I thought about underwater was how much I wanted to breathe". The response of Socrates ( or whoever it was) was," if you truly want to understand and know the truth, you would do anything and everything to get it". I love this principle b/c it helps me find those who are truly looking for the Gospel. With some of these lessons I had this past week, these men were "ever learning and never coming to know the truth" b/c they truly weren't searching for it, or so it seemed by the spirit of our lessons. So in contrast to hard lessons, we had some way awesome "easy" ones this week. We had one in particular that was full Africans. We went to their hostel, or dorms, and had a lesson. In the lesson we asked them to be baptized, and the concern of being previously baptized came up, so with the help of the spirit, we were able to use the authority given to and and teach loving but boldly the doctrine of the truth, resulting of 3 of them agreeing to be baptized on the 30 of March!! Unfortunately, I don't think that I will be in this area at that time but as long as they are baptized and confirmed, that is all that matters to start their journey. Doctrine, is truth which is the word of God, and when we hear the word of God, our faith grows. So I have learned to that there is no better way to teach than to teach boldly the word of God with the Spirit and love. I know that this great work is true, and I know that God knows I know it is true. We are truly never alone b/c God always has his hands in our lives.
Have a great week!!
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- Старейшина Руни
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