Mom!
I cannot believe it’s already been a year since our drive to the St. Louis Arch--that was the fastest year of my life!!!
Oh my mom, the zone leader job. . . it’s terrible. So much stuff that I have to deal with that is stupid and pointless!! For instance, the zone wanted an activity this month. We gave everyone two options--to go to Bako or to go to the Caves--and then we had everyone vote. The vote went for Bako, so we were like, “Ok, Bako it is.” Then some of the elders were like, "If we don’t go to the Caves, I am not going!" So we said, “Okay fine, we will go to the caves!” Then the Sister missionaries called and they were TICKED out of their mind, so we compromised and said, ”Fine, we will do a split activity and we will have one group going to Bako and one group go to the Caves." Everyone all agreed on this plan, so we figured we were good to go (this was last week). LAST NIGHT, I get a call from the Sisters. They told us, "The purpose of a zone activity is to build zone unity, and so we don’t agree with your decision of having two different groups." I LOST IT! I told them "that they actually have a super valid point, but why wait to bring this up the night before the activity?" So then, of course, we got the typical sisters’ crying and what not, so we just cancelled the activity and told everyone to go kill themselves and leave us alone. OK, so we didn’t say that last part--but we did cancel the activity. We’ll probably just go to a beach at the end of the month.
Things in our area are going okay, but we are
struggling a little bit with being new to the area and being young zone
leaders--so it has been tough. President Mains came and had a great interview
with my companion and I. He gave us
great advice to not only help our area, but to help motivate our zone. Every
time I hear him talk, I am amazed at how great of a teacher he is. He is the
perfect example of how to teach like Christ.
Past mission presidents loved to teach crazy stuff and answer
missionaries’ questions about deep doctrine, but President Mains never does
that. He always teaches simple Gospel
truths and then bears testimony of those truths—it’s sooo powerful!! We are
working with this man who is very interested in the gospel, but he is very set
on following the Seventh-Day Adventist’s belief of having the Sabbath on
Saturday. When I asked President Mains
about it, his answer was amazing. He said that there is not a commandment that
specifically outlines what day of the week we are to partake of the sacrament.
For instance, because of crazy circumstances in Hong Kong there is a sacrament
meeting everyday of the week. We are
only commanded to set one day of the week aside to worship. We as Latter Day Saints worship on Sunday
because that is the day the Savior was resurrected, so we choose that day to
remember Him, but it is not a commandment. President Mains told us that the most important
thing is to help our investigator to gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon and
Joseph Smith and that everything else will fall into place. That is why President
Mains is so amazing. He didn’t show me
some scripture to counter our investigator’s concern, but he just went
right back to the keystone of the Church, the Book of Mormon. AMAZING right???
We also had a District Conference this week. I had to run the translation thing and it was
really rough. The people giving talks just get up and read super, super fast from a piece of
paper in Malay and I have to try to keep up. It was the
most stressful meeting of my life!!!!
I just finished the D&C. It was wayy good and I
have read Matthew and Mark, they are amazing!!!!
This is the first time I have read the Bible and it is amazing! Another
cool thing happened this week. All of Sarawak had a black out for the night. We were riding our bikes in a big city that was pitch black--it was just soo creepy.
I love you mom and I miss you tonz!! This week
I get to go to Singapore for ZL Council, so that should be wayyy cool!!
Elder Madsen
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