And again, I say unto you, I give unto you a new commandment, that you may understand my will concerning you; Or, in other words, I give unto you directions how you may act before me, that it may turn to you for your salvation. I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise.
This past week, we had Personal Priesthood Interviews with President Hale. Also, we had an amazing training done by Elder Holland (Assistant) and Elder Isom (former Assistant). There is no end to the miraculous learning available to us in the gospel! The focus of the training was on D&C 82:8-10. I never fully understood it until this week. It's amazing!!!! The Lord gives us a new commandment of how we may act before Him. What is the commandment? To bind ourselves to the Lord so He may bless us! We are commanded to make a promise to the Lord so He will be bound to our words. Understanding this scripture and adding to it all we have already learned about being exactly obedience and knowing that God is a God of Truth, we will work miracles. There is no doubt about it. I can't believe we have lived in a nation of so little faith for so long. We must search the scriptures. It says it all there. We know these things. It's connecting it in our minds and acting upon it. We also discussed how a goal is a desire of our hearts. If we're going to set a goal, it better be our heart's desire, or there is no point in setting it. As missionaries, the desires we have in our hearts for our ward and our investigators are inspired by the spirit. We now are expressing the desires we have and binding ourselves to the Lord so that we can bring miracles to pass. I love it! I know it will happen. I must act my part. I must seek the guidance of the spirit to know what actions I must take, but if I am exactly obedient and do these things required of me, the Lord is bound to fulfill my desire for this ward! :-D
Well, it's been quite a week! A few highlights:
We are officially the Boca Biking Sisters as of last Wednesday. If the sun is out and the wind isn't blowing too hard, we are out and about meeting the people on the street of Boca Raton! The weather has been a bit interesting since the wind keeps blowing, the temperatures decide to be cold one day and hot the next. We even got some rain! That is a good bike story! We started our day biking to a neighborhood west of us that didn't look too far on the map - find out it is a 40min ride on our bikes. We visit two members and find out that the day has a 80% chance of rain! Oh well! We continue forth on bike heading now to east Boca to some investigators. As evening approached and it was time for us to switch to car - since Sis. Gardner doesn't have lights on her bike yet (and it's not safe to ride bikes in the dark) - we started to head home. Too bad we were now about 40min east of our apartment. And, it started to lightly rain. Oh dear. We were a bit worried about that, but onward on our bikes we go! We may have also made a few stops on the way trying to meet potentials, but no luck. Finally, when we came into the front gates of our apartment, the clouds open up and down POURS the rain! I just had to laugh! The Lord was looking out for the Boca Biking Sisters! He didn't want us to get wet so He waited until we were safely in our apartment complex. Precious!! I love tender mercies like that!
On Saturday was the yearly deep cleaning of the Boca Chapel. When we arrived, we had the choice to clean the windows or clean the font. Yep! We chose the font!! The second counselor of our ward has never seen that font cleaned before, and we could tell. Plaster, dead spiders, water turning yellowish brown ... we had some work to do. It was really fun to do! We had a few funny moments - like thinking the drain was clogged and using a plunger to try and fix it when really the drain switch was in the closet with the valves. So now, we can say that the Boca Raton baptismal font is clean and ready for our upcoming baptisms :-D
On Valentine's Day, I can't say I noticed a difference. One of the young girls in the ward gave us a cute Valentine Heart on a stick, but that was about it. So, as we were heading home that evening, we started craving chocolate cake. Lo and behold, there was a devil's food cake mix in our cupboard. Then, we had a box of cocoa that had an amazing recipie for chocolate frosting. Yep! We have a nice size cake still at home that we munch and nibble from every now and again! I'd say it was a great end to the day!
For next Sunday, I will be talking in church :-D It'll only be for about ten minutes, but I get to talk about my favorite thing -- my family history ... as it pertains to conversion stories of my ancestors. I'm excited! And I'm glad that I made all those cute little bookmarks of my ancestor's conversion stories and some other family history prep things I did before coming on my mission.
Also, I did receive my package just this morning. Thanks!! I especially loved getting a grapefruit and navel orange from our trees from home! Yay! Was the lemon from the store or did our lemon tree survive and actually produces lemons now?
Lots of love!! Take care! We continue onward in the work! I love being a part of the "Year of Jubilee" here in the beautiful Florida Fort Lauderdale Mission! We will create a Mission of Miracles as we continue in the faith!
‘Make no small plans: They have no magic to stir man’s souls.’ This is the vision I have for the South. I believe that one day the South will baptize more people into the church than all other English speaking missions in the world together. There are great hosts of marvelous Baptists, and members of the church of Christ, Methodists and Catholics who are honorable people, and have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and love him. As they see their church veering off to the right or to the left of these basic teachings, they will begin to search for the truth. And as pivotal teachers come into the church and have influence, we will see the time when we baptize hundreds and thousands, tens of thousands. In your day you will see a million members of the church in the South. There will be Temples plural in the Southern States. What a great call you have to serve with these marvelous people. ~Spencer W Kimball (1974)
