PMG Chapter 6

Aug 24, 2015

Dear Family,

Well... Here are some highlights.

On Monday I ran out of MSF (Missionary Support Fund)! Yay! That means I have to use personal funds for the rest of the month! I ran out of MSF because I had to buy a few repair items for my bike. 

On Tuesday we met with our most progressing investigator Ms G. I don't think I've told you a whole lot about her. We've been teaching her for quite some time now. Her daughter Ms K was a new member who was baptized about 2 years ago. Elder Lynch and I only got to meet Ms K 2 or 3 times before her medical issues added up and became too much for her to bear. We had a nice funeral service for Ms K at the church. Her mother Ms G and Ms K's 9 year old son were there. After the service we talked to Ms G about the gospel and she said she would like to start lessons. Since then we've been regularly meeting with her and she's progressing fantastically. She's keeping all the commitments we leave her and she enjoys reading the Book of Mormon. We have a baptismal date for her and she is excited about it. 

On Wednesday I started studying the chapter 6: How Do I Develop Christlike Attributes? in PMG. It's becoming a personal favorite of mine. While the other 12 chapters in PMG deal with what you do and what you teach, chapter 6 deals with who you are and who you should become. As I've been going through it, I've been seeing where I'm strong and where I can improve. I've been paying special attention to the Hope, Charity and Love, Patience, and Humility sections. They've helped me become a much better person. So much so that I was tested by an angry preacher :). All he was doing was throwing contention at us but we held our ground. He was mad at us but I wasn't mad at him. I could feel the contention but I could still think. I'm at a point now where I'm sad if someone says "no" to the gospel. 

On Thursday I had a cool experience with a less active I've never met before. Our branch mission leader took us to see a few LA's and Elder Shelley completely left me alone to come up with a spiritual though right on the fly with one of them. This lady left the church because she was also offended. I felt impressed to pull out Alma 7:11-13 and talk about why we go to church. I read that scripture, talked about the sacrament and stated that the reason we go to church is to remember the Savior. I could tell that got her thinking when the lesson ended. 

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were all more or less finding. 

I know mom has been going through PMG. I would like everyone at home to go through it. In Elder Holland's talk "Feed My Sheep" he said PMG was created so the gospel would more easily become a part of the missionaries life. And with all the quotes by several apostles and prophets about how members are missionaries, the word missionary becomes synonymous with the word member. That was one of the things Elder Zwick talked about at the mission conference. There were actually 2 Elder Zwick conferences. One was for people in leadership positions and the other was the missionary conference. He talked about the same things in both, more or less. He stressed the importance of members. In an ideal world the members would do all the finding for missionaries by giving them their friends and family members and offering their homes as a place to teach them. Since then we've been making a large push with the members and we've been seeing success. One member gave us a referral for a super solid family who were asking a lot of questions and another member asked us to teach them how to teach like a missionary. If this keeps up then we'll be teaching a lot more member-present lessons in the future. 

Again I would like everyone at home to begin studying PMG. It's more than a guide to missionary services. It's a way allowing the gospel to become a part of you. I know that because I've lived it for almost 5 months now. 

Thank you for being awesome!

-Elder Ben

This is a tiny military sized Book of Mormon. The elderly missionaries in our district work
with the military and they can get stuff like this really easily. I'm going to get a full scripture set.

I've decided to hold Peach Nehi as my 3rd favorite soda flavor ever. 

A lot of people here have "Beware of [whatever]" signs. I thought this one was great.

This is Georgia Peach ice cream with Mango Italian sauce and a little whipped cream on it.
It was amazing!

A sunset on the streets of Corydon.