Week 89 Strive to Look at Failures with Happiness and Enthusiasm

Hello everyone! Another week in Paradise, and we got our smart phones this week! That's what I used to type this up. Anyways here is the week.

Monday
We started the day emailing. Then we did some shopping. After, we had some lunch at Boomers. Boomers is a burger joint. After that, we then went to the church and played basketball for a while. We had a great time with the whole zone except the sisters. Getting close to evening, we went home, got changed, and then went to dinner. After dinner we went and saw people in our area before the night was over.

Tuesday
Tuesday was a long day. We did tons of walking. We started the day with progressing. Then we went to the church for mormon.org time. I was going to do some training for the portal, for our smartphones, but the website was down. After mormon.org time, we then went home and had lunch. Then we went into comp. study. After, we went and saw some people with the car, did some tracting, and then we walked to the rest of our contacts. The contacts that we were seeing were at least a half mile away from each other, sometimes even more. That's exhausting! But that's alright. We still managed. and I'm still alive. After a while, we then went to dinner with the Devries. Then we went to try to have our two lessons with people that were going to be new investigators, however, one cancelled and the other wasn't home. So, we made some different plans. Then we had a meeting with Bishop, and that ended our night.

Wednesday
We got our smartphones!! We started the day with District meeting and Elder Rich instructed about planning and how to set goals that will help us accomplish our purpose. After, we then had lunch. Then the zone leaders gave us our phones, and we got to set them up. After a couple of hours, we came home, had comp. study, and then went to our lesson with Sister Oldham. It turned out great. We were able to answer her questions about the Book of Mormon. After, drove down to Sudden Valley and had dinner with the Daly's. They feed us pizza. They also had a piano which I was able to play little bit. Sister Daly loved it. Then we went to see some people out in Sun Valley before the night was over. Around 7:30 we drove back to the church and started working on the area book planner. That has been an interesting process so far. It's a lot of work just to put our area book into the phone. After that, we went home and ended the night.

Thursday
Thursday was a sad day because we didn't have much work happen. We started the day by going to the food bank and sorting food. After, we had lunch and comp study at the church. Then we went to go see some people. Almost every person that we went to see was not home or they weren't able to talk! Later, we had dinner with the Jones family. The kids are so cute. Their youngest got a brush during dinner and started brushing my hair . It was really funny! After dinner, we then saw some people close by to the Jones family. Then we ended the day with the area book planner work.

Friday
Friday was pretty simple, only because some of the plans we had fell through. We started the day with comp study and weekly planning. After, we then went from the church to the Frazier apartments to help someone move. We soon found out that the apartment was Justin's and his roommate that he has been telling us was a rude person. It was this girl (his roommate) we were helping to move out. Funny how that happened! So, we decided to help her but told her not to tell Justin that we were helping. After, we moved couches into a moving van and many other things. We then drove to the storage unit where they were going to place all the furniture. We helped put the furniture away. After, we went to go see a referral named Eydie . She was nice and told us they would love to have us come and maybe do service, but she really wasn't interested in a message. We left our phone number with her and then went back to the church to weekly plan some more. After, we then had a lesson with Leilani. With taught her about the word of wisdom. Before our lesson, we saw Justin, and he told us that everything had been taken out of his apartment, and he was really, really shocked. I felt bad for acting like I knew nothing about it. But that's alright. Maybe it'll help him in the long run, who knows. After a lesson, we went over to his apartment and talked to him. We checked up with his reading and his prayers and offered our help in any way that he needed it. Then we went and had dinner. After, we went back to church and did some area book work in the area planner. That ended our night.

Saturday
We started the day by going and updating the progress record. With our smartphones, we now have the ability to electronically update our progress record through LDS tools. It's pretty cool! I'm pretty sure if you ask Justin he could tell you all about it! That sucks sometimes in the morning trying to figure out everything, but after we then went to go see some people before we went to go and have lunch. Around 12:30, we went and had lunch at the apartment. Then we did comp study, and then we went to go and see some more people after lunch. In the afternoon, we were able to go and see Justin, our investigator, again and follow up with how he was doing the night before. We committed him to pray and ask his Father in Heaven about the Book of Mormon to know if it was true. He said that he prayed last night, but he didn't tell us if he prayed about what we asked him to pray about. So, we discussed it with him, and we discussed some things that he had dreams about. We were planning on dropping him, however, once he started explaining the dream that he had that night, the spirit started to enter the room, and we could feel its presence. His dream consisted of him walking to a house, a house that his father had grew grown up in. At this house, his father opened the door and talked to Justin, and what his father said continually was, “I'm trapped, I’m trapped! Help me to get out.” In the dream, he said he could feel loved and as well he felt pain for his father, so much that he gave him hugs and they talked for a little more and continued hugging each other and crying with each other, but yet he couldn't seem to satisfy his father because he didn't know how to free him or why he was trapped. Listening to this dream, we gave him some advice and talked about the spirit world and how sometimes people have dreams of brothers and sisters telling them that they are trapped in spirit prison and the only way they can get out of that is if they become baptized and continue on in Exaltation. He took it pretty well, and he said he was going to go into further investigation about it. We told him to ponder about those things and to pray about them and once he did that, he would be able to understand his dream a little bit better.

After that visit with him, we then had a lesson with Jason Byers. He seems to be doing alright. We read some scriptures with him about increasing his faith. He really enjoyed those scriptures, and we had a good discussion. As we were leaving, he seemed very peaceful with himself. I was excited to see that because I have never seen that with him in the whole year and a half that I've known him on my mission. From that visit, we then went back to church and finished weekly planning. Then we went to the mall and got Panda Express for dinner. We also checked out Famous Footwear for Elder Rich to look at some new shoes. Then we came back to the church and did some area book planning so that we could get the area book into the phone. Then we went and had a lesson with Joey and had our meeting with Brother Jones. We talked to Joey about the word of wisdom. After our meeting with Brother Jones, with then came home and ended the night.

Sunday
We started the day with ward council. Then we had church right after. We went through all the church service and had a good time. There was a talk in sacrament meeting that talked about the atonement and how to look past failure with happiness. After church, we then went to Sister Thowson and waited a whole hour for her to come back from her walk. That was boring... so we went home and had some lunch. Then we planned out the day, and then went to go and see her again to see if she was home. This time she was. So, we went and gave her a blessing because she is going through procedure sometime today. After, we then went to the church and did our personal study, our comp study, and dinner all in 3 hours. Then realizing that we needed the area book to do some area book planning, we went to go and grab it from the car. However, when we walked out of the church building, we went to go and unlock the car, but realize that the keys were still inside the church building. So, we went to go back to the church to open the door, however, the church was locked because the lock was broken. THAT WAS STUPID!!!!!! So, we had to walk to Walgreens, call Brother Jones, and ask him if he would come and unlock the church building so we could go get our stuff and head back home for accounting. That was not fun.

Well, that's my week for you, everyone. It was an interesting week to say the least. However, I did learn a lot this week, and I'm grateful for everything I did learn. I understand that the Lord really does love each and every one of us beyond what we can imagine. He does not expect us to always succeed in life, nor does He expect us to be perfect a hundred percent as His son, Jesus Christ, is right now. However, He expects us to try, to strive to be the best we can be and nothing else. From the words of a scripture I quote, “For notwithstanding their sins, my bowels are filled with compassion towards them.” Them is referring to us as his brothers and sisters. To that I have to ask the question, “Why is that?” To answer that question, we must understand that Jesus Christ suffered the atonement for all mankind, but not just mankind, all living things. We must also understand that God expects us to do as much as we can and then understand and know that the atonement will make up the rest. The atonement is not merely Jesus Christ suffering on the cross, even though that is a part of it. The atonement is what makes me, the sinner, be able to access the gift of repentance.

If there is anything that you can take from this letter, brothers and sisters, remember this. We must not look at failure as a terrible thing. If we look at the life of Thomas Edison, when he invented the light bulb, he did not say, “I failed a thousand times, oh well.” He said, “I have found a thousand steps to achieve a miracle.” Thomas Edison looked at this as a positive thing to help him to be able to invent the light bulb. Thomas Edison was a great example of a man that looked at failure with enthusiasm. When his factory was burning down in flames, he did not cry, he didn't even weep for a second. When his son came to find him, he asked him if he was all right. To his son’s surprise, Thomas Edison told him, " Charles, get your mother. She will never see a fire like this ever again in her life." Haha! I Iove that. What struck me is what he told everyone the next day. "My friends, all of our mistakes have burned away. We can start again!" Boy, I wish to have enthusiasm like that after every failure! This was part of the talk on the atonement in our sacrament meeting Sunday.

This week I had the opportunity to receive a very uplifting letter from a good friend and a brother of Christ, who I believe I met in the pre-earth life before I came to this earth. I only say that because he has gone through a lot of the same struggles as I have and understands me a hundred percent. My dear friend became converted to the gospel while I was on my mission. In this letter, he was able to lift my spirit, to help me find peace in my service. And I want to thank him for that. Not only in that letter as I was reading it today did I feel the spirit, but I felt the love that my Heavenly Father and only Jesus Christ could give me, and even though I can't share this letter with every single person because it is a sacred letter, I know that it is meant to help not only me, but it will stand as a reminder to my friend and will help him in his life when he needs it most. 

In his letter, he recommended the talk by Elder Robins from this month’s General Conference. I encourage those that read this letter to read that talk. It has helped me a lot. Brothers and sisters, I know that as we look from failure to failure with happiness and enthusiasm to continue to grow, we will be able to strive to receive that perfect life which Jesus Christ commanded us to "be ye there for perfect, even as your father which is in heaven perfect". We will see joy in repentance. We will see sorrow turn into happiness, shame into peace, and hate into love. I know this to be true, and I know that as I start to apply this in my life, I will be able to conquer anything that comes in my path. I leave these things with you in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Elder Hammond