April 28, 2013

     Well, I don't know where to start!! It's been a real busy week! Last Monday, we went to the beach with one of our investigators. Super awesome! I got to take my shoes off and walk on the sand for a little while as I longed to jump right in and body surf for a while! ha it reminded me of our trip to Monterey when Jessi, Brian, Cody, Uncle Dan and I all went swimming that night... super fun! After that we all went to a delicious shaved ice shop and had some mango shaved ice... let me tell you a little bit about their shaved ice here... they don't use artificial flavoring!! When you get mango shaved ice, they literally put chunks of fresh mango on some smooth ice with sweetened condensed milk on it!! Even better than Matsumoto! It was incredible! I'll send you all some pictures.

     The week was spent in the chapel! Seriously, everyday we had lessons almost every hour! It was super busy, and I loved every minute of it! It was also really nice to be in an air conditioned building... VERY HOT OUTSIDE.

 

   I think the highlight of my week, was definitely Saturday night. It had been kind of sprinkling all day, and we had a couple hours to contact people outside, so we were a little bit damp but not too bad really. We then went to the chapel so that Elder D could do a baptismal interview for the sisters investigator. The interview was going a little longer than normal, and we were going to be late to a baptismal service... I was super worried we would miss his baptism!

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  I can't believe I haven't told you this story yet!! So, my first week here, we met this 20 year old kid who was interested in learning about Christ and Christian churches so we started meeting with him... He was SO cool! Very willing to keep commitments and before we knew it, he had a baptismal goal for April 27th. The problem happened when I went on an exchange with my Zone Leaders... I was calling through their list of investigators to see when they could meet and I saw our investigator listed on there!!! I asked Elder M who he was, and he says: "Oh yeah, you guys referred him to us a few weeks ago... he's getting baptized on April 27th!" ???? I was so confused! In the end, we found out that this guy was embarrassed to tell us that he lived over in the zone leaders area and he was going to get baptized there! hahaha!

     Well, his baptism was on Saturday night and we were going to be late! We booked it to the subway and went to the zone leaders area... when we found out that it wasn't just sprinkling anymore... it was raining. We had to walk about a mile to the chapel and we were already 20 minutes late! It took us a while to get there, and I was sad because I thought I missed the baptism, and also we were absolutely soaked to the skin. We get to the chapel and I can hear people singing, so I thought we missed it for sure! But apparently they had forgotten to fill the font with water!!!! God works in mysterious ways, and He postponed the service so that we could see our friend be baptized! It was so great to see! We had worked with him for so long, and he still comes to our family night activities! I definitely count him as one of my baptisms, no doubt! That was by far, the best part of the week.

 

     The Spiritual highlight of the week is about Families. What does it mean to have an Eternal Family? I remember going to the Manti Temple when I was about 8 years old and being sealed for time and eternity to my family... the most I remember of that experience is waiting in the little kid room for 2 hours with my little brother crying the whole time, but I can also remember little blips of the ceremony. The beautiful walls of the temple, the nice workers, the incredibly beautiful room with the most Sacred atmosphere, and my whole family dressed in white. I don't remember what was said, I don't even remember exiting the Temple, but I know, because of that Sealing Ordinance, my farmhilly is furheavier. :) Whenever my family goes to the beach (which is actually pretty often considering we live in Utah...) we HAVE to pick up as many shells as possible. It's been a tradition we've done ever since I was little, and it doesn't matter that I'm almost 20 years old now, I still can't go to the beach without being fixated with the pearly white shells lying on the sand... So this week when I went to the beach, I picked up some shells! I was later looking at them, thinking about my Eternal family, and thought about how families can be compared to these sea-shells! There are a few different categories of shells. Beautiful and whole, funky looking and whole, beautiful and broken and funky looking and broken. Those broken shells are the families with broken relationships. They may have been beautiful or funky looking, but now they are broken and (unless put back together) will remain imperfect. I don't think this represents divorce, or a family death, but I'm talking about the ACTUAL relationship. If we don't have a WHOLE relationship with all members of our family, there is a defect in our family shell. Those whole shells, are much nicer. Even if they are funky looking, they're still worth it to pick them up and put in our pocket. But what's the difference? I was looking at two shells and decided the difference lies in Eternity. The funky looking shells need some work still! They need to be polished and kept after, and only then can they become beautiful! Those shells with have been "beautified" of course, still need some work, but the process is well on it's way. I know that my family is working towards becoming a perfect shell, we're far from it, but we are a beautiful shell and I'm so grateful for that! I hope that all of us can aim for a Beautiful, whole shelled family! It's worth the effort!

 

Love you all! Jiayou!

Elder Noll