January 19, 2016
Hello my good friends! A little bit of a change of scenery
this week emailing on Tuesday instead of Monday.
It seems like this country loves to have national holidays on Mondays. That's
just one of many interesting things we do here in America. That along with the
use of inches, feet, yards, miles, pounds, fahrenheit..... just to name a few.
I am still confused to this day why we do all that dumb stuff. But, its the
world we live in and their ain't no changing it. Maybe the gospel can change
it. Idk, we shall see what the Millennium has in store for us. Fingers
crossed that we use the metric system.
Anyway, this week was just a big week of Elder Ericson being
tired. Holy cannolie. I don't really know what happened. I didn't feel top
notch for a few days and that really seemed to throw my sleep patterns
off quite a bit. I didn't even really get super sick or anything.
I just had a little bit of a stuffy nose, and it wasn't even that bad. But it
sure threw me for a loop. I have been really working on having good preparation
in the mornings and that didn't happen at all this past week and personal
study was me sitting there dozing off for a good 45 minutes. And then comp
study consisted of reading 3 pages from the white handbook and then
eventually me going to lay down for a little nap in my bed. But,
I survived. I call Elder Stringham every Monday to account for my efforts on my
visions/goals/plans and last night I got to tell him all about failing
every day for the past week. But, we got each other pumped up to straight kill
it every single day this coming week and even have a mid-week accounting on Thursday. And so far I am 1/1 for the
week! I went to work this morning and did real good.... until the
last 15 minutes of personal study... but I'll get through it by the end of
the week! And when we both go 7/7, "We're making waffles!"
(in Donkey's voice from Shrek). But since we don't have waffle makers
we are just going to make pancakes and let each other know how it goes with
them. So, stay tuned to hear about my pancakes next week!
We had a pretty sweet Zone Conference on Thursday in Abilene. The leaders of the church
realize that the reason why most people go inactive after they are
baptized is because they weren't fully repented before they were
baptized. And they realize that Preach My Gospel has little to nothing
about teaching repentance, so we are having a world-wide missionary
broadcast tomorrow to hear about
that. And in preparation for that we had a killer zone conference about
repentance! Elder Stringham instructed about the "culture of the
mission" and how we are going to change our mission culture to "teaching
repentance". Good stuff there. I don't think he was planning on using his
"culture of the mission" instruction to put an emphasis on teaching
repentance, but he made it work. And then usually President Heap has a little
more than an hour for his instructions and sometimes an hour and a half, and he
said that he had an hour and a half worth of material... but he went over two
hours I believe with a killer instruction about repentance! His style of
teaching us isn't to teach us how we need to teach repentance to other people
or whatever the topic may be. What he does is he teaches us the doctrine and
principles of the topic to increase our knowledge of it and help us apply it
ourselves, and then in turn have us be better able to teach it to others. So he
gave a killer big long instruction about repentance to help us understand it
better for ourselves and become more converted to the process of repentance,
and then as we continue to study it and learn repentance more fully for
ourselves we will be better be able to help others repent. I think his style is
genius. I think a lot of leaders would teach us how we need to teach repentance
to others and how we can incorporate it into our teaching, but all he did was
help us have a better understanding for ourselves. Ultimately I think it is a
much better approach because "faking it until you make it" doesn't
work effectively. He has done it time and time again with the Book of Mormon,
the sacrament, and other topics. And I have greatly improved my ability to teach
those topics to others because of I have gained stronger testimony for myself
through his instructions and then applying what he teaches us. Good man he is!
Mac is all ready to be baptized on
Saturday! We were able to have a sweet visit with him on Saturday and we continued our reading and also
were able to talk about the sacrament, repentance, and the baptismal covenant.
Sis McMunn told us that he seemed to greatly appreciate learning more about the
sacrament and apparently he is excited to be able to take it with his baptismal
covenant! And we were able to teach him some sweet stuff about the sacrament
because of good ol' President Heap and applying to ourselves the things he
taught us about the sacrament! Perfect example. Anyway, Mac had his interview on Sunday and is good to go with that. Sis McMunn
texted us last night and said that she thinks that he is getting excited, and
so I responded "He would never admit it... but he is!" in which I got
the response, "You have gotten to know my man so well"! hahaha Mac
seems to not have any emotions about his baptism, but its so there underneath
his stubbornness!
Now for a fun story about the people of the world and how
ridiculous they are. On the way to the McMunn's on
Thursday we stopped to talk to this man. He is a Vietnam vet and a
retired psychologist. Long story short, for about 15 minutes of conversation I
wasn't able to get through any of my thoughts and explain things like I wanted
to because this man kept cutting me off. And then, right at the end, we both
started talking at the same time but I decided I was finally going to get my
word in so I just kept talking and got my word in. And of course, this dude
responds, "Well see now you're just pissing me off! You need to learn to
listen to people and not cut people off. The most important person is who you
are talking to, and you seem to be more worried about what you have to say that
what I have to say." Ok sir. You are right. I apologize for politely
letting you cut me off for the last 15 minutes and asking you questions that
were all about you and nothing about me and letting you talk and talk and talk
only to get told that I need to not cut you off and spend more time listening
to you. I apologize from the deepest vessel of my heart. I truly do. Because
that was just wrong of me. It truly was. Hmmmm.... people these days. But in
all reality I got a good laugh out of it!
Well my good friends. It is time for me to bade you
farewell! I love y'all and thank you for all the love, support, and prayers on
my behalf! Hold to the iron rod! The fruit of the tree of life is too delicious
to not partake of!
Much Love,
Elder Reed Ericson
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