March 21, 2016
Hello! It is a sunny spring morning here in San Angelo,
Texas! It has probably been a little bit more "springy" down yonder
than it has been for the majority of you up in the more northern region.
However, it has been a little chilly this past week. And I hear that it was
pretty dang cold up in the Lubbock area the last week. Some missionaries went
to the temple on Saturday and they said that
it was in the 30's! Hace frio! Thank heavens I was sent down to the warm part
of the mission for winter! Hopefully I won't have to bear the brunt of the
boiling heat down here once summer rolls around. Not looking forward to that.
Send me up to the panhandle or the mountains of NM for that! Anyway, this past
week was a good week. I look at our key indicators (numbers) and it was
borderline one of the worst weeks I've ever had, but I have learned that
numbers don't mean anything here in the Texas Lubbock Mission and I am able to
look back on many good things that happened!
To start off, I'll drop a little line about the Easter
Initiative. We have seen that video now like a million times. At first it
seemed like the same thing that we've had for the past 4 initiative videos. A
lot or our "initiative work" comes with members after a meal. And
members have all seen every single video and this is just another of the same
it seemed like to them and there is not much excitement or anything. However,
Elder's Quorum yesterday really put it all together for me. There are a few
unique things to this video that we always like to talk about when showing it.
One of which is the layer of family history that is brought up with it. It
shows the young adults holding up pictures of their deceased family members and
it takes it from a feel good video and gives it a personal touch. I always just
think of those pictures being of my own ancestors and family and it gives me
great thanks for the atonement and the resurrection!
There are other things that stand out to me when I watch it,
but that is the main one. But yesterday in Elder's Quorum we had probably the
best lesson I have ever had in church on the Atonement and Resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the teaching of Howard W. Hunter. Holy cow. Bro Williams went
so hard. I have always known and realized that the resurrection is by far the
most important part of the atonement. In fact, I remember Grandma Ericson last
Easter mentioning in an email that Christmas wouldn't mean anything without
Easter. That has always stuck with me, but Bro Williams lesson really just
helped me understand and grasp the concept in a new light. He actually started
from the back of the lesson (the resurrection) and then worked back to the
beginning of the lesson (being saved from spiritual death). A quote from Bro
Williams, "Without the resurrection, the gospel is just a bunch of feel
good stuff." How true that is! Even the unimaginable suffering that Christ
went through literally has zero significance had he not risen. "Well
that's cool that Christ saved you from your sins...... well...... cool. Glad it
made you feel happy now because that's all it is. Temporary relief until you
die." But thanks to the resurrection, the relief that he brings to us from
our sins and all our other negative feelings and emotions MEANS SOMETHING.
Thanks to an unconditional effect of the atonement, the conditional effects of
it play an eternal and significant role in our lives. So now whenever I watch
the Easter video (which he showed in his lesson) I see it in a new light. They
mention "finding new life in Jesus Christ" a lot and that means something
much deeper to me now. The 2 minutes of pure simplicity touches me deeply.
Hallelujah!
Anyway, enough of my rambling. There are not too many
notable things that happened that have much significance to you. We did go on
exchanges on Wednesday/Thursday which were interesting. We ended up
pulling a much longer exchange than we were originally planning on because we
didn't have too much time to work on Wednesday.
For exchanges now we just have all 4 missionaries working the leaders' area in
two different companionships, which is an interesting experience compared to
the old way of splitting up into two different areas. Thursday
afternoon I was able to go out with Elder Johnson and we did some solid work.
Taught a sweet lesson to one of their investigators. Interesting story there.
He and his family are from Micronesia. He doesn't speak super duper English,
but enough to understand and get things. However they got him a Bompayan Book
of Mormon, so when we read scriptures he reads it in Bompayan and we read in
English. So that was pretty sweet.
We also walked and biked a ton and talked to a lot of
people. It was weird, their area seems to have way more people outside than our
area! And you would expect the social and economical aspect of our area to
bring a lot more people outside than their area! Oh well, we work with what we
have. So we did some solid work all afternoon and had some dang good discussion
about mission related things. Good times with Elder Johnson. (Random note: a
man was here in the computer area at the library that I am sitting in and was
talking to the worker. The worker answered his question and the man said
"God bless you" and walked off! I love Texas!) On Wednesday night during our exchange we went and
had dinner at the Lunkley's (same family that had us for Thanksgiving and
Christmas) and it was one of the most legit dinners ever! He went Cajun style
on us! Holy cow! We had a couple different kinds of Cajun sausage, gumbo,
jambalaya, a seafood boil with shrimp, crab-legs, corn, potatoes,
and then some lemon meringue soda to top it off (which tasted like a mix
of lemonade and cream soda - dang good stuff). Oh dang. So dang good! Bro
Lunkley can throw down some good grub! And then we ended it up with splitting a
caramel something pie into fourths and chowing that down. It was amazing. And
then after dinner we just had a grand old time with the Lunkley's. Probably
were there a little long, but we learned some great life things from them! Most
times we go over there they teach us a lot about relationships, marriage, etc.
which is ultimately what we are preparing ourselves for out here. President
Heap even says that his first priority is the make his mission a good
experience for his family, and then his second priority is to prepare us to be
good 1.husbands, 2.fathers, and 3.leaders in the church. Top two priorities. So
a good lesson on relationships and marriage at the Lunkley's once a month can't
hurt. They used some great analogies that were hilarious but perfect and I
learned tons!
Saturday was a good day
of work for us! It was a really nice day (on the cooler side of nice), so we
literally walked from 1:00-5:30ish with a few small breaks and talked to lots
of people and contacted a couple sweet former investigators! It was good to get
out and actually have people to talk to! And the good Lord blessed me with only
minor aches in my knees! Usually when I go out and walk for more than an hour
or so my knees ache but I went for quite a while and felt relatively good all
day! And then we had dinner with the one and only Blinn family after that so it
was just overall a sweet day in San Angelo! Hopefully now that it is getting
into spring time people will actually migrate outside. We have had lots of
really nice weather but nobody seems to want to enjoy it. But now that it is
officially Spring maybe people will switch gears in their heads! Other than all
that, not much to report on with lessons or teaching. We had a few less-active
lessons but that was about it. Granted, we were out of our area for a couple of
good work days, so that probably had a big impact on that.
Well my loved ones, we're fixin' to get out of here. So I
will close this one off for the day! I love y'all and hope that you can ponder
the wonderful atonement of Jesus Christ this week and particularly the his
resurrection and the amazing unconditional gift it is to all of us!
God bless ya!
Loves,
Elder Reed Ericson
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