Monday 7 April 2014

Greetings from Essex

This is a tribute window in the same church. In the bottom you can see the founding fathers of america, columbus and the statue of liberty! Thanks for the heads up mum!jos

Elder Phelps

Me

Pancake night! This is Elder Phelps

Del boy wasnt in sadly!

Hey!

Greetings from Essex!How are you doing?I’m settling into Maldon pretty well. The weather has been glorious and so has the work!So my new companion is Elder Phelps, we entered the MTC together and he has been in Maldon for 3 transfers before I arrived. We actually live in Chelmsford and Maldon village is a 45 minute bus ride away! The area is huge and so we are doing our best to cover as much as we can, we have a balance of street contacting and tracting. I’m really not a fan of tracting and neither is Elder Phelps, I hardly did it in London North and so we have done a lot of street contacting and we have been seeing miracles! We have been teaching a record amount of lessons for the area and we have gotten 3 new investigators every week since the start of the transfer! We go out every day knowing that we will find people to teach, we just have to be prepared to work for it. In a recent talk that President Jordan shared with us, an assistant said to his President ‘If you want to baptise a few people then you talk to a few people, if you want to baptise a lot of people you talk to a lot of people and if you want to baptise everyone then you talk to everyone!’ just a PMG says, talking with everyone is a missionary commandment and we know that ‘20 There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated— 21 And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated’. It sounds simple doesn’t it?So, how good was general conference? It’s sad I only have 2 more as a missionary; my notepad has never had so much attention during conference. I felt a definite confirmation this weekend that we truly do have prophets and apostles among us whom the Lord ‘revealeth his secrets’ too which they then share with us. This is such an important principle of the Gospel that the Lord works through his Prophets and apostles; it is a way of dividing the faithful from the passive, the Latter day Saints from the Mormons. Think about it, it would be very easy for the Lord to open the heavens and tell us all what he expects of us, to tell us where we are going wrong and encourage us to repent. He cannot do this however, firstly because of the Fall and secondly because we would cease to be our true selves. A member in the ward likened it to when we are at school, when the teacher is in the class room the majority of the pupils are well behaved however when the teacher is called out on an errand, suddenly pandemonium ensues and the once reverent class of young sunbeams becomes a jungle of wild acrobats with a distinct disregard for any form of education. (This may just be in my experience)  But the principle is true, when we are left in a state where we ‘can act and be acted upon’ the true nature of our souls comes into light. Thankfully in the Lords mercy he has blessed us with an abundance of Examples with Jesus Christ being the master. He has also placed in our lives, apostle and prophets; seers and revelators who continue to instruct us of what we need to do whilst the ‘teacher’ is out of the classroom so that we can learn how to progress and to ‘act and not be acted upon’.When Jeffrey R. Holland opened conference with his tenacious decree of courageous discipleship he noted that ‘God created man in his own image’ and I thought he was going to add that ‘Man (sometimes tries to) create God in his image’. We rationalise God’s ideals to a level in which we are comfortable with and even try to support it with the Scriptures. As missionaries we come across this a lot and it saddens me more than it frustrates me. Instead of rising up to the true standards of the Gospel, many can sometimes manipulate the scriptures to bring down their majesty in an attempt to make the message more popular. This is done in a society where popular culture demands passiveness and a submissiveness to the vices of the natural man. The general authorities of the Church delivered a message this weekend that edified and inspired me to be better, to do better and to aim for a better standard than I was previously working for.I also loved Elder Ballard’s invitation to study PMG and to let the missionaries know what you have been studying. I can testify that PMG is the secret to success in missionary work and I invite you to follow Elder Ballard’s council and tell me what you are studying!The Gospel is good. Its way good. I love you all, Hugs and Handshakes, Elder Nolan

Just to add,
I FINISHED THE BOOK OF MORMON COVER TO COVER FOR THE FIRST TIME! I feel so great about it, I finished just before conference aswell so I went in super prepared! :) 

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