Nearer My God to Thee!

Hello all!

Pretty good week! Zone Conference was definitely a highlight. Our new president is awesome! He gave us a lot of great advice on working with the ward to help further the work in our areas. We also talked about gaining strength through Christ, and the power and authority that we have as missionaries. The day was just packed with good stuff and lots of learning!

I think one of the favorite parts of the week was sacrament meeting yesterday. It was just fantastic. They had two somewhat recent converts speak for the first time, and they both did great jobs. The spirit was so strong as they spoke and bore testimony. Then another member of the ward spoke on trials. He did such a good job. His focus was on how our loving Heavenly Father allows us to go through trials for our benefit. We learn and grow from each of our trials, and through Christ we can bear any burden that we are given. Linda, the less active we met a while back, attended church yesterday and really loved sacrament meeting. She said that she felt everything that was said was meant for her. Next week her and her husband are supposed to come so I'm really excited!

So for the spiritual thought today, lets all turn to 3 Nephi 27:29 in the Book of Mormon.
29. Therefore, ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you; for he that asketh, receiveth; and unto him that knocketh, it shall be opened.
It's important to remember that Heavenly Father will never answer a question that we don't ask. I would like to apply this specifically to the Book of Mormon. The only way that we can know that it is true is by studying it, and then asking our Heavenly Father, just like Moroni encourages in Moroni 10:3-5. Praying to know isn't just a one time thing. We need to ask regularly for that confirming witness by the Holy Ghost that testifies of truth. To end I just want to leave you all with my testimony of the Book of Mormon. I know that it is true. I have received that answer for myself. I know that by studying it, and following its teachings, we can find great joy in our lives, and come closer to Jesus Christ. Whenever I read from it's pages, I feel that peace which comes from the spirit. The Book of Mormon has had such a profound effect on my life, and much of who I am today I can attribute to the things that I have learned from the Gospel of Jesus Christ which it contains. I encourage you all, just as Moroni did, to study it, and to pray with a real desire to know if it is true, or to confirm the testimony which you already have of it.

I love you all and hope that you have superb weeks!

Love,

Elder Moffitt

Let it Snow!

Happy Monday!

So to start things off, lets talk about that subject line. Well after doing emails on Friday last week, we were driving back from Fort Macleod, and it was 5 degrees Celsius and rainy. Then it started dropping. It got down to 1 degree, and then began to snow. In the middle of august. Snow. Frozen water falling out of the sky. Oh Canada. If this is summer, I'm scared to see what winter is like.

So not much else happened this week. We had some opportunities to talk to people as we walked around town. None of them were interested in having lessons or learning more, but talking with them was good. We helped a guy move. He's not a member but apparently some missionaries a while ago helped him move in, so he had our number and called us up. That was good, and we got to know him a bit. We might see him again next week, he didn't sound interested, but he'll talk with us which is good!

Sorry I don't have much more to report, hopefully this week will be a little more eventful.

Time for a spiritual thought! I hope I haven't done this one already. In an article by the 12 Apostles of the church, they stated that,
It is significant that of all the titles of respect and honor and admiration that are given to Deity, He has asked us to address Him as Father.
God is an all powerful all knowing being, but he is also our Heavenly Father. Just like fathers here on earth, he loves all of his children. His love for us is unconditional and eternal. He cares about each of us, and want's to reach out in love and bless us. If we want to talk with our Heavenly Father we must pray, if we want Him to speak to us we must read the scriptures. I know that as we keep his commandments and strive to strengthen our relationship with him, we will be blessed.

Hope everyone has a super week!

Love,

Elder Moffitt

I need to think of more witty subject lines. . .

Hey Everyone!

So my p-day keeps getting moved around. We went to the Cardstone temple today with some members, and so we had to make today our p-day. Next week we should be back to Mondays, but no promises.

This past week was good! The biggest thing I think was finding Connie and Bary. Connie had seen us walking around Claresholm a little bit ago, and told us that we should stop by her home. We did just that, and it was great! Her and her husband Bary have met with some of the past missionaries and really liked them. We're not sure just how much they know about the church though. They are both religious, and know the bible pretty well, so we were able to have a great conversation with them while we were over. We talked about the importance of Jesus Christ and his atoning sacrifice for us, and a little bit about his gospel. We left them with plenty of reading material because they kept asking for more! Our appointment with them for this week fell through, so we're going to try to meet with them next week and have an actual lesson with them! I'm very excited to get to know them better and teach them about the gospel!

We also met a man named Skipper Warrior from one of the reservations here. He was passing through town, and stopped us while we were walking back to our home. He said that he was a member of our church. We talked with him for a bit, and then he said, "Well I'm going to go get a beer now" looked at us for a second, and then followed up with, "Well Jesus drank wine, so I can drink beer." We explained how modern day revelation from the prophets councils us against drinking, but he told us that he was having a barbecue so he was going to have beer. So we pointed Skipper in the direction of the local liquor store and he was on his way haha.

We got to volunteer at a triathlon in Fort Macleod an Saturday. It was great! We handed water out to runners as they passed, and some of them didn't slow down to grab the cup, so water would go flying everywhere haha, not sure how effective that was. It was about 15 Celsius outside and I was freezing though. I honestly don't know how I'm going to survive a Canadian winter, I wasn't bred for this. Pretty sure I started to lose circulation in my hands. Regardless, it was a good time. I met lots of people, and I got a free shirt!

We had dinner with Ken and Linda this week! Linda is an inactive member who wants to come back to church and Ken isn't a member. They're a great couple! Dinner was great, and we got to share an awesome spiritual thought about overcoming trials through faith in Jesus Christ. Ken's friend was there too, and he just so happens to be a member! His name is Brother Fraiser and he is awesome. He always wears a cowboy hat around and knows how to play the harmonica and used to make knives and hitchhike. Yeah we find out some new interesting fact about him every time we see him. Plus he has a sweet mustache, I'm super jealous of it. But anyways, dinner was great, and we're hoping to get to know Ken and Linda better!

All in all a pretty good week. The work is hard sometimes, but definitely worth it. I feel like I've learned a lot being out here, but I definitely still have a long way to go. I love the gospel so much. It has blessed my life tremendously. I know that as we strive to point our lives to Christ and follow his example, we will be able to receive great joy not only in this life, but in that to come. That's not to say that we won't have trials, because we undoubtedly will. However, we can know that through Jesus Christ and his atoning sacrifice on our behalf, we can overcome any trial that we face. Matthew 11:28-30 -

28. Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

29. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

30. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

I love how Christ uses the example of a yoke in these verses. A yoke is designed so that two oxen can stand side by side and pull a load. The oxen both have to put in the same amount of effort or the yoke won't work properly. It's the same when we go through trials. We have to put in all of our effort to overcome them, and as we do, Christ will be next to us helping us to pull the load along.

In case you were wondering, yes that was the spiritual thought for the week, it kind of snuck up on us I know.

Hope everyone has a super-duper fantastic week!

Much love from up North!

Love,

Elder Moffitt


Oh and here's a pic of me on top of some of the hay we loaded up last week. It was a grand ole' time!

Oh Hey There Eh!

Aug 11 at 12:56 PM

Hello everyone!

Good week! On Tuesday we had zone training meeting in Cardstone, which was fantastic, and while we were there we stopped by the temple! I had been to Cardstone a few times already, and had never seen the temple, so that really needed to change. I love getting to see the temple, and really miss being able to go whenever I want. Hopefully I'll get to go this month sometime if we can get a trip approved by the mission president.

After we got back from our meeting on Tuesday, we had an appointment scheduled with Janelle, the girl that we tracted into a couple weeks ago. Well she was busy again and really didn't seem like she wanted to talk to us, so we just left her a card with our number and told her to let us know if she ever wanted to hear our message or ever needed help with anything. We stopped by Tayson's after that, but he wasn't home again, and Jaidah was there but didn't want to listen. So it looks like we're back to zero investigators for now.

However, on Wednesday we had an awesome experience! We were walking back to our house from the church, and a lady stopped us and started talking with us. Elder Stone and Elder Rejas had helped her and her husband move into their house sometime before I arrived in the area. Turns out she's a less active member of the church, and really wants to come back! We ended up talking with her for an hour or so. She has such a strong testimony, and says that she still prays and reads her scriptures every day, and listens to the hymns while doing housework. Her husband isn't a member of the church, and she wants him to come to church with her. Apparently he's gotten really big into church history though. He loves learning about the pioneers and the early roots of the church. They recently visited a few of the LDS settlements in southern Alberta and stopped by the Cardstone temple, and they're taking a trip to Salt Lake City within the next couple of weeks! We have dinner with them and their next door neighbors, who are members, this Friday. It should be a great experience and opportunity for missionary work!

On Saturday we got to help out at Claresholm Fair Days. A sister in the ward volunteers to organize it every year, and she asks the missionaries to volunteer so that we can meet more people from the community. It was a really cool experience! Fair days lasts for a few days and consists of a parade in the morning, then a rodeo, fair type activities in the park, and a bench show where you can enter in different items and win prizes. We worked in the park at the rock climbing wall. I would make sure that everyone signed a waiver, and then Elder Stone would help people get their harnesses on. We met a ton of people, and it was good for them to see us out giving service in the community, and not just in white shirts and ties knocking on doors! People are much more willing to talk to you when you're in normal clothes.

It's that time in the email again, SPIRITUAL THOUGHT!!! I know you're all very excited for this, so I will try to not disappoint! In our zone training meeting, we talked about the enabling power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I loved this lesson so much! We read a talk from Elder Bednar called "In the Strength of The Lord" given to BYUI students. In it, he talks about grace. We believe that we are saved through grace, but there is much more to this statement than we may initially think. In the bible dictionary, grace is defined as an enabling power. This enabling power is demonstrated many times throughout the scriptures. One example that stuck out to me was the story of Nephi in the Book of Mormon, where his brother's bind his hands with strong cords. When Nephi prayed to Heavenly Father, he didn't ask for the bands to be broken, or to be set free from them, but for the strength to break them. This is something we must apply to our own lives. We must not pray for our situations to be changed, but for the strength to change our situations. That grace that we learn about, is the strength that we can receive through Christ to overcome any challenges or obstacles that we face in life. We must still do our part in keeping the commandments and repenting of our sins, but when we are not able to do it alone, that's when we receive grace.

I love you all and hope that everyone has a fantastic week!

Love,

Elder Moffitt

P.S. I'm off to bale hay right now, so I'll hop back on the computer later today to email people back individually.

Retrainers!

So some great things happened this week!

We went on exchanges this week, and that night had a dinner with the ward mission leader for Fort Macleod. They had our whole district (all four of us) over for dinner and we exchanged back afterwards. Their youngest son wanted to have a drawing contest with me, so we started drawing, I drew a ninja turtle, some of my best work might I add, and he drew a zombie. He got mad that I was taking so long to draw and so I stopped and started teaching him how to make an origami bird instead. He loved it! He carried that bird around with him all night. I knew that all that origami would come in handy some day!

Our appointment with Tayson and Jaidah fell through this week. We're going to stop by again tomorrow, so hopefully we'll catch them then and be able to have another lesson. We also followed up with a girl we tracted into a couple weeks ago, and have a lesson set for tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to that! We have a few other people to contact this week as well, so I'm hoping we see some success from that!

So the high point of my week was definitely retrainers meeting! I got to see everyone from my MTC district again, it was glorious! I felt like Ammon when he met Alma on the way to Zarahemla! They all seem to be doing really well, and even though I didn't get to spend long with them, it was great seeing them all! We went to buffalo wild wings after the meeting for lunch, and a lot of the missionaries did the flaming challenge there. You have to eat 10 of the hottest wings in under 5 minutes. I didn't do it, but it was sure fun to watch! They have a slideshow with pictures of all of the people who have done the challenge, and I'm pretty sure that half of the pictures were of missionaries, I guess it's a big thing to do here haha.

So funny story from this Sunday. For priesthood meeting we met with the teachers deacons and priests, and were having a lesson on families. The teacher handed out a paper for us to fill out about ways that we could serve our families. I looked over at the deacon sitting next to me as I was filling out the paper, and saw that he had already crumpled it up and there were big wet spots on it that he was poking his finger through. When I looked back again, he had the whole paper shoved in his mouth. It was super weird. Good ole deacons.

Spiritual thought of the week! We downloaded a lot of talks from conference to listen to on our long drives, and recently we've been listening to a lot of Uchtdorf. I love a talk that he gave titled "Pride and the Priesthood". In it he states that:
Some suppose that humility is about beating ourselves up. Humility does not mean convincing ourselves that we are worthless, meaningless, or of little value. Nor does it mean denying or withholding the talents God has given us. We don’t discover humility by thinking less of ourselves; we discover humility by thinking less about ourselves. It comes as we go about our work with an attitude of serving God and our fellowman.
I love that. It's so important that we learn to follow the example of the Savior and turn out. We need to constantly strive to serve those around us and think less about ourselves. As we do this, we will find greater happiness!

Hope everyone has a fantastic week!

Love,

Elder Moffitt


P.S. here's a pic we took after retrainers meeting. That's downtown Calgary.