FAMILIA!!
What an eventful week it has been here in Florida and as well in Orem!! First I would like to give a shout out to my little sisters! Kylie, congrats on graduating!! You're so old!! I can't believe you will have gone to more college than me, by the time I get back! (fyi, I expect a letter from you next week filling me in on all the details from graduation! :) Kenzie, congrats on that great american award!! It sounded like you worked super hard for that! And Maddie, way to survive your first year of Jr. High! I think you deserve the biggest medal of everyone for doing that! Don't worry Jr. High is only 3 years, and I promise life gets better after! ;) Also, I can't believe Reid and Ryan are home! When you see them you, have to make them promise that they WILL NOT get married before I come home!!
Anyway, now about our week here in Ft. Lauderdale West, a.k.a. the Promised land! So I don't think I explained things very well, about how we have been teaching this Marshallese family. So, Mary speaks perfect english and marshallese. Her and her husband Ghandi, were the one's who got married and baptized earlier this month. Then like I mentioned last week we started teaching Mary's sister-in-law. Her name is Fretha. She speaks literally no english. But, we bought her a Book of Mormon in Marshallese and she's been reading it a lot, so that's where most of the teaching has come from. But our lessons with Fretha are fun, because basically we just talk to Mary, and then she says the same thing back to Fretha, then Fretha replies in Marshallese and then Mary tells us what she said. It's a slow process, but Fretha has come along way! In fact she was baptized and confirmed this past weekend! It was great to see just how happy they both were and how excited Mary was to see that because of her she made a difference in someone's life! Other than that nothing too eventful happened in our area, just continuing to search for all the people that God has prepared here!
I would like to end just by sharing something that I have learned this past week. I've been studying a lot about Faith. And there was a talk that i found by David A. Bednar called Seek learning by Faith that really made things clear. He talked about how there are 3 different aspects involved in Faith. The assurance of things hoped for, the action of Faith, and the Evidences of Faith. He describes it as a cycle. First we have an assurance, or a hope. That hope leads us to act. And because of our actions and hope we are able to see the evidences of those actions! Which leads us to have greater assurance and hope, to act even more and see even greater evidences! For example, with the Book of Mormon, we are given a Promise, or an Assurance, that if we read it, and if we pray God will let us know by the Spirit that it is true. So anyone can read that and gain a hope for an answer. But unless we take ACTION, and truly study it, and pray with real intent, we will never see the Evidence. The spirit will never be given an opportunity to testify to us because we never did our part. It's the same with all other aspects of the gospel and in truly developing Faith in our Savior Jesus Christ. I'm so grateful for the chance that my mission has given me to seek learning by faith. I'm so grateful for the evidences that I have seen over the course of my mission that have increased my faith and deepened my conversion. I know Jesus Christ is our Savior. I know that the promises He makes us in the scriptures are real, if we will do our part and just act!
Love you all and have and have an amazing week!
Elder Nielsen
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