I love this Gospel

Elder Goins is doing great. We have been teaching a lot and he is getting better and better at it. Companionship study is very important in all of this training and learning 

This week was a good week. We are teaching a lot of people and we are helping people come back to church as well. I love this Gospel! It is so much fun to tell people about the truth. While we were siting here emailing home we had this lady come up to us and tell us that we should Google "Joseph smith abortions." She said that we were teaching a lie and that we need to know that Joseph Smith is a lie. Every time someone tells me something like this I think of the thing that Moroni told Joseph Smith:

He called me by name, and said unto me that he was a messenger sent from the presence of God to me, and that his name was Moroni; that God had a work for me to do; and that my name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindred, and tongues, or that it should be both good and evil spoken of among all people (JS-History 1:33).

I thought it was wonderful that Moroni warned Joseph about this and all of us as well.

I gave a talk in sacrament meeting this last Sunday. Someone fell though so they asked the missionaries to help with the talk. We had to be in another ward as well so we decided to do splits and I gave a talk. It was about 20 min long. I got to talk about what ever I wanted. I liked that. So I talked about the restoration. It was fun to be able to share that with so many people. 

I am sorry it is a shorter letter today. My computer died on me 2 times and it had to restart 2 times. 

I love this work. We have lots of people in our teaching pool. 

We are teaching several less actives that are coming back to church which is exciting! I am glad that they are doing so well and have such a desire to come to church. The only problem that we are running into is that we are so busy that we can't teach them a lot each week. This stake we are in has a huge potential to grow and to even have 2 sets of missionaries in it. The members are helping us a lot and I believe that they will continue to help us. 

I Love Being a Missionary

This week was a good week. Three new investigators and 16 lessons that we were able to teach. It was great! Especially for whitewashing. I showed some missionaries about Robert liking the girls attention more and they laughed. Funny.

Grandpa emailed me a letter and he used crazy works that I had to look up. This is what he said:

Grandma just told me I should send this to all our currently serving missionaries so they will read the antepenultimate paragraph.  (I hope you read the penultimate and the ultimate as well.)  In fact – you can read all of it.  Love each of you very much.     Grandpa Bean.  

We went to Temple Square this week and we loved it. It is a great opportunity to go up there and to be able to see the temple and all of the work the pioneers did and the spirit that is up there. Wonderful. I love being a missionary up here. 

Riding a bike it lots of fun. We get to see the area from a different perspective. Also my companion has fallen off of his bike about 5 times kinda funny. He is never injured seriously yet. 

I love being a missionary. We get to see people change their lives and we get to be a part of it. I am so glad that I get to be in the work of salvation. We also had stake conference this week. We learned all about the temple and how important it is to go to it as much as possible. 

My companion is learning the lessons and he is going great. He is an interesting person. 

We had a good experiences this week. Things that happen that are amazing and come out of nowhere. We had an investigator that has investigated for a long time. She accepted a date yesterday after reading 3 Nephi 11-- great chapter by the way. We read it and she said she wants to be baptized and we invited her to be baptized on Nov 8th. She said yes! Yay. I love seeing people so overcome with the Spirit that they change and want to come unto Christ. That is why this work is in a way easy because all we have to to is be ready and follow the Spirit.

I have been studying about service and the importance it is in the gospel. We need to serve everyone no matter what their circumstances and the places they are in their life because God asked us to. So I make my companions bed a lot because he does not like to do it. I also do other minor things that I don't think he even knows about, but that is ok I will keep doing it and he might see and recognize the importance of serving.

New Place

Brother McCall is the very first person that I ever gave a blessing to in my life. That is kinda sad that he passed away.

I met Michael Barton's cousin yesterday. He is in my stake. 

This stake is a good one and I will be fun to train my last few transfers. How did you know my companions name? Was it in the letter they send home? Elder Goins is a good elder. I like him and I will be able to teach him a lot and I will also learn some things from him as well. He comes from a rough background. He is learning and wants to learn a lot. 

We have one person on date and he is progressing. He is 9 years old. His mom is becoming active as well. 

We are teaching lots. The area has had missionaries that were not really liked by [members] very much. So sad, but they seem to like us. I feel like I have really learned how to get a stake to trust us. Or in that case anyone. I don't fully know how I do it but I think the number one thing to do is to smile. That helps so much for everyone. 

The members in this stake knows how to help us as missionaries. They are very helpful. We have 8 referrals right now and a lot of them seem really good. 

I love being a missionary and training gives me the opportunity to give my knowledge to a new missionary so he can help other missionaries. This is the first person that I have trained that will be staying in this mission because all the rest I have trained were trial missionaries. 

We are on bikes. That is fun except when it is cold and when it is dark and when you want to get from place to place. [Editor's note: ask Ben what he thinks.] The benefits for it is that we get to talk to a lot more people out on the street. That is good for Elder Goins. Just to learn how to talk to strangers.

General Conference Weekend

Something our mission is changing is that we are going to be finding all of the recent converts over the past 2 years and find out if they are active or not. I am so grateful for this because I know some of the people I helped to be baptized are now less active and if missionaries were still going by then they probably would still be active. There are a lot of people willing to come to church but they need a friend to help them make that step and when they make it a lot then it becomes natural and they can start to do it on their own. 

I don't know how many converts we have had in our ward back home but if you could find out I think it would be a fun activity to go around and say hi to all of those people and ask them if they want to come to church with you. it is a good FHE activity lets say a mission prep for Robert. 

This week was lots of fun. Taught quite a bit of people. Transfers are this week, Wednesday. Such an interesting time of your mission transfers. God will put you exactly where he wants you. All spirit driven. I was listening to conference and they talked about personal revelation and how all people need it. Then they gave a specific example of mission presidents. If there is one thing I learned on my mission is that our mission president definitely has that steady stream of revelation. Not just a flash of light. So wherever I go who ever is my companion it will because God wants me there. 

We are going to have a baptism this next week, Alec. He is so excited to be baptized. We had lunch there yesterday between conference and he told us that he has seen missionaries before but they knocked on his door and he was playing video Games and he said he was kinda annoyed that they distracted him from his game and now he loves this so much. Amazing to see that God has in his mind when people are ready to receive the gospel and he prepares them for it. That is what this is all about. 

I talked to this doctrine guy the other day and he was talking about God and time and how God does not really work by time like we do because he is not limited my it. He gave us this talk on it. This explained a lot to me about my time here on earth. Here it is:

D&C 130:4–7. The Relativity of Time

Several scriptures suggest that the way we perceive time on earth may not be the way time really is throughout the universe. Alma 40:8 suggests that only men measure time and that to God all time is as one day. Other scriptures suggest that all things are present before the Lord (see D&C38:2; Moses 1:6). Verses 4–7 in section 130 suggest a similar concept,namely that past, present, and future are continually before the Lord and that time is relative to the planet on which one resides. 

In the twentieth century, the field of physics began to speak about time and space in a way that may help explain these revelatory statements.Albert Einstein, in the early part of this century, developed what is known as the theory of relativity. Einstein postulated that what men had assumed were absolutes in the physical world—space, gravity, speed, motion, time—were not absolutes at all but were interrelated with each other. That is why the theory was called the theory of relativity. Physicists now agree that a person’s time reference will vary depending on his relative position in space. 

According to Einstein’s theory, if a body moves at very fast speeds (those approaching the speed of light, which is 186,000 miles per second), that body’s time slows down in relation to the time of a body that is on earth;and for the body in motion, space contracts or shrinks. In other words,time and space are not two separate things but are interrelated. Physicists refer to this as the space-time continuum. If an astronaut were to journey out into space at speeds approaching the speed of light, though to himself all would seem perfectly normal, to someone on earth it would appear as though his clock were ticking slower, his heart were beatings lower, his metabolism operating slower, and so on. He would actually age more slowly than would a person who remained on the earth. Though the finite mind tends to reject such concepts, Einstein’s theory suggests that reality to us is a product of our relative position in the space-time continuum. 

According to this theory, if a being achieved the speed of light, to that being all space would contract to the point that it would be “here” for him,and all time would slow down until it became “now” for him. The theory of relativity thus may suggest how, for a being of light and glory like God, all space and all time could be present. As difficult as such a concept is to understand, increasingly sophisticated experiments continue to substantiate Einstein’s theoretical description of the realities of the universe. 

Lael Woodbury, dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communications at Brigham Young University, talked about man’s perception of time and God’s perception of time in an address sponsored by the Church Educational System: 

“The evidence suggests that God … perceives time as we perceive space.That’s why ‘all things are before him, and all things are round about him;and he is above all things, and in all things, and is through all things, and is round about all things’ [D&C 88:41]. Time, like space, is ‘continually before the Lord.’ … 

“… Right now we perceive music in time as a blind man perceives form in space—sequentially. He explores with his fingers, noting form, texture,contours, rhythms. He holds each perception in his mind, one by one,carefully adding one to the other, until he synthesizes his concept of what that space object must be like. You and I don’t do that. We perceive a space object immediately. We simply look at it, and to a certain degree we‘know it. We do [not] go through a one-by-one, sequential, additive process. We perceive that it is, and we are able to distinguish it from any other object. 

“I’m suggesting that God perceives time as instantaneously as we perceive space. For us, time is difficult. Lacking higher facility, we are as blind about time as a sightless man is about space. We perceive time in the same way that we perceive music—sequentially. We explore rhythm, pitch,amplitude, texture, theme, harmonies, parallels, and contrasts. And from our perceptions we synthesize our concept of the object or event—the musical artwork—that existed in its entirety before we began our examination of it. 

“Equally complete now is each of our lives before the Lord. We explore them sequentially because we are time-blind. But the Lord, perceiving time as space, sees us as we are, not as we are becoming. We are, for him, beings without time. We are continually before him—the totality of our psyches, personalities, bodies, choices, and behaviors.” (Continually before the Lord, Commissioner’s Lecture Series [Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1974], pp. 5–6.) 

Einstein’s theory is only a theory, although it is being substantiated again and again as a valid representation of reality. How God operates through the vastness of space and the eternity of time has not been revealed in specific detail, but what information man has been given can be harmonized with what physicists are discovering about the interrelationship of space and time. 

Time is relevant to mortality.

Good study right? It took me several times to read over this to fully understand what they were saying. 

It was cool to see Ben and Monica. Question is Robert taller then Ben? If he is then I think he is taller than me too. I was looking and I think Ben is taller then me. 

Robert I miss you too, but it has been 3 years since I have seen Ben in person only 21 months since I have seen you. It is not that much farther away. I am sorry you lost your game. Beyer is a good school and was really good at football when I was there. 

I love the picture from all of the people. The Chapmans kids look so old.

Where is Robert in this picture? Just kidding. haha He is the tallest person there. He has grown a lot as well. 

I loved General conference. So 2 of our investigators were able to see it. I know one of them fell asleep a lot. haha the other one Mandy the one Ben and Monica meet she had to leave right after conference so we were not able to see if she received her answer yet. 

Listen

We had MLC this week Mission Leadership Training. It was cool. President Chambers talks to all the sister training leaders STL and the zone leaders ZL. He shares some great insights about the scriptures and new things coming out. I love them. Before my mission I did not like meetings very much, now I love them and can't wait until the next one. 

We are teaching Alec. He is one of the coolest investigators ever. We were able to teach him about Christ and he has heard little to none about Him. he told us,"that Guy is a great Man!" We told him back, "Yes it is Jesus Christ." Then he said "O that is why every one likes him." We laughed and said yes part of the reason is that and then went on explaining the atonement. Every time we go over there he opens the Book of Mormon and wants to read it with us. He has a true love for the Book of Mormon. We have to tell him sometimes that we have a lesson about the plan of salvation and we need to teach it to you. He just does not want to do anything with us except read the book of Mormon with us. 

Today is my companion's Birthday. He is now 23 years old. 

This week we have had to fix a lot of issues with our zone. That is one thing as a zone leader that is tricky. Like you said Mom people sometimes don't like you because of the tings you have to say to them. (Like Dad or Nephi talking to his Brothers) I was reading about Nephi and building the boat today. Nephi was chastising his brothers about partying on the boat and told them to stop and then his brothers tie him up for 4 Days! That is a long time and no one could soften their hearts except the Lord. Not even Nephi's Kids.

One thing about being over so many stakes is that we are trying is to visit the ward leaders from the family wards and try to get referrals from them for young signal adults. Just a finding idea. if you have any I would love to hear them about how to find people to teach. 

Have a good week!

Love Elder Walker