Week 8; UNI is So Fun 🤑🤙🏻

Photo Album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/QuW5JQQJL6emqhb68 We stopped by one of our progressing friends named cary. He is so cool and we've had a few lessons, and he's come to church twice, but he is also catholic, and hopefully he can see the truthfulness of this church as he continues to read the book of mormon and continues to come to church. We had a lesson with him and one of our members and it was great. We talked about the plan of salvation with him and it was such a spirit-filled lesson. I love when you get to teach someone who is very smart and knowledgeable about the bible and religion because in every single lesson you get to go into the details of it and you really just don't have to teach as simply as you would with someone who wasn't as smart. We then went to his garage where he showed us his gt0 and how he used to do drag racing and martial arts training and painting. He pulled out these guns that he purchased and that he's been collecting, and they are these huge pistols, that were so heavy, we even got to take a picture with them. We went up to the State college elders again to be with them for the day and it was an amazing day full of many blessings. The weirdest thing about that day was that they had a film crew making a documentary short film on mormom missionaries. They want to clear up the misinformation and misconceptions surrounding us and how we are just normal people. I was with Elder Verdine again and it was so fun I learned so much from him and throughout the whole day, something to know about him is that he loves to talk. So I really just didn't get that much time to talk to people, but near the end of the night, I was talking to him about how I wanted to improve my teaching and specifically about the restoration. We role played for about two hours that night while walking around the campus, and also in the church. One thing we mainly talked about was how focusing every single principle to faith in Jesus Christ and God is our loving heavenly father really improves and personalizes your teachings so much. One thing that was notable that happened was how we exercised the spirit of prophecy in our work. Elder Verdine was teaching me about it and how if we have enough faith, then we can really know through the power of the holy ghost who to talk to or where to be. After we had said a prayer of gratitude from a find we got, we both said to each other that we saw visions of where we needed to go specifically and they were both different and so we decided to go to mine first. We started to walk towards my vision and it was in kind of this random area and we saw this guy right when we got to that area where I was thinking of and I knew as soon as I saw him that he was the guy that the spirit had led me to in a vision. He was awesome and was interested in coming to church and learning more. We then went to where Elder Verdines vision was and since he has been on the campus for so long, He knows a lot of where things are in street names and he had a vision in his mind of a specific corner and street name for where we would find someone. We went there and as soon as we got there, we found this lady who was almost like she was waiting for us. We started talking to her and she was awesome and was interested in learning more and coming to church and also in being baptized. She was super cool and elect. We had an amazing sunday where we had three of our friends come to church, and it was an amazing sacrament meeting. One of the speakers was a youth speaker named Daniel who was a preist, and it was awesome. He talked a lot about using the gift of testimonies and to cherish them and share them with others. He then gave an amazing musical number He made from the hymn, We thank thee o god for a profit. It was an amazing rendition of it and invited the spirit so strongly in all of our hearts. The Bishop also spoke and talked a lot about temples and how important families are and how we can all be eternal families through temple ordinances. He also spoke a lot about the plan of salvation and the atonement and its importance. Such a great sunday. On my Mission, learning to rely on god has been my biggest challenge. Being out here, doing the lord's work, and gathering Israel has heightened all the temptations of the bad habits in my life. Satan doesn't want me to become like christ and align my will with my heavenly father. He wants me to suffer and be miserable like unto him, which is why he wants to stop the construction of my foundation before it gets too strong to break. I've been trying to focus on improving my prayers recently, making them more meaningful, actually talking like there is someone listening, wanting to hear, and pouring out their love for me. Using the gift of prayer has been amazing, though it's not necessary, he commands it because he loves us so much. Everything about this church and its truthfulness/fulness can boil down to one thing: Continued Revaltion. This church just has more. During the period of time known as the great apostasy after christ and his Apostles died, after a long time the Christians stopped believing that god spoke to them anymore. They thought that the mosaic law had been fulfilled in preaching the Gospel to the people. In Acts 10 it talks about a vision that Peter had about preaching the Gospel to not just the Jews, but the Gentiles also, the whole world. God loves us so much that he continues to guide us and lead us through his son, prophets, and more scripture. More ways to grow our relationship with Him. More ways to grow in our faith. The more stories we learn about christ, the more we can grow our faith. Growing our faith and knowledge of the Holy scriptures makes us feel good, we feel the spirit testifying unto us of its truthfulness. That is why learning to rely on god through the many ways listed, helps us to admit our nothingness and be like unto a child and submit to the father. Through the continued guidance, leadership, revelation, and scripture: we can continue to rely on everything god has given us and continues to give us in order to be more comfortable, confident, and humble enough to admit our nothingness to become like his son, Jesus Christ. We are infinitely small in the amount of children god has, on this planet and others. For me it's hard to fathom how I can be of infinite worth to him. As lifelong disciples of christ, we have a mission to gather Israel by inviting them to come unto christ by helping them recieve the blessings of this restored gospel. Without us, there wouldn't be a church. Without us, there wouldn't be a need for a redeemer, a plan of salvation, or even this world. If we left out 1 of his children, the work would slow. Each and every one of us is infinitely important in his glorious purpose and will. We are literally family members to him. In the premortal existence, the reason we are known perfectly by our heavenly father is because he actually got to know us over an eternity before we entered into this second estate. He didn't just know because he's god, he knows because he actually took the time to sit each and every one of us down to get to know every single thing about us, ever tiny detail. He progressed just like us, he knows what we will go through and have been through, he had his own mortal life at one point on some other world, we are walking in his footsteps and he is walking with us in every moment of every day, forever. He wants his family to be like him and better just like our earthly parents. He wants us to recieve that joy he has experienced following his own laws and commandments he created himself. It's a Family Centered Gospel. Overall this week has been pretty slow and full of not much success but it has been so fun. This Week we have zone P Day and zone conference, which is so exciting. I'm also approaching my 3 month mark, which is so crazy and it's already halfway into the transfer. It's crazy how loving the work can make it fly by so fast and i'm grateful to be here. With Love, Elder Batman