Week 41: Halloween and Hesed

I can't believe I'm on week 41. That number seems way too high. This week wasn't as much of a grind as last week. Halloween slowed us down and not a lot of people were home. We still found a lot of people though. Just on Monday night, which was a P-day, meaning we only had 3 hours of real missionary work, we found 3 people. One of them is a kid named Denilson. We talked with him and his parents and it was crazy. They're all super excited about the Book of Mormon. They called it a preparation Manual for the second coming which I really liked. We then showed Denilson the Gospel Library app, and he was like "oh yeah, I'll for sure use this. At least like 30 minutes a day or something." That's just incredible.  Normally it's such a struggle to get someone to read 1 verse in a day.

We had interviews with President this week, and it was really good. We talked a lot about what our motivation for everything we do should be, and really it's all about Love. Our motivation for everything we do should be our love for Jesus Christ. If it isn't, that's OK, but that's where you want it to be. So I'm going to do a deep dive on everything Jesus and see how things change.

We also had an Area 70, Elder Vest, join us in our Branch service this week. It was really funny though, because there were only like 18 of us. I got to talk with him quite a bit though and it was really nice. He led a short lesson and talked a lot about Hesed, which is actually something President Nelson has talked about a few times now. It's a Hebrew word, חֶסֶד. And it is a covenantal love. There's not quite a translation for it in English, and so it's translated many different ways in the Bible (lovingkindness, mercy, goodness, etc.) President Nelson explained that when we make a covenant with God, our relationship is deeper, more intimate, and is now Hesed. It's a covenant type of love, like a marriage. I'm still studying it because I have questions about it, but if any of you want, feel free to study it as well. And please let me know what insights you have! I'll put some of what I learn about it in my next email. Elder Vest invited me to study this talk if you want somewhere to start.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/2022/10/04-the-everlasting-covenant?lang=eng

- Elder Wride

Sorry for not a lot of pictures this week!

I've learned how to cook, but not a lot of healthier stuff yet. Lots of BBQ. There's some BBQ Bacon-wrapped Cheese-filled Hot Dogs.