OBEDIENCE

Well, lets get to the meat shall we...

Last PDay we went with the other Elders to the Peachtree city church building to play sports and stuff but while we were playing scatterball Elder Elsholz (AP) destroyed his ankle so we rushed to the urgent care. The rest of the pday was spent playing munchkin so I can't complain. 

The AP's had zone conference 3 days this week so we were loaded with the car miles. Thank goodness for that...

Wednesday we had a great dinner with the Brown's and their non-member friends. They were pretty open to gospel conversation so it was a great learning experience on both sides. 

Thursday we had the best Zone Conference ever!! Most of the conference was about having Faith to find and also being exactly obedient. While I was on exchanges with Elder Elsholz he shared with me a quote from Pres. Eyring. I probs already shared this last week but since I can't remember we'll do it again...

"We must do everything in our power to qualify for the spirit of the Lord..." 

it went on to say more about missionary work but just this one little line changed my whole perspective about the spirit. I don't think I knew I was doing this before but I realized I needed to change my perspective. It was almost, "I will do the bare minimum to have the spirit with me." As I have been out on my mission I know how important it is to have the spirit with you at all times and in all places, what a wonderful thing missions are. 

Stake Conference was Saturday and Sunday, it was so awesome!! A member of the seventy named Elder Baheshty (that is definitely spelled wrong) came and gave wonderful talks. The Saturday night one was interesting and frankly sneaky...I'll explain. He got up to speak and his first motive was first to depress us by showing everyone what was happening during the apostasy, then before he built everyone up by presenting the Restoration, he first chastised to show how important Temples are and missionary work. It was incredible!! HAHA

Also, random sidenote but David Archaleta (spelled wrong again) came to the Sunday session. It was super funny because all us missionary got up after the prayer and Elder Elsholz just said, "hey look its David A." We all thought he was joking, he was even joking but it turned out to be him. He is super short, like 5'2" maybe. Elder Ashcraft asked him for a pic twice and he was turned down both times, he was pretty depressed about that. HAHa, I know I don't have a pic or vid but y'all will just have to take my word for it on this one. LOL

Sunday afternoonish to eveningish we were biking in the town square and while we were waiting at the intersection a guy from the corner pub bar opened the door and yelled at us to come inside. He wanted us to listen to him do open mic so (and since it was raining and we were just going to do tracting) we agreed and it was actually a great finding opportunity. I know we are supposed to avoid the very appearance of evil but when we told peep's that we didn't drink coffee or beer it sparked up a lot of interest. It was so funny!! I will never forget that experience!!

Two kinda spiritual thoughts before I end this email...first one is a quote from Elder Holland. 

"An obedient missionary (member, disciple,etc.) by definition has the spirit of the Lord with Him ALWAYS."  That is so crucially important to understand!! I will just leave it at that. 

While we were with the Browns for dinner, Brother Brown shared a really cool thought that I expanded on a little bit. He was talking about while we are grasping onto the iron rod, we sometimes see people wandering in the darkness. They are too far away from us to grab them and pull them to the rod so instead as members (and missionaries) we link arms to bring them back to the light. That can be applied to missionary work so well! As a missionary and his companion are walking down the strait and narrow path holding to the rod, we may be able to get someone prepared for the Gospel message every once in while (at least in the Georgia Atlanta Mission). But when members are involved, and we can all link arms, that chain becomes longer and longer and we are able to bring a lot more people into the Church! That was kinda cool thought!! 

Love y'alllllll!

Elder Northrup