12 WEEKS TO DO SOMETHING GREAT

Я не могу говорить по-русски!

The week has been great! We had three investigators at church this past week. It was a great feeling to see the work pay off it that regard. Again, we never seem to have great difficulties to find new investigators, but committing them has been the point to improve on.

I set a record for how quickly we could get kicked out of a student dormitory. We were spotted by a group of three guys when we knocked the first two doors (They later earned the title 'Jungs'), who then reported us to the front desk. The woman escorted us outside LOL. We had planned to find some people there, and we would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling kids.

We taught a group of three men yesterday. They seem to be Muslim by title but not super-strict followers of it. The lesson was on the Plan of Salvation and it went well. They pointed out to me, though, how much I say the word "cool (Germans say it too!) and I became self-conscious of it and kept saying it more and more. Now whenever we communicate, we say "cool" about every sentence. 

Coooooool. 

Oh and WOW I HAVE TWELVE WEEKS LEFT HAHAHAHA. That's crazy. Time feels like it has flown by, but I also feel that it's been so long since I have seen any of you. It depends on how I think about it. Rest assured, I accept the fate that I have become less like a person and more like an abstract idea or concept to most of you. 

What is an Elder Wallentine?

We visited some members who were having a very difficult time this week. They are both older and nearing the end of their lives, and it seemed that they were really suffering. We hear about personal and collective difficulties often throughout the world today--that's also what fuels the media, so we are bound to hear it--and some of us may feel like their joy or hope in life is dimming or already gone. If we ourselves aren't struggling with a life-threatening illness, surely we would notice the increasingly degenerate tide of wickedness that is engulfing so much of the world today.

For these reasons, I couldn't help but feel that the remaining chapters of the Book of Mormon were written for our sakes. I felt these words as though they were speaking to the world. Mormon wrote his son, Moroni, the following:

"My son, be faithful in Christ; and may not the things which I have written grieve thee, to weigh thee down unto death; but may Christ lift thee up, and may his sufferings and death, and the showing his body unto our fathers, and his mercy and long-suffering, and the hope of his glory and of eternal life, rest in your mind forever."

Whether or not we say we know, do we truly know and feel why we are on the earth? Perhaps the reason bad things happen is so that we can learn to follow God and rely on his strength. As tribulations greater than we are come, we must rely on God if we are to endure as gracefully and as well as possible. After all, we see today in in history that the peaks of nations' economic growth lead so often to forgetting God because we, pridefully, move away from God because we feel self-sufficient.

Regardless of your spiritual and temporal statuses for the time being, I second Mormon's words of exhortation to his son: May Christ's grace and mercy rest upon your hearts, that you may find peace in Him. The invitation is for all. And may you also remember the great words of Christ prior to His death, which read:

"In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."

Love you guys!

Elder Wallentine