June 24, 2013

The Work of Salvation

Did you all get to see it? I hope so, there was some cool stuff. More on that later.

Anyway. Fun week. Here's a couple highlights.

 

Saturday, our branch had a blood bank activity, so I signed myself up and got to go give blood. It was a lot quicker than I had expected, probably because I'm so used to giving plasma. But anyway, it wasn't to physically taxing. I was a little sleepy at points throughout the day, but really nothing to extreme. Hah, right after I finished up the nurse said "okay, so for the rest of the day, drink lots of water, don't exert yourself too much, and try to stay out of the sun". So...I drank lots of water for the rest of the day. Hah.

But I'm curious, will someone go and look up if that's going to restrict me from giving blood back in the states? I wouldn't think so-I mean technically I'm still in France, right?

 

Sunday night we got to attend the broadcast from the Marriott Center of "The Work of Salvation". It was the training of new mission presidents, to which were invited Full-time missionaries, ward council members, and everyone else who wanted to attend. The historic part of the event (in my opinion) came at the beginning, when L. Tom Perry said that missionaries would now start using computers to do online proselyting. No clue how that's going to work. Or when that might actually happen. But look for Elder Santos's facebook page, coming to an internet near you. Maybe.

 

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT: Some of the other cool parts.

-God isn't going to bless us with more of His children (through baptism) so long as we are not taking care of the ones that He has already given us. Think about that, the people that have already been baptized are every bit as loved by God as those who have not been, and He cares just as much about them. How about us? Do we care less about our less active members than we do about an investigator? Do we even know them? Elder Nelson also told us that we should be "setting a place at the table" for everyone that should be coming, not for everyone that we think is going to show up. Do we notice when people aren't at church? And will they feel that they are sitting in a seat that was just waiting for them, when they come?

-President Monson told the story of a branch president who wanted to have an architect in the ward, so he opened up the phonebook with the missionaries and picked one out. And just like that, they invited him to the home of the branch president to learn about the gospel. So if we think about that in our lives-do we really have less of a chance to know someone that God is preparing than does someone throwing darts at a phonebook? Are we really more likely to offend someone, offering them something that we are sure is a good thing, than we would be in doing so with a stranger? We're in such a good place to do missionary work, and we don't even take advantage of it!

 

Well, I'm going to stop there and try to get some individual responses in. Love you all!

-Elder Santos