December 15, 2015
Oh what a week it has been! Yesterday was my laziest day of my mission and it sucked. We had a big zone conference with the whole zone, zone leaders, ap's, and the mission presidency. It went from 8-3 so it took up half a day and that half was awesome! They gave a great training and it was everything that I needed to hear. I won a scripture mastery game along with 3 other missionaries and the mission gave me this really sweet tie pin. The other half of the day, Elder Sagmeister got the stomach flu. So just after zone conference, along with the mission president, President Allred, we gave Elder Sagmeister a blessing. Afterwords we went home, Elder Sagmeister went to bed and I just chilled at the home all day. I felt so useless hahahaha I was just on gospel library watching videos and reading scriptures all day.
We also had a huge snowstorm come in yesterday. We have at least 8 inches of snow. I hate the snow. I had the wonderful opportunity to rock a car out of the snow this morning and the snow just has a way of making your day annoying. When it snows it gets all over your face, you constantly are making sure you don't slip on ice, it's usually windy, and did I mention it's cold? Well at least I didn't have to tract yesterday. Elder Sagmeister is already feeling better so we should have a successful p-day today.
We had a baptism on Saturday!!! Woot woot!! I learned how to make programs and my program I made actually turned out pretty good. President Nielsen of the Mission Presidency came and a lot of the Ward was there to support! It was a really good baptism. The father Bradley, who has been fairly inactive, was able to baptize his daughter Reejelyn and that was really cool to see. Our mission
president has us practice sharing the 5 minute restoration so we shared that at the baptism and it was just an awesome day!
Reejelyn was confirmed the next day! Confirmations are more stressful than baptisms. You are just so stressed about the family and if they are going to come to church the next day for the confirmation. Of course Bradley comes in a minute before church starts and I was able to let out a huge sigh of relief. Reejelyn was confirmed by her grandfather, Mike, and so that was also cool to see.
We should have a couple more baptisms this month which is good! In fact it's great! I remember before I came out on my mission (which feels like a week ago) I always told myself that I would consider myself successful if I had just one baptism. Now I've had two and I
honestly still don't feel quite accomplished and I shouldn't. The Lord does not measure your success based on numbers. Yes, Baptism and Confirmation is CENTRAL to the purpose of a missionary. The Lord measures how successful you are as a missionary based on how well you
attempted to fulfill your purpose. And I know I can do a lot more while I'm out here. There is soooo much work to be done. There are so many people who need Christ in their lives. And I am willing to keep doing the Lord's work for the next 21 months to help those lost sheep come closer to Christ.
My testimony is strengthened. I have changed a lot. Yes I'm still 18 and I still do stupid things. You can't fix stupid and I fit in that category. In fact, Elder Sagmeister has started a list of all the
clumsy and stupid things that I've done so far and it's actually pretty funny/awesome. I think that's one of the wonders of missionary work. The Lord needs YOU and YOUR personality, talents, strengths, needs, weaknesses, everything about you. He doesn't want you to a different Elder. He wants you to be a better Elder. I've seen miracles happen as I've let the Lord help me to be the missionary he wants me to be based on who I already am. I love this work and I love the people. Transfers are the 30th and I don't want to get transferred. I just love the people so much and I want to be around to see my investigators be baptized.
On the other hand though if I do get transferred I would love to go to Logan to meet all my long lost relatives. There are plenty of people even in Ogden who know a Dentist Skabelund or a Doctor Skabelund. Fun fact: my Senior couple played on a baseball team with my Grandpa's cousins. Wayne Skabelund and his son Dee Skabelund. I also got a hold of some Skabelund phone numbers and I'm tempted to prank call them.
Wherever I go it is where the Lord needs me and that's all that matters. The church is true. It is led by prophets. Priesthood power and authority is very real. The Book of Mormon is very true. There are
so many people in the world that try and prove the Book of Mormon to be wrong. My challenge to those is to read the Book of Mormon and pray for themselves. God works in mysterious ways. We don't need to understand everything. We just need to understand that God is our loving Heavenly Father and he wants us to return to him. He has provided a way and we need to accept that way. We all accepted his plan we just need to follow it.
Alright that's enough preaching. I love you all!!!
Elder Skabelund
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