Missions. It's the life.

Have you ever found a machete and just wanted to chop down a whole bunch of forest to get to that one person that needs to hear the gospel?

I have.

Have you ever driven past a small moving object on a road, pulled over immediately to the dismay of your companion, run back and saved a turtle from certain death?

I have.

Missions. It's the life.

This week has had a real focus on members. Did you know that until the members are strong and ready to support missionary work it is almost impossible to do missionary work? We've developed a plan to build all the members in our ward. We visit them. We share with them the story of Nephi building the boat (1 Nephi 17). We ask them what their vision is for their family. We ask them what their tools are to get there. We help them make the tools. And the tools are a series of steps:

1. Daily prayer and scripture study (individual and as a family)

2. Attending church regularly

3. Regular Family Home Evening

4. Keep the Sabbath Day Holy

5. Keep all the commandments (10 commandments, word of wisdom, tithing, chastity)

6. Participate in sharing the gospel (visiting teaching/home teaching, missionary work, family history)

7. Attend the temple regularly

Where are you in your vision? What do you need to do to change?

Now, we can't just walk into a random person's house and start interrogating them on how they are living the gospel (though sometimes we do just that). So to build trust and show our love (WE MISSIONARIES ABSOLUTELY LOVE YOU. Please remember that) we do service! Service is how we show our love.

So for a few hours we visited the Shafer's house and sorted through all of his collected metal, looking for aluminum! We did it with the elders. Have I ever told you have much fun elders are? They are fun. See following picture for demonstration (both of these bikes are broken):