Well I haven't actually gotten to see conference yet! We don't get it
until next week here because of the time change and everything. So
Saturday, I will get to travel a couple hours to the stake center here
to watch it and then probably end up staying there overnight because
of the travel and everything. So I'm still pretty excited about that!
It will be kind of a nice break, but that just means we are going to
have to work extra hard the days that we are actually in our area.
This past week was ok. We had a couple of really tough days in the
beginning where we couldn't really get any lessons that we had
planned. We also tried working in a part of our area that has never
really had much missionary work, but since then have decided it's a
little too far for the time being. The hour and a half walk both ways
in the middle of nowhere convinced us to wait for just a bit before we
trying pushing into that area any more. We did have a couple other
pretty decent days though. We worked a little more with Emmy, our less
active with a bunch of kids that could potentially be baptized. We now
have 3 of her kids preparing for baptism and are hoping to keep
inviting the others. We are still also working with Angelo to overcome
his Word of Wisdom problem and to gain a stronger testimony. He says
he knows the Book of Mormon is true, and believes the church is true,
but isn't sure if it's the one he wants to choose. So we have really
been pushing with him the past little bit. Our church attendance was
also probably the highest it's been in at least a month and a half so
that was great because the Stake President visited to see how the
branch is!
So our work was kind of slow this past week, but I'm looking forward
to this week too! I'm especially excited for conference,so I think I
will wait until next week to send something a little bigger, but I'll
leave a little something for this week. This is from a talk by Elder
Holland years ago while he was President of BYU called The Bitter Cup
and Bloody Baptism. In part he quotes Martin Luther King Jr and C.S.
Lewis. I would recommend the full talk to any of you that want to read
it.
"Martin Luther King once said,
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of
comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and
controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige,
and even his life for the welfare of others. In dangerous valleys and
hazardous pathways, he will lift some bruised and beaten brother to a
higher and more noble life.[Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love
(New York: Harper and Row, 1963)]
But what if in this war it is neither a neighbor nor yourself at risk,
but someone desperately, dearly loved by you who is hurt or defamed or
perhaps even taken in death? How might we prepare for that distant day
when our own child, or our own spouse, is found in mortal danger? One
marvelously gifted man, a convert to Christianity, slowly watched his
wife dying of cancer. As he observed her slipping away from him with
all that she had meant and had given him, his newfound faith about
which he had written so much and with which he had strengthened so
many others now began to waver. In times of such grief, C. S. Lewis
wrote, one runs the risk of asking:
Where is God? . . . When you are happy . . . [you] turn to Him with
gratitude and praise, [and] you will be . . . welcomed with open arms.
But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is
vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound
of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You
[might] as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the
silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be
an empty house. . . . [Yet he was once there.]What can this mean? Why
is [God] so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very
absent a help in time of trouble? [C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (New
York: Seabury Press, Inc., 1961), pp. 4-5]
Those feelings of abandonment, written in the midst of a terrible
grief, slowly passed, and the comfort of Lewis' faith returned,
stronger and purer for the test. But note what self-revelation this
bitter cup, this bloody baptism, had for him. In an obligation of
quite a different kind, he, too, now realized that enlisting for the
duration of the war is not a trivial matter, and in the heat of battle
he hadn't been so heroic as he had encouraged millions of his readers
to be.
"You never know how much you really believe anything," he confesses,
until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to
you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as
long as you are merely using it to [tie] a box. But suppose you had to
hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover
how much you really trusted it? . . . Only a real risk tests the
reality of a belief. [Lewis, p. 25]
. . . Your [view of] . . . eternal life . . . will not be [very]
serious if nothing much [is at] stake. . . . A man . . . has to be
knocked silly before he comes to his senses. [p. 43]
. . . I had been warned--[indeed,] I had warned myself. . . . [I knew]
we were . . . promised sufferings. . . . [That was] part of the
program. We were even told, "Blessed are they that mourn," and I
accepted it. I've got nothing that I hadn't [agreed to]. . . . [So] if
my house . . . collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house
of cards. The faith which "took these things into account" was not[an
adequate] faith. . . . If I had really cared, as I thought I
did[care], about the sorrows of [others in this] world, [then] I
should not have been so overwhelmed when my own sorrow came. . . . I
thought I trusted the rope until it mattered. . . . [And when it
indeed mattered, I found that it wasn't strong enough.]
. . . You will never discover how serious it [is] until the stakes are
raised horribly high; [and God has a way of raising the stakes] . . .
[sometimes] only suffering [can] do [that]. [pp. 41-43]
[So God is, then, something like a divine physician.] A cruel man
might be bribed--might grow tired of his vile sport--might have a
temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have [temporary] fits of
sobriety. But suppose that what you are up against is a[wonderfully
skilled] surgeon whose intentions are [solely and absolutely] good.
[Then], the kinder and more conscientious he is,[the more he cares
about you,] the more inexorably he will go on cutting [in spite of the
suffering it may cause. And] if he yielded to your entreaties, if he
stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that
point would have been useless. . . . [pp. 49-50]
[So I am, you see, one] of God's patients, not yet cured. I know there
are not only tears [yet] to be dried but stains [yet] to be scoured.
[My] sword will be made even brighter. [p. 49]
God wants us to be stronger than we are--more fixed in our purpose,
more certain of our commitments, eventually needing less coddling from
him, showing more willingness to shoulder some of the burden of his
heavy load. In short, he wants us to be more like he is and, if you
haven't noticed, some of us are not like that yet."
Love You all and I'm so glad I have the opportunity to be out here
putting my faith to the test and helping others strengthen their faith
as well! I've seen so many blessings, and despite the trials, I know I
grow stronger every day because of them. So in the future when other
trials come, I will know that my "rope" is strong and will hold fast.
Elder Van Boerum
until next week here because of the time change and everything. So
Saturday, I will get to travel a couple hours to the stake center here
to watch it and then probably end up staying there overnight because
of the travel and everything. So I'm still pretty excited about that!
It will be kind of a nice break, but that just means we are going to
have to work extra hard the days that we are actually in our area.
This past week was ok. We had a couple of really tough days in the
beginning where we couldn't really get any lessons that we had
planned. We also tried working in a part of our area that has never
really had much missionary work, but since then have decided it's a
little too far for the time being. The hour and a half walk both ways
in the middle of nowhere convinced us to wait for just a bit before we
trying pushing into that area any more. We did have a couple other
pretty decent days though. We worked a little more with Emmy, our less
active with a bunch of kids that could potentially be baptized. We now
have 3 of her kids preparing for baptism and are hoping to keep
inviting the others. We are still also working with Angelo to overcome
his Word of Wisdom problem and to gain a stronger testimony. He says
he knows the Book of Mormon is true, and believes the church is true,
but isn't sure if it's the one he wants to choose. So we have really
been pushing with him the past little bit. Our church attendance was
also probably the highest it's been in at least a month and a half so
that was great because the Stake President visited to see how the
branch is!
So our work was kind of slow this past week, but I'm looking forward
to this week too! I'm especially excited for conference,so I think I
will wait until next week to send something a little bigger, but I'll
leave a little something for this week. This is from a talk by Elder
Holland years ago while he was President of BYU called The Bitter Cup
and Bloody Baptism. In part he quotes Martin Luther King Jr and C.S.
Lewis. I would recommend the full talk to any of you that want to read
it.
"Martin Luther King once said,
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of
comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and
controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige,
and even his life for the welfare of others. In dangerous valleys and
hazardous pathways, he will lift some bruised and beaten brother to a
higher and more noble life.[Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love
(New York: Harper and Row, 1963)]
But what if in this war it is neither a neighbor nor yourself at risk,
but someone desperately, dearly loved by you who is hurt or defamed or
perhaps even taken in death? How might we prepare for that distant day
when our own child, or our own spouse, is found in mortal danger? One
marvelously gifted man, a convert to Christianity, slowly watched his
wife dying of cancer. As he observed her slipping away from him with
all that she had meant and had given him, his newfound faith about
which he had written so much and with which he had strengthened so
many others now began to waver. In times of such grief, C. S. Lewis
wrote, one runs the risk of asking:
Where is God? . . . When you are happy . . . [you] turn to Him with
gratitude and praise, [and] you will be . . . welcomed with open arms.
But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is
vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound
of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You
[might] as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the
silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be
an empty house. . . . [Yet he was once there.]What can this mean? Why
is [God] so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very
absent a help in time of trouble? [C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (New
York: Seabury Press, Inc., 1961), pp. 4-5]
Those feelings of abandonment, written in the midst of a terrible
grief, slowly passed, and the comfort of Lewis' faith returned,
stronger and purer for the test. But note what self-revelation this
bitter cup, this bloody baptism, had for him. In an obligation of
quite a different kind, he, too, now realized that enlisting for the
duration of the war is not a trivial matter, and in the heat of battle
he hadn't been so heroic as he had encouraged millions of his readers
to be.
"You never know how much you really believe anything," he confesses,
until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to
you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as
long as you are merely using it to [tie] a box. But suppose you had to
hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover
how much you really trusted it? . . . Only a real risk tests the
reality of a belief. [Lewis, p. 25]
. . . Your [view of] . . . eternal life . . . will not be [very]
serious if nothing much [is at] stake. . . . A man . . . has to be
knocked silly before he comes to his senses. [p. 43]
. . . I had been warned--[indeed,] I had warned myself. . . . [I knew]
we were . . . promised sufferings. . . . [That was] part of the
program. We were even told, "Blessed are they that mourn," and I
accepted it. I've got nothing that I hadn't [agreed to]. . . . [So] if
my house . . . collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house
of cards. The faith which "took these things into account" was not[an
adequate] faith. . . . If I had really cared, as I thought I
did[care], about the sorrows of [others in this] world, [then] I
should not have been so overwhelmed when my own sorrow came. . . . I
thought I trusted the rope until it mattered. . . . [And when it
indeed mattered, I found that it wasn't strong enough.]
. . . You will never discover how serious it [is] until the stakes are
raised horribly high; [and God has a way of raising the stakes] . . .
[sometimes] only suffering [can] do [that]. [pp. 41-43]
[So God is, then, something like a divine physician.] A cruel man
might be bribed--might grow tired of his vile sport--might have a
temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have [temporary] fits of
sobriety. But suppose that what you are up against is a[wonderfully
skilled] surgeon whose intentions are [solely and absolutely] good.
[Then], the kinder and more conscientious he is,[the more he cares
about you,] the more inexorably he will go on cutting [in spite of the
suffering it may cause. And] if he yielded to your entreaties, if he
stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that
point would have been useless. . . . [pp. 49-50]
[So I am, you see, one] of God's patients, not yet cured. I know there
are not only tears [yet] to be dried but stains [yet] to be scoured.
[My] sword will be made even brighter. [p. 49]
God wants us to be stronger than we are--more fixed in our purpose,
more certain of our commitments, eventually needing less coddling from
him, showing more willingness to shoulder some of the burden of his
heavy load. In short, he wants us to be more like he is and, if you
haven't noticed, some of us are not like that yet."
Love You all and I'm so glad I have the opportunity to be out here
putting my faith to the test and helping others strengthen their faith
as well! I've seen so many blessings, and despite the trials, I know I
grow stronger every day because of them. So in the future when other
trials come, I will know that my "rope" is strong and will hold fast.
Elder Van Boerum
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