October 12-18, 2010: "Faith is really an action word"

Well hey!

Awesome letter. That is so crazy Talor is getting married... Kyler sent me an email and this is all it said: "Talor?????? did you hear about our cuz???????????" hahaha That was back when I had no idea! That's really cool though. I bet he's a great guy. Yes, I did receive the letter this week along with the pictures. Thank you! I needed some new pics to put on scripture cases and what not. Now whenever I'm teaching about families or something I have a picture to show so that people don't think I'm just making stuff up about how amazing my family is. Often times when street contacting I use the tactic of...'despite the fact that I am hundreds of miles away from my family, I've really never felt the immense amount of love that I have for them as I've made the Book of Mormon and the gospel of Jesus Christ the central focus of my life.' (that sounds bad because that should be the central focus of our lives at ALL times but still you get the point.) For some reason that ends up hitting home with a lot of people and they agree to hear about our message or to read from the Book of Mormon.

Man! The day long yellowstone trip! If I could think of a heaven on earth and it wasn't Phoenix, AZ (as a missionary...) I would have to say that you saw it on that awesome drive! Dang! Sounds like you saw some good animals too. Surprisingly there are a lot of hunters down here and sometimes it gets tough to hear about their stories but I read Jeremiah 16:16 (Behold, I will send for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them; and after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks) and find that I am also a hunter and fisher at the moment as well. :) Kinda helps and relieves the salt to the wound. Haha jk. Gimme a few months and we'll be back in Hell Hole and/or Aghetter Hollow creating eternal memories.

So this week has been awesome! The first week was the pits, and this week has been uplifting. I know that if we don't experience the sorrows, we won't appriciate the good times either. Elder Nelson is awesome and has been growing and increasing in confidence very quickly. It's been weird though, this week we've had more people want to bash us and debate than I've ever had in my entire mission! I think it's been because I've needed to learn how to handle those sorts of situations. At first, I would get pretty contentious and mouth off scriptures and ask them why they believe certain things if the Bible says that it's supposed to be a certain way and the conversation would get pretty heated. That's NOT how it should be done haha. And slowly but surely after each person that wanted to "chat" I learned that's how it shouldn't be done. Now, after the discussion with a guy last night, I just smile at them, agree with everything they say, just respond with a quick "yup" or "sure" and they end up getting very angry. Hahaha Then, because they have studied so much about our religion, they try to tell us what we believe. That's when I come in with scriptural references to all their material regarding what they THINK we believe. Last night this guy was goin crazy! Just furious about how we believe that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are two separate beings. Man, Elder Nelson and I came out feeling good because we didn't retaliate at all except for bearing testimony and sharing references from his Bible. haha that's the best... As fun as it is though, it never really gets anywhere.

District meetings are getting fun! I often feel like the elders don't need to listen to me though because they've been out so much longer. So I do my best to just be good friends with them and then it ends up working itself out. There's a member of the district who used to be an office elder named Elder Sentman. Oh, he's 27 years old HAHA. He's awesome though and we get along really well. I have to go on exchanges with each elder in the district every transfer and last week I was with Elder Schafer in his area so Elder Nelson had to plan out the entire day in our area and take it over for a day! He did awesome! I wish I didn't have to leave our area to go on exchanges so much because of all the good stuff that's going on. A few weeks ago we tracted into a lady named Trish and she invited us back the next day. We went over and as we sat down with her she looked at us and said, "you know, there is something I forgot to tell you. About 25 years ago when I lived in Oregon I got divorced from my first husband and then two missionaries knocked on my door. I ended up getting baptized." Of course we were kinda disappointed (haha) because she seemed so solid but as we talked she said she wanted to get reactivated in the church. She said she lives with her husband who's not a member but he would NEVER be interested in coming to our church at all. Well we went over on Tuesday of last week and had a good chat with them. Terry, her husband, sat down and talked with us and we discussed the restoration, Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon and several other questions. He was really nice and towards the end of the lesson I asked them if we could help them clean up their house. They tried to blow it off but I insisted and finally they gave in. We ended up throwing away HUNDREDS, literally hundreds, of unpaid bills that were piled on their coffee table. It took about thirty minutes and then I moved over to the fireplace and mantle. There was literally a 1/2 inch to 3/4 of an inch of dust coating all their picture frames, mantle, fireplace, and everything that was placed on it. I grabbed a nearby vacuum and started sucking up all the dust. The whole place came a live with color! Seriously there were things that I thought were grey that after I vacuumed them, they turned out to be fire engine red. We cleaned up the room real good and then Trish looked at us and asked if we wanted dinner. Of course we were starving and she made us some tacos. So the visit with Terry, who we were told would never want to meet with us ever, ended up with him wanting to come to church and then also to come to the temple to watch the Joseph Smith movie. It was awesome and service can go a long way if you let it!

Another thing I've noticed is that soon after people meet with us, a whole rush of anti material all of a sudden becomes present in their lives. I know it's not coincidence. So now in lessons we have to talk about that. We tell them that "over these next couple days before we meet with you again, you are going to have a lot of random things show up that are against the church! You will have a lot of questions but just know to come to us to have those questions answered." It almost always happens like that. A girl named Gracie goes to school with a member of the church and stopped us one day in a parking lot and said she wanted to meet with us. We scheduled an appointment and over the next few days before the appointment she heard just about everything a person can say that is negative about the church. She asked us about the answers though and she was perfectly fine with what we said! We invited her to be baptized and her response was, "well of course I would! Why wouldn't I?!" Haha She is awesome and definitely the elect.

This week I studied a bit about faith and how "faith without works is dead" (James 2:17). I wanted to find a reference in the Bible that talked about what faith is and also what those "works" are that the book of James states. In Hebrews 11:1 it says, "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." To me, that's powerful..."the evidence of things not seen." A lot of people we come in to contact with think that all we have to do is BELIEVE in Christ and we will be saved. I just don't think it's that easy. I've noticed that for me the only way that I'm able to feel of the spirit and keep the spirit with me is when I do the "works" part in exercising faith. Faith is really an action word. I believe the works we must do involve consistent, sincere prayer, scripture STUDY, church attendance, obedience to the commandments, repentance (because we all mess up, and I have to repent daily out here haha nobody's perfect and repentance is such a blessing we have been given), the ordinances that Christ has told us we need to return to live with Him and the Father, etc. I found another scripture in Hebrews 11 that states, "But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." I love how it says without faith it is impossible to please Him - without faith, without action, without work. With this new responsibilty as a trainer and district leader it's been awesome to see the help from Heavenly Father as I've prayed and asked as well as doing needed "works" to fulfill what He would have me do. I know, without a doubt, that by faith miracles are wrought (Ether 12:16, Moroni 7:37)

I hope all is going well for you! Make a cardboard cut out of me and Elder Figgins or something so that we can still be in the pictures at Talor's wedding! I love you all so much and if you ever feel so inclined to send pictures again, please don't be bashful. Haha I love them!

Love you all so much.

Love,

Elder Colton Mouritsen