Monday, September 26, 2016

This week has been a joy, about half way through the week Elder Glad and I realized we needed to be more diligent in listening to the spirit for finding and speaking to our brothers and sisters. So we have been doing our best to do so and we are starting to have more success now in finding. Though it was towards the later part of the week so we only found 2 new investigators but will find many more this week.
This week I have been working hard towards growing in my temperance/self mastery. I quote I heard this past week was something along the lines of "self mastery is necessary to invoke the power of the priesthood". I believe that full heartedly to be true. If i get frustrated or angry and cannot learn to control those emotions and reactions I will have no power and will end up listening and acting based off satans views. I do not want that. I have been working towards learning to control thoughts and motivations and pushing through when i am tired or unmotivated. For example in the mornings I do as you suggested and when i get up and as we run i start to think of the future, of visions, goals, and dreams i have and how i need to learn to push through and keep going in diligence to get there, i know to well that without being uncomfortable i am likely not growing. As i have been doing this there has been much change in me. I am also doing the same with diet, as i have realized God has blessed me with a beautiful tabernacle and i am the steward over and need to take great care of it. Especially if i want to access the full blessings the holy ghost can offer. If i am not taking care of my body I will have limited access to this gift and blessing from Father.
Henry is doing alright but not as hot as he was before. He has been slowing down quite a bit on his personal prayer and scripture study and that is where his problem lies. Our last lesson we invited him to pray and think about where he wants to see himself in 1 year and in 5 years and to write down his goals/vision for himself. Next time we will help him make plans to get there. (reading,praying, listening to spirit). We also were blessed to be able to get Pat Spurgeon to go to womens conference with Sister Reed, we heard she had a wonderful time. That she showed up in a bad mood after fighting with family but was about in tears by the end of it, she felt the spirit.
This was part of a talk I loved.
After Jesus had been teaching the Nephites as a resurrected person, giving them as much truth as in his wisdom he felt they could absorb at one time, he counseled them to go to their homes, and to ponder in their hearts the things he had said, and to pray to the Father in his name to find out if they were true, and then to come again on the morrow and he would teach them more.
Now that gives us the pattern by which we should operate in the Church. We come together in congregations, seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit, studying the revelations, reading the scriptures, and hearing expressions of doctrine and counsel given by those who are appointed. These teachings ought to be delivered by the power of the Holy Spirit. They ought to be received by the same power. And if they are, then the speaker and the hearer will be mutually edified, and we will have true and proper worship.
Then when the meeting is over, the “amen” should not end it. We should go to our homes and to our families and to our circles, and we should search out the revelations and find out what the Lord has said on the subjects involved. We should seek to get in tune with the Holy Spirit and to gain a witness, not solely of the truth and divinity of the work in which we are engaged but also of the doctrines that are taught by those who preach to us. We come into these congregations, and sometimes a speaker brings a jug of living water that has in it many gallons. And when he pours it out on the congregation, all the members have brought is a single cup and so that’s all they take away. Or maybe they have their hands over the cups, and they don’t get anything to speak of.
On other occasions we have meetings where the speaker comes and all he brings is a little cup of eternal truth, and the members of the congregation come with a large jug, and all they get in their jugs is the little dribble that came from a man who should have known better and who should have prepared himself and talked from the revelations and spoken by the power of the Holy Spirit. We are obligated in the Church to speak by the power of the Spirit. We are commanded to treasure up the words of light and truth and then give forth the portion that is appropriate and needful on every occasion.

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