My report on how to live life

Today is the 27th of August, 2012. 18 months ago, I got out of my parent's mini-van and walked into the Missionary Training Center. I spent 3 weeks there, and then flew to the most foreign land in the United States of America, Texas. Now, in exactly 6 months from today (not that I am counting down) I will go to the Dallas Temple, have testimony meeting and dinner with the departing missionaries, and go to sleep for the last time as a missionary in Texas. This is crazy.

It's rough whenever people ask "how long have you been out?" or "how long do you have left?" because then I start thinking about home and stuff, and I don't want to be trunkie in any way.  

This week was one of those weeks where you just wish people would just use their agency in a way that allowed them to progress. I mean, you wish that every week, byut this week was rough. Tons of punched appointments, nobody came to church, everybody had an excuse, and it was just disappointing. I mean, life goes on, but still, it was just a more dry week than normal. Except with the weather. It has been a really weird August for Texas, we have had a lot of rain this month. yesterday during studies it was sprinkling, then right before we walked out the door to go to church, the sun came out and heated everything up, and it was really humid. We got to church, went to YSA sacrament, then went in for Ward Council with the family ward. During ward council the primary president came in and was soaked, she said it was raining hard. We got out and it was a downpour. It rained like that for most of church, it rocked. That was the hardest rain so far this month, but we've had longer rains that were less intense several times.

 We also got out on the bikes more this week. We live on a big 4.6 mile loop (hence the street name Harmony Circle) and we decided to get the bikes out and ride around it to talk to people and knock on doors. It's a country area, so there is some distance between houses. Most are futher apart than Grandma Stoker's neighborhood. It has been good when we have done that. I love riding the bikes, it just bites trying to convince myself to do it.

 Well, that's about it for this week. I love y'all! Have a great week! Find someone for the missionaries to teach!

 

--Elder Braxton C Foust--

The Doctrine of Christ

"This is my report on how to live life. They say the best way is just to live one day at a time. If you try to live seven days at a time, the week will be over before you know it." - Sally Brown (Peanuts)

 This week was awesome. We are really seeing miracles start to happen. We have been finding a lot of people that have allowed us to come back and teach them. The only problem, which is the same problem missionaries seem to have all over the place, is getting them to come to church. One thing I have noticed is that we invite and invite and invite people to come to church all the time, and it is like pulling teeth. But some random person they meet once says "hey, you should come check out my church" and they go there. It is so dumb. That is why members are so important in this work. Because when a member invites them, they are more likely to come. So invite your friends to go to sacrament meeting with you! 

On Wednesday we had our Zone Conference. It was awesome. It was held at our stake center and Denton Zone came down, so I got to see a bunch of people I was up there with before, including Elder Phister. It was a ton of fun. I got to conduct the meeting, so I sat with the APs up front and had to get up over and over again. And the Elder that was suppose to play piano got lost on the way from Denton, so President asked me to play piano as well as conduct. That was interesting. "we'll now have an opening hymn, #72 "Praise to the Lord, The Almighty." Sister Facer will lead and I will play piano" and then I walked across the front to the piano, and had to sight read a song tha I do not know how to play. If I had known I was going to have to play it, I would have been practicing it. Oh well, it wasn't a big deal. But if you ever get to see the person conducting the meeting have to walk back and forth to the piano, it is pretty funny.

Zone Conference was incredible. I love listening to President Sagers teach and train, because nobody does it like he does. He knows everything there is to know about the scriptures. We talked about the Fall of Adam, and about how we are all fallen, and we need to overcome our personal "falls." He talked about how when Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden they left to the East (because Cherubim were placed in the East at the entrance where they left through) and how the tabernacle in the Old Testament was set up with the three doors facing to the east, and how it is symbolic of moving back in towards God's presence. Then he described and explained a lot of the sacrifices and ordinances that took place in the Old Testament tabernacle, and how it is similar to the Temple today, and how it is symbolic of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I loved it. That was just one subject. It rocked.

We had some great lessons this week. A couple weeks ago we got a referral from a man in St. Louis who said he had been working with a family for a while and they are ready to meet the missionaries now. I will call this family the Keller Family. We had been trying to get in for a while, but they have a gated driveway and we didn't have the code, and the phone number we had didn't work. We were able to get her Cell phone number and then got to set up an appointment. We went in there not knowing anything about this family other than they were "ready." Boy, are they ready. As we were talking about some stuff, the daughter mentioned the "puppy book," whcih we obviously had no idea what she was talking about. So they pulled out a three ring binder (the over of which has puppies on it) and opened it up. Inside were pages of the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price that had been marked, cut out, and put into page protectors sorted into subjects. Sister Keller told us that as she read those books she would mark stuff she loved, but then couldn't find it again later on, so she bought another one, and as she finds stuff she likes she cuts it out of one and sorts it in the Puppy Book. She has already read the standard works. She loves it. I have never seen anything like this in my life. And their daughter is brilliant, she is 11 years old, but has a strong understanding and love of the Bible, all from personal studies. I am excited for this family, they are great. Brother Keller has not done nearly as much research, but he is open to learn too.

The reason my title is the Doctrine of Christ is simply this. Everything we do, teach, learn, and apply goes back to the fundamental doctrines that Christ himself taught. Faith in Jesus Christ and his Atonement, Repentance, Baptism by immersion and by the priesthood authority for the remission of sins, the laying on of hands for the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end of our lives. Anyone who does not strive to increase their understanding of these doctrines cannot develop their relationship with their Father in Heaven, and cannot fully partake of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. The Atonement covers both the physical aspects of our existence and the spiritual, but without the full Doctrine of Christ, aspects of each of those are lost. If we want to come unto Christ, we must follow his Doctrine. We must live his gospel. My invitation is for you to study Faith this week. Study what Faith really is, what it does to affect both our behavior and our nature, and what you need to do to increase your faith. Study with prayer, and I promise you will have a greater understanding of what faith really means.

I Love Y'all! Have a great week!

--Elder Braxton C Foust--

Egg Rolls and Cake

This week was pretty exciting, and also very stressful. We had a good amount of success and taught some great lessons.

Tuesday was fun because I was on exchange with a brand new district leader to train him on how to fulfill his responsibilities. He is going to do great. We taught some great lessons together too. We taught one of our eternal investigators, I will call him Caleb. Caleb is a strong Baptist. He constantly reminds us of that fact. He has told us several times "I was saved in 1974." Well, Elder Moore and I have taught him a lot and he understands that those are our beliefs, but he hadn't had a moment where he realized that we weren't just teaching our beliefs, but that we are teaching truth. That we are teaching God's beliefs. So on Tuesday we started to teach about Baptism, and he asked how we baptize. Once I told him about the physical aspects, I explained (again) the need for authority. Finally something clicked. He started to ask more about the need for authority, and eventually I had broken down that this is the same organization that Christ had. He is the head, he was 12 apostles, there are 70s (found in both the old testament and the new) who report to the apostles, and then there are units in the different areas, like in the NT there was Corinth, there was Philipi, there was Ephesus, there was Jerusalem, etc. Today there are groups in Weatherford, in Fort Worth, in Dallas, in Denton, etc. Once he saw the organization of Christ's church, and I again explained authority by the laying on of hands by those who have authority, he realized something and said "so basically what you are saying is that my pastor had no authority to baptize me, and my baptism wasn't valid."

This can either be a really good turning point or a really bad one. Fortunately with Caleb, it was fine. He said he'd study the Book of Mormon and pray about it and about authority. We'll see what happens.

Wednesday was our Zone Training. We had a really good training and even had one of the members of the YSA ward come because she is preparing for a mission. It was a really good meeting. With this over, some of our stress for the week was taken care of. But not all of it yet.

On Saturday we had a full day. We had lessons lined up from the morning until dinner. Then after dinner was what I thought would be the scariest thing of my mission so far. In our meeting with the Stake President a few weeks ago he asked us to speak at Bishopric training on how the ward leaders can help member-missionary work, and have a Q&A about it, and do it all in 15 minutes. This may not seem like a big deal at first, but let's look at some key points. We are talking to a bunch of older men, who hold priesthood keys, and who know a lot more than we do. At the same time, they assume they know more about missionary work than we do, but forget that our mission is nothing like theirs was. President Sagers instructed us to teach out of Preach My Gospel, which we did practically nothing but quote Preach My Gospel. The worst part about it is simply that no matter how we present this message, someone will not be happy, and they will let us know. We have to do all we can to help the work progress, and not step on any leader's toes. We did the training on Finding, and talking about how missionaries work with members, and how the ward leaders can help that go forward. It went pretty well. Bishop Bell, who we live with, said he was impressed and loved it, so that's really the one that matters. I'm just glad it's over.

And now this morning was crazy too. The Bell's have had missionaries in their garage apartment for 4 years now, and it has taken some damage due to high traffic 19-21 yr old boys living there. So they are remodeling it. So our morning was spent packing up, moving out, and tearing up the carpet, the padding, the carpet tack strips, and the base boards. All in all it took about 4 hours. Now tonight they are going to be painting, and then the tile guy comes tomorrow. We should be back in by this weekend, but it'll be crazy.

Yesterday was an eagle court of honor for 5 guys in the ward. We didn't go, but we had to do our sunday night reports and got there as they were cleaning up, so we got some left over food. Egg Rolls and Cake (hence the subject line). It rocks. 2 of the boys are brothers, and their parents are from Cambodia. They actually escaped during the war. The Father in the family has told us stories about being near the killing fields (like Elder Nielsen talks about) and stuff, it is crazy. His wife makes really, really good eggrolls. I am going to go home and eat some today.

I Love Y'all! Have a great week!

--Elder Braxton C Foust--

Tastes like Chicken

Actually, in case you're wondering, Guinea Pig does not taste like chicken. The taste is more like Pork Loin.

This week was a really good week. Transfers went smoothly, everyone is ready to go, and we found 3 new families to teach. All of them have a lot of potential.

 One of them is an Army recruiter and his wife. They are really cool. The lesson we had there was incredible, the spirit was strong and they felt it. Now we'll see if that keeps up. I will call him Joe

The next family we found is a large family, they have like 7 kids total, kind of a his and hers deal. We are not sure if the husband is going to be very receptive, but the wife likes what we've shared so far a lot.

The last is an elderly couple. At the moment the wife is not interested, she is 7th day Adventist or something, she goes to church on Saturday. But he loves what he has seen of the church and what we have taught. He is an excommunicated Jehovah's Witness (long time ago) and he hasn't found anywhere he feels like he belongs. But he came to church yesterday and loved it. I'll call him Jerry.

Gus is back in the hospital. He wasn't being taken care of very well and got dehydrated, and he had bad affects from his medication, and his kidneys shut down. We haven't heard much, and we're not sure how well he is doing. We're praying for him a lot.

Last Wednesday we did baptismal interviews for a companionship in Cleburne. It is a family of three, so we both got to do interviews. The coolest thing about it was that they are from the Marshall Islands and speak Marshalese, and no english, so a marshalese member translated for us. It was really cool.

 ZLC was on Friday, it was also incredible. We talked about "Where we are," "Where we want to be," "How we are going to get there?" and "When will we do it?" for the mission about several things. Baptisms,  lessons, investigators at church, our teaching skills, our conversions, and a couple other things. It was really good.

I love teaching people. The second scariest thing in the world is knocking on someone's door. The scariest is when they sat "come in." That happened twice this week. But I love it once we get passed the initial contact, because this is the most important message in the world. I learn a lot as I teach people, because as I listen and hear what they feel, think, hear, and see, I understand how to teach to them, and how to help them understand. One way that happened was talking about Prophets this week. Prophets are called of God. They are ordained by someone who has authority from God to do so. They receive the Priesthood authority through that ordination. They also receive revelation for the whole world when they receive this ordination. As they receive revelation they write their words down, and it becomes scripture. When Moses wrote the 5 books of Moses, he wrote the history and the revelations given to man from God that had happened to that point. He also added what revelation he had received all the way up to the moment he left this life. Then Joshua took on the role, and continued to write a history and revelations. His words did not remove the previous prophets' words, but added to them, and testified of them. This continued all throughout time, throughout all the dispensations. Although there were periods of apostasy in between books of scripture, God continued to call prophets. When Christ came, he fulfilled the role of prophet, and he is also the savior of the world. He prophesied, received revelation, received and used priesthood authority, and spread the gospel. His words were written by apostles, and after his death, they continued to write scripture as they received it. Again, these writings added to the previous writings, and testified of them. But eventually, the apostles were all killed. When this happened, Priesthood authority given to man, and Revelation for the world ceased in Jerusalem. People still had the writings of all the holy prophets, but continued revelation ceased. They had the words of Christ that had been written, but without continued revelation, how could they be kept pure as they had in the past? The answer is simple. They could not. And with this we see the prophesy of Amos come true from chapter 8:11-12

It is not that people can't find the Bible, because that would be silly. The Bible is everywhere. But people can't find the words Christ is speaking right now unless they hear a prophet’s voice. There are 14 million members of the church worldwide. Not all of those listen to the prophet’s voice, and other billions of people in the world do not either. They (and maybe you) are living in fulfillment of Amos' prophesy. If you are not hearing the words Christ is speaking today, you are "running to and fro not knowing where to find it." Even if you don't think you are.

There is a prophet of God living on the earth today. He has been called of God, ordained from on high, and receives revelation from above each and every day. If you do not choose to listen to his words, and follow the commandments Christ gives to him to give to us, as Christ has with all the prophets before, you are choosing to miss out on some blessings. We have to be 100% obedient in order to receive 100% of the blessings. The only way to receive the highest degree of glory is through 100% obedience, through submitting our will to our Father. And how can you submit your will to God if you do not listen to what that will is? You cannot. And no one can be saved in ignorance. Choosing to be ignorant is choosing not to follow Christ.

So, let us do as he asked when Christ said "Come, follow me."

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--Elder Braxton C Foust