Another week down (Mar 12, 2008)

Hello everyone! Thank you for all of your emails. I hope everyone’s having a good week. By the way, Mom, that’s bizarre that Chris Barry is engaged! I don’t believe it. Everyone I knew is so old…

We had a great week. Our investigator, Natalya (who used to be desperately out of work, but now has a little job to get by on while she finds something else) is VERY close to baptism; all she wants to do now is see a baptism firsthand and see what it’ll be like. We had a powerful first lesson with her where we spoke about the apostasy especially, discussing the implications of the apostasy in general and, most importantly, to her personally. We read Ephesians 2:19-20 and I drew a picture where a church building was built on a foundation labeled “Apostles and Prophets,” with Christ as the cornerstone. (This is a very common teaching tool, by the way). As we talked about the apostasy, we crossed off the words “Apostles” and “Prophets.” We then talked about how Christ leads his church through revelation to his prophets and apostles; so, without them, Christ’s presence isn’t in the church. We then crossed out His name. We talked about how without a foundation, a building can’t stand, and it was the same with the church. Other people tried to rebuild the church, but they tried to do so without that foundation; their buildings won’t stand either. Then, as we talked about the restoration, we talked about how Christ restored prophets and apostles. He speaks to them through revelation, and they are again the foundation of the church. We then told her that the other churches formed are made up of very good people, who for the most part believe very strongly in God, and who do very good things for other people. God loves them just like He loves all of His children, and His plan will save them as well. But in order to receive exaltation, the highest form of salvation—in order to live with God Himself, just as we did before this life and just as we all agreed that we want to, we need His church, with His foundation, and His authority to offer the necessary ordinances.

In other news, I’ve been trying to improve my ability to cook, since my ability right now is hovering around zero. This past week, I’ve made pancakes and French toast, both of which turned out to actually be pretty good. It made for a good change from my usual two breakfasts—cereal or scrambled eggs.

Well, unfortunately we haven’t been to a village recently, but hopefully this Friday we’ll be meeting with an investigator who lives about two and a half hours away. It should be pretty fun. The name of his village is Vorokhta, which sounds kind of like it could be a Klingon word from Star Trek. Actually, there’s a lot of villages that sound more like Klingon words than anything else.

I love you all! Thank you for everything, and I’ll write you again next week!

--Elder Hurst

PS – In case anyone didn’t understand the title of my last email, “Life: 21, Elder Hurst: 0” is supposed to be like a score. It was supposed to be funny.