"Our gated door was gone!!!"

Elder Rich and I are keeping ourselves pretty busy out here. I think I
mentioned last week that we have built up a pretty large teaching
people and that is always nice. It is hard when you don´t know what to
do during the day but we haven´t had that problem lately. In fact..
some days we don´t find enough time to visit everyone that we have
planned to visit. It´s a good feeling and I am really happy where we
are at. Now it´s time to start focusing in, get these people to really
progress, and help them take the steps necessary to come unto Christ.

Something kind of crazy went down last night. Elder Rich and I were
doing our nightly planning and we heard our gated door outside
rustling around a bit. We used that it was just the other missionaries
that we share a house with coming back and didn´t pay any mind to it.
About 10 seconds later when we realized that they still weren´t
opening the door Elder Rich got up to check. He opened the door and
our gated door was gone!!! Some kid had stolen it and was running down
the street with it. He ended up dropping it and running away so that
we couldn´t catch him because the door is pretty heavy. We grabbed the
door, put it back on the hinges, and everything is good now. There is
no need to worry about us and our safety, however. We live in a nice
area and it was actually our fault. We know that we need to close the
gated door and lock it every time but we figured we´d leave it open
because the other missionaries hadn´t gotten back yet.

Anyways, I gotta hop off this computer now but hope you all are well
back home. Praying for you guys and especially the Nielsen family.

Love,
Elder Rainock

"Really inspiring"

Written October 7.

Conference weekend was really inspiring and it is always a treat to hear our loving prophet, apostles, and other church leaders speak to us. As well as the Mormon Tabernacle choir that always sounds fantastic. 

 

I have never taken so much away from conference in my life and it makes me wonder how much I have missed in the past. Taking and reviewing notes is a skill that I have comed to love since being on my mission and desire to take with me afterwards. 

 

There are so many things that I would love to share from conference but for lack of time I will only be able to share a few things that I think might help all of you back home the most. 

 

1. If you missed the saturday sessions then you must go back and listen to them because they were amazing jam packed full of good stuff. Elder Dube stuck out to me as a very captivating speaker (very much do to his enthusiasm and sweet accent) and was very inspiring. It was a fun talk to listen to and his line, "never look back, look at waht we still have to do" kind of dropped the hammer on me a bit as I just completed 8 months on my mission and have been dwelling on hitting my 1/3 mark a lot. 

 

2. Missionary work is really hastening around the world and the involvement of the members with the missionaries is KEY! The talks by Gifford Nielsen and Elder Ballard from saturday are good places to get started if you need that extra kick in the pants. "Make the decision to do what Jesus Christ has asked us to do...fear will be replaced with faith when we kneel in prayer for opportunities to share the gospel." - Elder Ballard

 

3. Elder Eyrings talk in the sunday morning session was very good. I always have the desire to grow a strong love for the Lord because I know that is the first and great commandment but sometimes I don´t know how to go about doing it. He mentioned some choices that lead us to growing in our love for the Lord. 

 

One is through repentance and gaining an understanding of the atonement... that one really hit me as I reflected back on how much my love has grown for my Lord and Saviour through the healing powers of the atonement. There isn´t a day that goes by where I don´t think about how glad I am to be where I am because of the decisions I have made to apply the Atonement in my life. I am trying to be more pure every day. Like Elder Scott said in his talk: "repentence is not punishment, it is the hopefilled path to a more glorious future."

 

Another way that we can grow in our love for the Lord is through accepting calls to serve him. That one hit me hard as well as I am currently on my mission after having accepted a call to serve him continually for two years... it has truly brought me closer to the Lord. 

 

Elder Rich and I have built up a huge pool of people we can now teach after 4 weeks of really hard work. It was very challenging at first but now we can start focusing on specific people who are currently ready to take important steps in coming unto Christ. Thank you for your prayers!

My heart aches for the Nielsen family. They need everyones´ prayers right now.. please keep them in your hearts and in your prayers. Sister Nielsen lost her husband and her children lost their father due to a tragic, unexpected, turn of events. 

 

My prayers for all,

 

Elder Rainock