More Catch-Up

June 5, 2011

This week was a good week! We got pretty darn close to achieving our goals. I hope that we'll continue to be able to get closer and closer and eclipse it so we can continue to set higher goals. We had a couple hurdles this week with investigators dropping us for the time being and Melvyn(the one who read the whole Book of Mormon)'s wife hating us which makes it difficult, but we had some awesome experiences and things happen that made up for it. Elder Holland also started to get sick on Saturday and Sunday, so we weren't able to do as much as I was hoping to do but it was still a good week.

The best news is that Morgan passed his interview and will for sure be baptised (british way of spelling it if you americans were looking to make fun of me...) on the 18th of June!!!!!!! I'm so excited for him. It will be a double baptism with an 8 year old boy of a members who we have been teaching and preparing too. They are both really good and clever boys. The other good news was from a couple other individuals that we were able to meet. One was from us trying by a person who used to investigate the church and he happened to be interested. So we tried by his flat on friday and he let us right in. We had a nice chat and he said he had read some of the Book of Mormon and that we'd be alright to pop by again to have a hchat about it. He is 19 years old(at least that's what I've been telling everyone) and he's really chill and nice. I'm excited for him. The other person was a referral we got from church headquarters because she had ordered a Book of Mormon online. So we went by to see her with a member. She is a 17 year old girl who is just interested in searching religions so that she can find the right/true church. We told her what we do and about the importance of the Book of Mormon and she said yes to having us help her to find the truth. I am super excited about her because of the interest she showed and because of the awesome young women we have in this ward that would really help her out and make her feel welcome. We'll have to see how everything goes with them this week and hope they continue to progress and show a greater interest in the church and it's teachings.

Today for P-day, we went to my first British Castle- Caerphilly Castle. It is the biggest one in Wales and one of the biggest in the UK. I hope to get some pictures of it sent out. Also..... Happy Birthday Mother!!!! You are soo old, but that's alright because I still love you!

So this week there seemed to be a pattern in what I was studying. There seemed to many instances where the word "free" or a form of it arose. The first one that came up was "salvation is free"(2 Nephi 2: one of the first couple verses) which to me seemed pretty interesting for those two words to go together since it doesn't seem right. So I decided to research it a bit more and see where else the word free is used. The connection I made with it deals with our agency- our freedom to choose. When you think of salvation, we learn in the scriptures that it is only in and through Christ because of his atoning sacrifice for us. So how is that free when we still have to do the repenting and good works? That is exactly what I asked myself. The conclusion I was able to come to was the fact that Christ performed the Atonement for everyone, whether we apply it or not. So the ability to gain salvation in already in place. Then we know that agency deals with our choice, so we have the freedom to choose whatever we want to. With those ideas in place and the knowledge that the only way to achieve salvation is through the choices we make- to repent, have faith, get baptised, go to church, and all that good stuff- then we can therefore conclude that salvation is free because of our freedom to make all of our decisions. Agency is big. Salvation is big. So if we use our agency wisely and correctly, we can attain this "free salvation" by following Christ and doing the necessary things. Your future is in your hands. You make all of your decisions, not anyone else. So use your agency to find the truth, follow Christ, and attain that eternal happiness that is promised with salvation.

I love you all so much, but I need to go and stop rambling on. Keep finding the happiness and hold onto it. Just make sure to find the happiness that can eventually be eternal and not something that lasts for a couple seconds. Stay cool and keep writing to me because it makes my day to read about others lives.

Love you all,

Elder Hulet