Week 7: October 25, 2010

Excellent its another pday! Its good to hear from everybody and again it looks like a lot of changes are going on. Geez this week was awesome, we had zone training with president Probst. He is preparing all of us missionaries for may when the MTC's start teaching a new curriculum on missionary work its called the Doctrine Of Christ. Im not so sure if i am even supposed to tell you about it but it goes along with Preach My Gospel. PMG was just a stepping stone out of those old memorized discussions, Anyways The doctrine of christ is just another element to PMG which centers more fully our message around Christ, and it is really intersting to look at and see how every principle we teach ties back to our heavenly father and Jesus Christ. Its Great to see how much better and more effective the Doctrine of Christ is than just PMG, president showed us that since he has been teaching DOC we have more than tripled the number of baptism dates in our zone. Also just yesterday we were priveleged enough to have Elder Holland come and share his testimony. If any of you are not familiar with Elder Holland he is an apostle just like Peter, James, John, Bartholemew, Matthew, Nathaniel just to name a few from the New Testament. But Elder Holland is a witness of Christ and apostle in these latter days. Anyways Elder Holland shared with our stake his testimony, he started off by telling us to try and imagine what Peter the senior Apostle must have felt like when Christ was crucified. Peter had only been learning and following Christ for about 36 months to the end of Christ's ministry, he really didnt have all that much experience. Peter really didnt know what to do, he was devastated the man who he had followed ever since he was told "come follow me.. i will make you fishers of men". The apostles didnt go out and do as Christ wished them to do, they basically went back to work as fisherman I can picture them just saying well that was a great run while it lasted now thats over lest go fishing again. In John 21 Christ appears to his disciples for the third time after his ressurrection at the sea of tiberias, they were not having any success on the sea coincidence i think Not. They fished all night and in the morning Christ was standing on the shore but they knew not it was him, he said unto them do you have any meat? the reply was, No. Christ said cast your nets on the right side and we all know that they could not draw their nets into their ship. After Christ fed them he asked Simon Peter three time Lovest thou me more than these(fish) then feed my sheep! 3 times Christ asked him that and on the third reply Peter Cried and wept and finally understood what he was supposed to do. He wasnt supposed to go fishing, he was chosen to be an apostle a special witness of Jesus Christ and for the rest of his life was to go and preach His gospel or in other words feed His Sheep. Elder Holland then told us that he was too called of god to be a special witness of Christ an apostle and how special his calling was, he then told us that anyone who is baptized does the same thing they take upon themselves the name of Christ and are then disciples of him Provided they are baptised with the proper authority. Man what a special day it was to hear an aposlte of the lord speaking to a huge congregation, he then wanted to meet all of the missionaries after the meeting. We all met him, shook his hand and were able to talk to him for a little bit and then he shared with us how happy he was that we were all on missions and how important the work is. What a powerful man and so spiritual every word he spoke pierced us to the heart. It was a life changing experience it was awesome. Other than that this week was pretty normal no dog bites no injuries haha oh well there is always next week. Im still doing fine and ill probably get that package next week so im pumped for that thanks mom! At any rate I hope all of you are doing alright i keep you in my prayers. hopefully it doesnt seem like i rushed this e-mail but im excited for pday! so love you all!

Chase