Week 6 in Holly Springs/New Car/First Transfer and Tornados

Hey Yall, what a week it's been. I want to start of by expressing my gratitude for all of the prayers and thoughts and live that have been sent my way. We have felt them and this week was really good. We were really focused and successful. It's a bit of a long email but it's been a pretty cool long week.

OUR WEEK: was super busy and full. We had about 4-5 lessons scheduled every day this week. We also had our last exchange of the transfer this week where we switch with the district leader and for 24 hours we have a different companion. We did the transfer right after we had district council in Oxford and went to Buffalo Wild Wings because it was Tuesday so we got BOGO wings. During the transfer we met John Basham, see the picture with me holding a gun. He is awesome and has already read the Book of Mormon and said he completely knows its true he just hasn't been able to be contacted because he was so sick. Then we got a call that we had one of the oldest cars in the mission, a 2019 Tacoma lol. Because we are in the area on the church ranch we are getting a brand new 2022 Nissan Frontier on Wednesday😍. That made the exchange weird because we had to wash and clean out the Tacoma. That took a bit of our time and they had to set up the new Orbcomm or tiwi as they used to call it which is the safety device for the car. But it was funny because we're getting a new fleet system at Zone Conference in a couple weeks. The new truck is awesome. The way it works is that the church buys new cars and then before anything requires maintenance, they auction it off and buy a new one. That way they are super safe and they don't have to deal with tires or engine issues. It's kinda cool and the way they do it they don't loose too much money. I was super interested because it seemed kinda wack with tithing but it actually saves the church money in the long run by not having serious accidents or dealing with repairs.

Transfers: me and my comp and the rest of our district are all training and we are all staying the same so that makes this next transfer super nice.

Tornadoes: The weather here has been mega weird the whole week. It goes from frigid cold to the bone to 70s with 100% humidity. We had a thunderstorm and tornado warning on Thursday so we had to hurry and get home from downtown Holly Springs which is about 8 minutes from our house because we actually live in Redbank which is basically just on hwy 178 West. We hurried home and had a study with our zone. There was no damage to anywhere around us, but my phone died which had the Sim card and we were exhausted so we went to sleep. We forgot to text in and our phone was dead so they didn't know if we were safe 🙃. Sorry for that scare. We woke up and did the transfer deep cleaning and then when I booted up my phone, there was a ton of texts and calls.

Spiritual Thought:

This week I really had a lot of amazing spiritual growth with understanding time and how faith works as well as just my relationship with God. I want to share an excerpt from a book I read during free time. The book is "The Screwtape Letters", in Chapter 15 on page 75. This is a letter from a head demon to his nephew trying to tempt a man he says,

"The humans live in time but our Enemy (God) destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself and to that point of time which they call the present, for the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. -- He(God) therefore would have them continually concerned with either eternity, which means being concerned with him, or with the present. Bearing the present cross, receiving present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure. Our goal is to get away from the present and get then to think that the future is the eternity."

Sorry for the long quote but it really opened me up to so much understanding about God and our relationship with him. God is only concerned with the present and our eternity and how those two things relate. The Atonement is the catalyst and connection between the two. Nearly everything in the world, the news, media is getting you to focus on what happened or what might happen. Neither of which matter and rarely even impact you personally in the present. The whole point of this life is to begin to prepare now and experience in this moment so that we will be able to reach the eternal and infinite potential we have and are continuing to inherit from God.

MY CHALLENGE THIS WEEK: Is to analyze your life and see where your focus has been and see how you can focus you attention on growth you can have RIGHT NOW, today. What is the task currently ahead of you and how are you going to just smash it. How could you let Christ author your story more and not listen the noise of the world. Please email me a response I love getting responses and I'm working on responding to each one but if I don't get to you know that I read it and appreciate it anyway.❤

Some suggested study and links:

First off the new 2022 Youth Album is an absolute bop, here the link, but it's like a Baptist pop music album with LDS doctrine and scriptural references haha.

Dust

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/trust-in-the-lord-2022-youth-album/dust?lang=eng

These talks together are amazing,

Invite Christ to Author Your Story

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2021/10/42johnson?lang=eng

Look Down the Road

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2021/10/57meredith?lang=eng

-It was cool he came to our Sunday devotional yesterday and it was so good. I was basically crying the whole time haha. Not that hard to do I guess, my comp says that all the time but there are just so many spiritual experiences and so much to be grateful for.

Timing

https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/dallin-h-oaks/timing/ And this is a talk that my sister, Bridget, sent me and I absolutely love it.

I have also been reading Isaiah 9 preparing for Christmas, and its so good especially with the Cleon Skousen commentary.

Love you all and I'm so thankful for you all,

-Elder Ball in Holly Springs, Mississippi