Dear Family,
It was so good to get to see all of you on Sunday! Kinda unreal. It amazes me, the two times that I have talked to you, how normal it is. I don't feel like I ever left (except for the fact that everyone's hair is longer). I have a scary feeling that when I finally get home again that I will have that same feeling, that I never even left. I've been working harder lately on becoming more truly and lastingly converted. I've realized that the more of your heart you give out here the more your heart will change. Sometimes its just hard to give everything you've got because disappointments still come. But at least at the end of the day you could say that you really lived, that you really tried, and you left your mark behind.
So we had the most spiritually-blasted week in the entire world! You know when you exercise really hard and your whole body feels like jello? That is how may spirit feels right now. It has been incredible! We had our Zone Conference this week with President Christianson. The beginning of the day started in none other than.... the Sacred Grove. Just like Joesph, we met all together on a beautiful clear Spring morning. There we sang, and were instructed on being the Lord's angels on this earth. Then President Christianson took us on a tour through the grove. Everything was peaceful and beautiful, the sun was shining through the trees, the birds were chirping everywhere, and as we continued to walk down the path in silence I could just feel and hear something so much deeper. There is a spirit in that place that cannot be denied. It is a place of revelation. A place where you can understand your relationship with God more as you understand what His relationship was with the young prophet Joseph. I know that what Joseph Smith said happened there really in fact happened. I know that it was in that beautiful grove of trees that God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, appeared to answer a 14 year-old boy's prayer. I know that Joseph was not a perfect man but when he heard the voice of His Father call, he responded. That grove of trees is a place of peace, of light, and of hope. Everything that the Gospel of Jesus Christ brings to the world.
When our grove time was over we met in a chapel to listen to the words of Elder Holland from the MTC devotional that he gave in January. What a spiritual whipping! He laid down the law, that we are to never go back to the people we were before our missions! That we are to be like the Apostles of old and leave our fishing nets back at the sea, and never return. We have all been asked by the Savior of the world to "Feed His sheep", and we are called to do that for the rest of our lives. This work never stops until the great Jehovah says that it is finished.
Sister Stoker and I were also able to go to the Temple this week, first time in about 7 months. Man, I love that place. I wish we never had to leave it to go back to such a confusing and distracting world. I have decided that the main thing that Satan uses to get me out here is distraction. He never gives up, he knows our weakness even more than we do. He's kinda a jerk. So... my new goal: Stick it to Satan, by spreading the good news of the gospel to everyone.
