Long Week

G'day! family and friends!
well, this week has been... interesting, but i think i will start this out by answering anna's question- Anna, i dont know exactly if the BOJ's portion of the plates are the sealed portion- what i DO know, is that when Ether Hid up the plates, the lord confounded the language and had him bury the Urim and Thummim with them. why? because that record contained the things that people did that had to do with the secret combinations of the devil, and the secret oaths of darkness made by those the devil influenced. now, God didn't want that information available to everyone, because that would cause too many people who wanted to be in high places to get some bad ideas. Also, the ONLY people who can successfully use the seer stones are seers, and prophets. prophets wont use those secret combinations, so they are allowed to interpret those writings. so, mosiah interpreted them, and then didnt let the people read them, but put them with the rest of the record, and now we have them to learn from. hope that answered your question.

anyway, this week was very... disheartening. every last appointment canceled that we were actually hopeful about. it made things very difficult. however, there were a few highlights. first, we had interviews on friday. I LOVE interviews. i get to ask president lots of questions and we have some of the best Zone leaders in the mission, so we received some MEAN training. i love being in the same place with lots of other missionaries, trying to all work together to become better. we have a goal this year of 240 baptisms in the first 6 months. the main quote is this: "if we use last year's methods, we will get last year's results." our goal exceeds by a long shot last year's results. so now everyone is scrambling to get better and baptize more. its hard. but its really good.

Also, we had stake conference this weekend. we were allowed to go to the Adult session on saturday, where the keynote speaker was Elder Hamula of the area presidency. it was MEAN! (and by "mean", i mean awesome!) he spoke about the sealing power and how important that is, especially in light of the many natural disasters that have been happening in the pacific area in the last month. He also spoke about how when parrents live up to their sealing covenants, their children are sealed to them, no matter what. and that sealing will eventually prompt the wayward child to repentance, so that they can inherit the celestial kingdom with the rest of the family. that brought me lots of comfort.

oh! there was also a tsunami warning for australia! but, im far enough inland for it to not affect me, but they later said it was only dangerous for those in a boat. but it was a great day for me, and then p-day was a welcome relief from the stresses of last week.

you'll be happy to know alos that i went to the doctor, and was prescribed this inhaler thing, thats not really an inhaler, but i haven't coughed hardly at all since then. so i'm getting better, and the doctor said i should be all good within a week. so ya. :) any way, my time is up, so i'll talk to yous later! i love you!
love,
elder Tayler Christensen