WEEK 13 LANSING (WEEK 84 0F MISSION)

hey everyone! no time this week! 

Last Week Transfer Day
Loading up the Van again!

so the mission department of the church is coming to our mission tomorrow... sweet right?? thats why we have no time! trying to prepare for that! haha itll be soo cool!!! 

things are going great here at msu. sooo nice to have students on the campus again haha. felt like during christmas break we would talk to the same people every day! "i know you said you weren’t interested yesterday, but what about today? no? darn... well... see you tomorrow!" haha anyway... things are great. xiang li and mark are total bosses!! we got to see mark again for the first time since his dec 6 baptism. he is the coolest. he loves teaching with us and got a copy of preach my gospel so he can help his friends understand why he lives the way he lives. we gave preach my gospel to xiang li too and then we met with him like 4 days later and he was like... "i love that book! especially chapter 11! how to help people keep commitments." 

"how much of it did you read xiang li?"

"remember when you first taught me you asked me to read the scriptures and study for 10 minutes/day at least? well i study for an hour a day. so i read the whole book."

hahahah he is the greatest. so fun to teach with them because they are so eager to tell how the Gospel has blessed their lives. Mark calls blessings "benefits" so he always teaches people that if you will believe this then you will receive all the benefits. derek martindell is doing well. his schedule is really open so he will be teaching with us all day every day! best converts ever! 

Isn't what we believe incredible?? God knows all things. We have no way of knowing what tomorrow will bring. How utterly unreliable are our own plans and thoughts. We would be much wiser to seek counsel from God. We don't always end up doing what we want to do, or even what we planned to do. But all that really matters is if we end up following God's plan for us. We ought to counsel with God in all our affairs so as to not be going the wrong direction. Obviously this idea has a lot to do with why God gave us parents. Nephi teaches in the first verse of the Book of Mormon that what made his parents goodly was that they, "taught him somewhat in all [their] learning..." Our parents have been there before. They love us. Their deepest desire is to see their children be happy and successful. This is the same situation each of us are in with our Heavenly Father. Hearken to (which means to hear and then, most crucially, to obey) the counsel of your parents and especially the counsel of your Heavenly Father. His direction often comes through His prophets, whose duty it is to set standards and determine right and wrong in our day and age. Follow their counsel. Disobedience is the dumbest thing we can do, for we know not the consequences, but God does. Therefore, in order to maintain our happiness, He gives us commandments, which if we follow their course, will point us, "through this vale of sorrows to a far better world of promise." (alma 37, near the end of the chapter, cannot remember the verse off-hand. I recommend reading it). 

Love you all! have a good week!