Hey fam & friends!
Hope you all had a great week. It is getting really cold here again. Its supposed to snow tomorrow haha Im really happy that this is my last Iowa winter for now! Sounds like the Chili Cook Off was a success and a blast! We have a ward halloween party coming up so we have talked to all the members and they are planning on inviting their friends and neighbors!!!! Its gonna be sweet and we signed up to be judges of the dessert contest...its great to be a missionary! Also, Blake, Jordan, Dallas, Chase, Trevor, James, and Dallin are all doing great. I love reading their letters! We were definitely all in the same "work of salvation" classes in the pre-earth life ;) STUDS!
So this week, we ran into some apts with a bunch of Congolese people. We met like 6 families and started teaching them a little bit. It is hard b/c all the men work all the time and most the older women speak only Swahili or French. But the kids love us and we will see what comes of that tricky situation! We had a sweet experience the weekend before last. We hadnt been able to meet with Milord (our investigator with a date for Nov 2) all week and it was Saturday so we really wanted him to come to Church. We called and texted all day, but no response. Then, as we are saying our goodnight prayer, he texted at 10:32 and said he was sorry that he had been working all day. Well, it was tempting, to say the least, to text him back and make sure he knew about Church the next morning at 9am, but we are not supposed to use the phones after 10:30 (Lights out). Because we were raised by goodly parents who taught us to trust in the Lord, we stayed obedient and prayed that he would come. The next morning he called at 8:30am, told us that he had gotten off work at 2am that morning but still wanted to come to Church! He came and it was a great fast & testimony meeting.
It is my testimony or knowledge that obedience to the Lord's commandments means everything!!! Like Joseph Smith said,"I make it my rule that when the Lord commands--do it!" And there is nothing that our Savior Jesus Christ didnt teach us when he uttered with the weight of the agonizing atonement on His shoulders, "Nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done." If we really are Christian and believe in God and His love then we obey. We understand that we are imperfect and tend to mess things up, so we might as well follow the promptings of the Spirit and leave the rest to our Heavenly Father. A lot of times, we think that we are powerful and great, so we can do things on our own. Like with Milord, we think that WE are the ones who can get him to Church. That is when we forget that only the Spirit of God, the Holy Ghost has the power to change hearts and natures, not us. We need to always be putting ourselves in situation where we have to rely on Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. That is the essence of humility, which leads to all other Christlike attributes, including faith and charity. Obedience is the first law of heaven so lets find ways to be more obedient. Nephi in the Book of Mormon is my favorite example! Read the scriptures and it will fuel your motivation to do more, believe more, and love more. Have a great week and I love you! Love, Elder Seth McGinn
ps Pic of the Tristan family from Des Moines! She is the one that was in Vegas and called dad :)
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