THE VISION OF THE SOUTH

"Make no small plans: This is the vision I have for the South. I believe that one day the South will baptize more people into the church than all other English speaking missions in the world together....We will see the time when we will baptize hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands...In your day you will see a million members of the church in the South. There will be temples plural in the Southern States. What a great call you have to serve with these marvelous people." President Spencer W. Kimball

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Check Your Desires (and I'm getting transeferred)


So I am getting transferred. Really transferred.  This time not just to the next area over. I am super scared and sad. I have met people here that I love so very much.  It brings me to tears to leave them; I hope that I will be able to make new friends in my next area and thank goodness for Facebook so I can stay in touch with all the people that I want to. Missions are really interesting. You can never get comfortable.
 
This week I was really impressed by Brad Wilcox's talk called "His Grace Is Sufficient".  There is something in there that really hit me he says that we are not earning heaven we are learning it. That judgment will not be us and God with a checklist saying sorry you only got a 98/100, so sorry no heaven for you. No he thinks, as do I, that it will simple be God inviting us to come and partake of the rich blessing and us deciding if we are going to or not. So my challenge to you is to check your desires and see if you would accept His offer. It is hard and for me I still have lots left to learn but the good thing about a mission is that the lessons are constantly slammed in your face.
 
Love you! Next week I will tell you where I am going. Hopefully it will be somewhere cool!!

Monday, May 19, 2014

TP PW: Go for Gold?

Sent Date: Monday, May 19, 2014
Author: Andrews, Zachary Jacob

President,
This week was slow but good non-the-less. Elder O'Donnell and I are getting along swimmingly, Never understood that analogy, but like it. Some might dare to say that we get along too well. We came to realize that we needed to be a little bit more diligent. So we took the opportunity to push ourselves and go for the Gold. Almost if on a queue we got cancelled on across the board. Now I am used to being cancelled on that is just a fact of missionary work, but with our already shallow teaching pool too many cancels and we are in real trouble. So here we are with our renewed sense of diligence and absolutely nothing to do. So we determined to continue on as normal and fight for every square inch, we didn't get far. We did this for the majority of the week but then about the time our heads were going to explode we get a call, it was Armando Falcon, the family that my trainer Elder Mellor worked with his whole mission. He needed our help.

We helped him and then the next day he wanted us to come over, which is nothing unusual, not to be prideful or anything but they love me and I love them to death. It will be hard to leave them but I am here to do the Lords will not my own. I am rambling. Point is that we helped them out a lot this week and then last night they invited their friends over to have a family home evening the spirit was so strong. This little story just grew my testimony that God, the most powerful, awesome, all knowing Being in the world, is helping me. It makes my hands tremble to type those words. Pardon the french but WTF that is crazy! The funny thing is... He never lets me forget it. And I don't imagine He will.

Elder Andrews,

P.S. Life is good, the District is good, i am sure Elder O'Donnell has filled you in on all the details, he adds a little bit to his weekly letter everyday... don't know if i was supposed to tell you that but oh well. I am reading out of the Book of Mormon but after playing basketball for 4 hours for some reason it is hard to remember what I was going to share with you.