Week 3

This past week has been crazy. TONS of classes and workshops and lessons, and I've learned a whole lot. Being zone leader has been such a blessing, I love all of the missionaries in our zone. We had a new district come in on Wednesday and that night we got to go in and just get to know them and do a little orientation meeting and help them get adjusted and prepared and it was just fun. They're all super special. One of them was struggling with some personal stuff and President Ford (our MTC branch president and one of the kindest and wisest men I've ever met) let me give him a blessing and offer my own advice and counsel and it was really humbling. Our branch presidency is so awesome. We did arrival interviews when we got here and then we did our departure interviews with them on Sunday and I met with President Ford and he asked five or six questions about how I've grown and what's been hard for me and things of that nature. It was only like a 10 minute meeting but I was amazed at how much I've grown. It felt like the Spirit was speaking through me as I was talking about myself and showing me the different ways I've stretched and grown and the things I can continue to do to become even better. I've learned so much about humility, not the humility that means being quiet and meek, but the fact that truly everything good about me and everything good I do comes from the Lord. Brother Glazier who served with Uncle Steven when he was in the bishopric came in and did a little study session with us about Ether 12:27 and we noticed that the "weakness" it talks about is singular. I think everyone just kind of assumes that that verse is talking about specific personality traits or things like that that we might want to change, but the weakness referred to is our mortal, imperfect state that we ALL share. Christ has given us that weakness so that we may be humble, aka learning to rely on Him completely and fully and with gratitude, so that through his grace and our faith in Him and His teachings we can truly be made strong. It doesn’t happen on our own. And sometimes it takes more then just us trying. Sometimes we have to be pushed. Our extremity is the Lord’s opportunity. For example, Elder Hoyt and I had a little bit of a disagreement the other night. Nothing too major. It was late and we were trying to have some quiet study time but he was being loud and I said something with mostly good intentions (he was admittedly starting to get on my nerves) but I said it in a way that sounded too accusatory and I offended him and he raised his voice and said a few things. I wasn’t super happy and wanted to just retaliate in anger. But instead I went and sat down and prayed and opened my scriptures to D&C 84 and I know the Lord was trying to teach me about patience and love and kindness. And it paid off. We waited a few minutes to cool down and just had a quick talk and were able to sort everything out. I was so grateful. So yeah. The Lord always wants us to *learn*, not just get through it. 

I’ve totally loved all of our investigator lessons and getting to learn to teach and help people. There’s been such a wide range of lessons. We’ve had some where our study has been truly directed and our lesson plan fits perfectly to our investigators and their questions, we’ve had some where they’ll ask one question and we’ll spend 40 minutes talking about that single topic, and there have been some where no matter what we do our investigators struggle. But out of the six investigators we’ve taught we’ve committed four to baptismal dates and then one of them we were able to transfer him to Missionaries in the area so he can prepare more for baptism. His name was Ryan and I have the most amazing story about him. He plays baseball for UVU, he chews tobacco and drinks a lot of alcohol, and he owns a business. He’s a really interesting guy. He had questions about who God was and how he could be happier in life. We had taught him about the Book of Mormon, prayer,  the Atonement and repentance, and a little about the Plan of Salvation. And so our third lesson we invited him to pray vocally with us. It was a very casual prayer but still very powerful. At the end he jokingly said “And God, make it stop snowing” and within five minutes IT HAD STOPPED SNOWING. it was so cool. We pointed it out to him and he was like “no. No way.” And then just started chuckling and we wanted to talk about it but we were out of time :/ but we were stoked cause we were like there’s no way he won’t believe in God after that miracle. We had our fourth and last lesson with him and to put a 45 minute discussion into a few words he said he wasn’t going to change his life just because it stopped snowing for a couple minutes. It was hard but also understandable and through the Spirit we helped him get to a point where he said that when he received a confirmation that he could be confident in he would get baptized. So we helped him to get started in the right direction. It was again really humbling. I’ve really been shown how important diligent study is. There have been so many times where the Spirit has brought a specific verse or principle to my mind in a lesson or discussion and it’s so helpful. The scriptures always teach truth and bring the spirit better than I ever could, and it’s helped shape our lessons and discussions in such an awesome way. And it’s strengthened my own testimony. As I teach the doctrine by the spirit and the scriptures, my own testimony becomes so much stronger. I don’t remember who said that but it was in one of our devotionals. 

We’ve had a ton of fun as a district and I’m going to miss them a ton. Elder Hassler is one of the missionaries in our room and he does the most hilarious impressions. He does Borat. He does George Bush. He does Russians. He does everything. The other day at lunch someone found a huge ball of this weird putty stuff so we started making sculptures and he made a whole family of different people, one of which was his hand who was “the strongest Russian” and I almost threw up from laughing so hard. We also play this game as a district where if you make eye contact with someone and blow an imaginary dart at them they have to freeze until someone who’s not in our district touches their ear. Its especially fun in the cafeteria 😂

Anyways. I’m so stoked to take everything I’ve learned and become so far and put it to use in the field. It’s going to be awesome, and I feel a lot of anticipation but not a lot of nerves. I’m so blessed and grateful for my district and our teachers and everything in the MTC. I love this work that I’m involved in and for the way the Lord has made me an instrument already. I’m grateful for His knowledge, power and love and for how fully we truly can rely on Him. In a little over 24 hours I’ll be in Portland and I’m so excited. As always, it’s lit

With Love,

Elder Bond

Here are some pics for you. The two big group photos are us with our two teachers. The dark haired one in the middle of the picture is Sister Cornejo and the blonde one in the middle of the other picture is Sister Siebach. They've been awesome. And then the rest are us at the temple this morning.