Tuesday, June 14, 2016

May 30, 2016

Dear Family,
It has been an eventful week. It all started on Tuesday when Elder McGuire got in a couple of heated arguments with some people finding. It didn't help that those people were disrespecting us and calling us hypocrites. One guy told us that we haven't repented and that we don't share a message about Jesus Christ and that we believe in fairy tales. Elder McGuire was getting frustrated and had enough. We finally just walked away. Cooler heads prevailed. This frustration was an accumulation of frustration built up for almost 2 years. We meet a lot of rude people on our missions but some days you just get tired of it.
On Thursday we got a call from a member in Ontario who sounded very distraught. He asked us to visit him. We thought he was from Sackville at the time. We asked him where he lived and he said Brampton then we're like "Uhh.. we're in Nova Scotia we can't really come fly to Ontario to visit you." We told him we'd track down the missionaries in Brampton and have them visit him. So we located the Brampton Elders and we actually called them on the phone and told them to go visit this guy. It was so weird to talk to missionaries from another mission. After we got off the phone with the Toronto missionaries I realized that at any given time we have the capacity to locate any missionaries around the world and call them. I could very easily find out what Chris's phone number is and call him.

It made me grateful that our Church is a worldwide church. Missionary work is the same work regardless of if you're in Nova Scotia, Texas, or Alberta. It's the same work of salvation. The gospel is also the same gospel regardless of where you go. Above all we all have the same loving Heavenly Father. It reminds me of a scripture: 2 Nephi 27:23 - "For behold, I am God; and I am a God of miracles; and I will show unto the world that I am the same yesterday, today, and forever; and I work not among the children of men save it be according to their faith."
Last weekend we agreed to help a less active that we work with move into Halifax to live with his girlfriend. We didn't think of anything of it at the time. On Thursday we got a call from the Elder's Quorum President and he basically said "Now wait a second here.. there's something sticky about this. We're helping him move to another apartment so that he can live common-law.. so in essence we're helping him break a commandment." After we got off the phone we made various phone calls to get various opinions. Our hold up from not helping him move was we were actively working with him and we already told him we would help him move. Plus we didn't want to ruin the relationship. Finally we called the mission president and he told us that we shouldn't help him move. But it wasn't for the reason we expected. He told us that in the missionary handbook it says that missionaries are not to replace the efforts of the Melchizedek Priesthood function. 

This Sunday, The New Brunswick Stake and the Nova Scotia will gather together in Sackville, New Brunswick at Mount Allison University to hear from Elder Renlund of the Quorum Of The Twelve Apostles and Elder Gong of The Presidency Of The Seventy. We will be traveling via transfer van on Sunday morning for 2 hours to be there. All of the missionaries in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Maine, and PEI will be traveling there as well. It is interesting that you also have a multi-stake conference in 2 weeks with some apostles and general authorities. 

Have a good week!
Love,
Elder O'Brien (the older)

No comments:

Post a Comment