Email #77 - New Plymouth
Dear Mom, Dad, Breck, Izaak and anyone else reading this
email!!
Hi everyone! My
goodness it has been a hard working and fun week here in New Plymouth. But
before that I will answer your questions.
First off Elder
Kofoed is fun. He likes to work hard and strives to always have the guidance of
the spirit with him. When we pray and talk about what we should do to help the
people we teach you can tell that he has a strong love and desire for those
people to progress in the gospel. One
funny fact about him though is that he is related to pretty much half the town.
(Yes it is a Mayberry town.) Yep, he has aunts, uncles, cousins and
grandparents here. I'm amazed he was even aloud to come to this mission because
of that. But President just told him; if you are with family, make it a
missionary experience. So, if you happen to be up in New Plymouth and we
happened to meet I would make sure to make it a missionary experience for you
all. lol. (As much as I love you though please do not come where I am. I would
go nuts and probably try to sneak home with you all.)
Now the car
picture… If you are talking about the red car with the scratch on it, just know
that the person we hit is still alive..........JK! I was just too close to the
mailbox when we were checking the mail and I scratched the car. lol. That was
an annoying time, I had to fill out a whole accident report form and even draw
a diagram of the accident. It was kinda fun but more annoying. lol.
Now that I am in a
car area my asthma is doing better, but Boise took a toll on my inhaler. I will
need a new one soon, and I am all out of the preventives. My pants are fixed, there’s
a member here who was able to do that and they look good as new! I am positive
that all the members who assist the missionaries in any way are greatly blessed
and I truly appreciate all they do.
Now seminary was
super fun! We taught four classes, and as each class went by I got more and
more confident with our teaching. We talked about Psalms 22,23 and 24. When I
first read them my thoughts were, "What the heck is this even
saying?" But Elder Kofoed helped me out and we quickly saw that all three
of these Psalms talked about Christ and His Atonement. So we began by first
reading a few verses in Psalms 22, and then watched the Mormon message entitled
"An Apostle's Easter Thoughts on Christ" with Jeffrey R. Holland. Oh
how I love that video, if you haven't seen it look it up on lds.org under Mormon
messages. After that we talked about what thoughts we had as we watched the
video and then read Psalms 23. We then turned real quick over to John 10:11-15,
which talks about the good Shepherd and his sheep. In verse 12 we read about
the wolf that comes and scatters the sheep. Now what do you think the wolf
represents in this story? Satan right? Well John Bytheway talked about these
verses and he said that he doesn't see the wolf as Satan, he sees the wolf as
the law of justice. We have sinned, and the law of justice say's we must pay.
But read verses 14 and 15.
"14 I am the
good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.
15 As the Father
knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the
sheep."
Christ is the good
shepherd, and he stands in between us and the law of justice. We then talked
about how because Christ paid the price for us we are now indebted to him and
he has set the terms on how to repay him. Those terms are what make up his
gospel. All that he requires of us is to have faith in Him, repent of our sins,
be baptized and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost and endure to the end. And
we endure by continually trying to follow Christ, repenting and making
covenants with God in the Temple. This is where Psalms 24 came in with the scripture
mastery in verses 3-4. We then bore our testimonies and that was the lesson.
Needless to say it was super fun, and the kids seemed to really enjoy it all.
Ok, now about the
rest of the week. Apart from seminary a
lot of time was spent introducing me to the members. Specifically the ones we
work with most the time. We have some great member here by the way, One that I
really like a lot is brother Butler. He is the seminary teacher AND our high
councilman over missionary work. We had dinner with him and his family a few
nights ago and he is very knowledgeable in the scriptures and in deep doctrine.
We also have Br. Jerry Jones who is a
ward missionary. We helped out in his Sunday school class of 9- 11 year old
boys. We dressed up as King Limhi and Alma and told their stories as found in
Mosiah21-24. That was fun.
As for investigators
we have a few. Dave is one who has been investigating for close to a year now.
He's in his late 30's but in his mind he is around 13 to 17 years old. He keeps
saying 'If I find out it's true I will get baptized." So we asked him what
he was doing to find out the truth. His response was "meeting with you
guys." That's good, but not the best way to find the truth. So we talked
about the Book of Mormon with him, and shared Moroni's promise in chapter
10:3-5. We then committed him to read from the Book of Mormon every night for
the rest of the week. We'll be following up on that this week.
We also have two
older sisters named Renee and Carol. We brought Br. Jones along and watched
"Joseph Smith, Prophet of the Restoration" with them. The spirit was
very strong. And I always tear up watching that movie no matter how hard I try
not to. It's so frustrating!! lol.
Anyway. On a side
note, Elder Kofoed really likes basketball so we have been getting up early and
playing basket ball at the church. On Fridays we meet at the high school and
play with some members as well. It is super fun and I am getting pretty good if
I do say so myself. lol.
So that's me this
week. Busy and having fun! Sounds like you had a busy week at the ranch as
well. No surprise there. And I'm with you Mom, I hope you have a slow week this
weekend so you can just sit back and enjoy conference. I am so looking forward
to conference as well. Do you realize I have only one more conference on the
mission after this? This next month I will have only six months left!! (I try
not to keep count but it just can't be helped at times. lol.)
Well, I love and miss
you all. Thank you so much for your prayers, love and support. Take care and
stay cool!
-Elder Bevell-
p.s. Dad. Holy long email Batman!!!! lol. "Fight the
good fight" -1Tim 6:12-
p.s.s. Here is a picture of the Boise Temple. Enjoy!
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