Dear Family,
It is so great to hear from you both and humbling to hear that you recieved those kind words from President Ellsworth and Brother Peterson. I will be telling you of my experience with bro peterson in a minute. But i would like to thank you for all that you have done for me. Those comments are certainly attributed to you both for raising me the best that you have, i am grateful for you both pushing me to succeed and achieve my goals, you have always supported and loved me no matter what, and i promise you that no matter how annoyed or frustrated i may have seemed growing up, i am grateful for everything that you have done for me, i would not be the person that i am today without you so thank you so very much i love you dearly. That is incredible to hear about the man you are reactivating! His story is somewhat similar to a man that we are working with (Santiago, i will tell you about him in a minute as well in the Miracle March update). It is absolutely humbling and incredible to witness and feel that sincerety from those willing to change everything to come to know our Father in Heaven better and make sacred covenants with Him. Some may seem like a King Lamoni's father's experience, willing to give up everything, their whole kingdom, others may be like the people of Ammon, they just have that "one thing" their "weapon of rebellion" that they bury deep in the earth as a result of their covenants. I will certainly keep Steve in my prayers. What a blessing the gospel is in this life, it truly can change us and others as we live and obey the first principles and accept the ordiances of the gospel. i hope you all have a wonderful time at Conference this weekend, i am extremely excited to hear what our beloved prophet and Christ chosen apostles and other leaders have prepared for us. i know that they have thought and fasted and prayed and thier words will be specifically for us and as we attend and watch and listen with an open heart and with our spiritual ears, the Lord will tell us exactly what He wants us individually to know through them.
i hope the job works out for ash and i also hope that work is going well for both of you! Things may be crazy and busy and hard, but i bet they are certainly worth it! Spiritually financially speaking, the Lord's return on investment is far greater than anything that this world can offer, wouldn't you agree? I too know that putting pride aside, or as i said "burying our weapons of rebellion" can be hard, but submitting to the Lord's will will bring so many blessings and miracles and is so worth it.
MIRACLE MARCH UPDATE!!
These may require back story (which leads me to talk about bro peterson then leading into santiago). On thursday last week we had a training in which two representatives from the missionary department were there to help us out and help us more fully become instruments in the Lord's hand. Brother Watson and Bro Peterson helped us more fully understand and apply the Doctrine of Christ in everything that we do, when we "build upon the rock of our Redeemer" we are building upon the Doctrine of Christ, everything that we teach and do is an appendange to this doctrine. What is this doctrine? We often refer to it also as "the gospel" or those first principles and ordinances i mentioned earlier. When it comes down to it, it must help us build our faith in the Savior, have a desire to repent and change, recieve baptism or the sacrament, feel the Holy Ghost more in our lives and endure more. So, we focused on the Restoration, however, not the restoration of the church but the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and practiced building upon this "sure foundation" for our lessons and our teaching. It's incredible to see how much work it takes and how long i have to go before even being partially capable of teaching haha but that's what it's all about, that's a good thing that i still have room to improve, for if i didn't, i would be in some serious trouble. But on the ride back to PQ, we were able to give bro peterson a ride up there and all the way we were talking about what we just learned and how we can more fully apply these principles, he taught me and practiced with me in the car, we role played and practiced and evaluated in the car, it was incredible! I realize this to be a once in a lifetime opportunity for me, so it was extrememly humbling. We then went and had a lesson with Santiago and his girlfriend who is investigating the church Samantha. guess what we taught? you guessed it the restoration of the gospel of jesus christ. needless to say, we had a lot of help from the spirit and tried to follow those gentle whisperings and promptings, what a lesson that was! the spirit was intense and Samantha accepted a baptismal date for the 28th of April! we will continue to help her receive the gospel and do everything we can to help her prepare for that date. but the lesson is not over, we then invited Santiago to offer the closing prayer (backstory, he is a Marine who has been out of the church for a while and does truly desire to change and feel the presence of the Holy Ghost more in his life. ok back in) and when he began praying, after about fifteen seconds it went silent, i kept my head down in hopes that he would not feel embarassed and would keep praying, my companion looked up from the prayer a couple of times and tried to help him through because we didn't want him to feel embarassed or we had not taught him how to pray, but he couldn't say a word, and then Santiago started to cry, he began to offer up the desires of his heart to our Heavenly Father and the spirit was so incredibly strong. we got up from that prayer and we all embraced Santiago and he said to us "that was the first prayer i've said in a long time". What an incredible experience and how wonderful the gift of prayer and repentance is, all possible because of our Savior and His loving sacrifice for us. the repentance process is a beautiful thing and that is truly how we can individually access that healing power of the Atonement, it is real, i testify to each of you that the Atonement is real and has the power to heal all wounds, no matter how big or how small. We then the next day had the opportunity to teach Jen, the wife of a less-active member whom we are also teaching and reactivating the gospel. That lesson we taught, listend and discerned as best we possibly could and Jen's goal is to come to a decision, or to receive revelation about the church (Jen has been taught by missionaries for a few years, so she knows a lot of the doctrine and chances are that she has already recieved an answer, we just need to help her recognize and understand the holy ghost in her life). The member that we were with, Bro. Smith bore powerful testimony of the sealing power taken place in the Holy Temple and Jen does have real intent, she was able to come to church this past sunday and both she and her husband stayed for all three hours. This is the Lord's work and i am blessed to be able to be a part in it.
Well family i must go, but it was great to hear from you and i wish all of you the best and know that this gospel is true, it is the fullness of the everlasting gospel of Jesus Christ and He is our Savior and Redeemer. Until next time,
Love,
Elder Aaron Jordan Lloyd
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