the hometown of champions

Another week has come and gone, and the weather continues to be sweltering! This last week was all clear blue skies and above 100 degree weather for most of the day, and that's what it should be like for the rest of the month! ha We had an investigator who we visited who the heat was really getting to. He has been going through different challenges, but this time all he could think of was the heat. We read Elder Uchtdorf's conference talk, The Hope of God's Light with him, and he just kept making comments referring to the unbearable heat. It was pretty hilarious! I'm pretty sure his favorite part of the lesson was when Elder Olvera was helping him download the Book of Mormon on his phone and I walked over to his broken fan and wiggled the control and got it to work. I had to hold it a certain way, but he immediately told me to stay there for the rest of the lesson. At the end, he asked my companions if I could stay behind to stay there fiddling with the fan control. He's pretty funny.

 

This last week I learned a lot about confidence! The Lord doesn't just command us to do things he knows we can do and then leave us to our own faculties! He "prepares the way" to do them! We have to have confidence that the Lord will show us what to do. The nice thing about the Lord's plans is that the hard things always require growing to be able to do them. That's why he sent Jesus to help us grow and change! A lot of the time I feel like I believe that the Lord will help me, but the difference between believing and and doing is having faith and the confidence to do it boldly!!!!!! A good example for me is Nephi. When his brothers didn't believe he could build a ship he said: "If God had commanded me to do all things I could do them. If he should command me that I should say unto this water, be thou earth, it should be earth; and if I should say it, it would be done. And now, if the Lord has such great power, and has wrought so many miracles among the children of men, how is it that he cannot instruct me, that I should build a ship?" I love his boldness and confidence based off of his unshaking faith!!!

 

Well, that's all folks! 

God Bless Texas! I am Elder Black. Thus I end mine epistle.