New Year's Eve

I'm staying and my companion is Elder Clausen.
Well we can't go out in the evening because of new years for some reason so we will have to do our proselyting during the day so I will have to go for now.
I forgot to email when we got back to the apartment. We had a great week though. 
Win a round of Tsuro for me.

Merry Christmas

It was a wonderful week here in New York. We had a Christmas zone meeting where we talked all about Jesus Christ and the Christmas story and we sung all the Christmas hymns. That was about it.

We got a huge blizzard on Christmas eve and Its been snowing since so we have quite a bit of snow even though it was barren of snow a few days ago.

Merry Christmas!

The hunger

Hungering is something that everyone has experienced because it is a desire for something, usually having a connotation of food. Our desires shape our actions and our actions shape our character. Often times in this mortal life our desires have dualities that are diametrically opposed to each other. We choose which desire to act on as we cannot act on both at the same time. 

Through time we can act on our smaller desire to do good and our character will change from evil to good, making it easier to choose good because it is our greater desire. Even when we have won this battle the war is not over yet. A sad disposition of the natural man is that it will usually choose a smaller evil desire over a greater good desire, leading a noble character to corrupt it's integrity.

Our Spirits however, as children of a perfectly benevolent Father, have a equal habit of choosing a smaller good desire over a larger evil one. This puts us in a position to "act, and not to be acted upon".

Thus the scripture in 2 Nephi 9 vs 39

"Remember, to be carnally-minded is death, and to be spiritually-minded is life eternal."

It was a fair weathered week. Lots of thoughts while walking on country roads in the farmland. We have the onion capital of the world in our area along with plenty of other crops.

Merry Christmas!

Baptism

This week there was a baptism here in Batavia! The mother and father of the family we are teaching were baptized on Saturday and confirmed on Sunday. 

They are going to be pillars of this ward. 

I've finally had to bust out the coat for winter instead of my jacket. So it's probably going to stay that way until spring. 

It's been really awesome to see the Lord work through imperfect people to bring us all closer to Him in the short time I have been in this area. One thing I have noticed this week is that it's the little contentions that lead to the big problems. They allow for the handleholds that Satan can use to cause issues in our lives. So pay attention to the small snide comments you make.

The elect hear my voice

Batavia is going to be a great place someday. We have been keeping ourselves busy for sure. There is a baptism of a couple this Saturday which will be awesome to see. They have been meeting with the Elders for a couple months now and we look forward to preparing their kids for baptism towards the end of December.

We got to have zone conference this week and afterward we had exchanges. I got to go down to Warsaw with Elder Bland. It was a great time. But their apartment was wrecked.... so I cleaned a little for them. I got to see the johns family because they fed us which was awesome and then i also got to see the Judkins because sister Judkins needed a blessing. They had some anise cookies which were pretty good.

During the finding I'm pretty sure I had talked to every person before. It was cool to see the change in some of them.

During finding last week in Batavia we had a cool experience. We were talking to this lady at her door and she was saying something and then she paused mid sentence and asked if I was okay. (Pretty normal for me I guess) I must have a resting dead face. Anyways so I said I love what I'm doing and asked if I could share a scripture with her and after I read it she paused and asked her husband to come over and had me read it again. It was cool to see the Spirit work soften her heart.

I know scriptures heal the wounded soul because they are from our Heavenly Father through our Saviour.

Mom: What scripture did you read to her?

Erik: 3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4 Surely he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

Mosiah 14

You can turn almost any scripture into a gospel conversation. Sometimes i ask people to open to a random page and read a random verse and then we talk about how it can answer some of the problems or questions that they have.