(I have been a tardy mom regarding posting J's e-mail for this week. My apologies for that.)
Happy New Year all,
This week was by far so much better for missionary work than the week before Christmas. Investigators were more willing to receive us. When we knocked doors people weren't busy with family visits. Granted New Year's eve was hard to contact people but for the most part we had success.
So this week I started something new with my reading of the scriptures in English. I decided that I'm going to underline every time the scriptures mention a part of the gospel of Christ (faith, repentance, baptism, gift of the Holy Ghost, and endure to the end). I've assigned each topic a specific color. I've really enjoyed doing this. It's kind of been like a treasure hunt. I've found that after I started doing that every morning I'd wake up and I couldn't wait to read some more of the Book of Mormon and every night before I go to bed I want to read some more, basically because I want to continue to find times when these things are mentioned. It's been amazing how quickly the pages go by as I'm really focused on the words so I don't miss an instance. Before I started underlining these words I'd read the scriptures in English and I'd only feel like I could read one or two chapters at a time but now I have this immense desire to keep reading and reading. Sometimes it's hard to stop.
But here's what I've found so far...from Alma 1- 36 (granted I skimmed the first 10 chapters of Alma because I had already read them before I started underlining)
Faith...54 times
Repentance...82 times
Baptism...16 times
Gift of the Holy Ghost... 4 times
Endure to the End... 3 times
I've learned something from how many times repentance is mentioned in these chapters. This is mainly when Alma and the sons of Mosiah are out doing missionary work. And there is a scripture that talks about how a missionary is to "cry nothing but repentance unto this generation". Well by underlining these words I've come to see just how much Alma, Ammon, etc. are truly fulfilling their purpose as missionaries. That's pretty much all they did, was bring people to repentance. Awesome! This also shows me just how important repentance is to the Lord. Really seeing how much it is mentioned in the scriptures is helping remind me that I need to repent every day and so I've become a lot better about doing that.
Anyway, that was probably the most interesting/significant thing that happened to me this week. I got creative with my scripture study. So my question for the week is... What can you do to be more creative with your scripture study? I know that studying the scriptures in a slightly different way has really helped me have a greater desire to read every day and I find my study a lot more enjoyable.
Have fun with your scripture study this week!!
Also, tonight we are going to find out if our investigator (......) got a response to his prayer about being baptised on the 15th. Pray for us that he'll commit to that date. I'll let you know how it goes in next weeks email.
Love you all,
Hermana Hansen
p.s. Don't forget those hand written letters :) Oh and I'm also asking people to share with me their favorite scriptures. So what's yours?
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