Living Christmas Cards

I’m very excited for this holiday season. It’s about this time of year most people are taking the time to ponder on the things that matter most: their family, their lives, their goals, and perhaps even their relationship with God Himself. Our district is doing something super fun and special to take advantage of this. We’re delivering Living Christmas Cards on the behalf of our members to their neighbors and friends. What we do is we knock on their door and carol to them (Silent Night, First Noel). After the song we say “John and Mary Smith, this is a living Christmas card sent to you by your friends Steve and Kate Johnson. May we come inside and share the story of Christ as recorded in the Bible.” We would then recite Luke 2:7-14 and bear out testimony of the Savior followed by a quick prayer. We tried it for the first time last night in our district leader’s area. It went super well; the first family we did it to was actually Jewish, but they loved it so much and invited us right in. We presented it with great confidence and that made the Spirit strong. Another house we went into was in the middle a “mental meditation class,” so there we a ton of people we got to go and share it with during their break.
This past Thursday we had our mission conference with Elder Richard G. Maynes of the Presidency of the Seventy. He spoke to us for over two and a half hours and just about every minute was wonderful. He focused a lot on the importance of giving our investigators the opportunity to read the Book of Mormon themselves, rather then read and preach at them. He talked of instances while he was a mission president where people were convert just from reading the Book with no missionaries around. Early church History has many examples of that as well. He also focus on how we need to make our purpose as missionaries a part of our “inner fabric.” Looking at data from missions in the US, we need to be having quality gospel conversations with at least twenty people a day to maintain productivity and regular baptisms in our areas. It was very eye opening the way he presented the importance of talking to pretty much everyone and anyone. We can’t just say hi, but we need to try to actually stop them and give them something to ponder on and learn from. That can be hard, but it’s very important.
In my studies, currently, I’ve begun to do something super fun. President Nelson gave a great talk last Conference about making lists during his Book of Mormon reading; I’ve started to make one of my own of the many phrases that we owe to the Book of Mormon. Not so much a list of doctrines in the Book, but phrases and expressions that are unique to it. Some are doctrinal like “When ye are in the service of your fellow beings, ye are only in the service of your God” (Mosiah 2:17) or “It must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things” (2 Nephi 2:11). Others are just expressions like “great and abominable church” (1 Nephi 13) or “tight like unto a dish” (Ether 2). It’s been super fun seeing how many different ones you can find and it has helped me appreciated it even more.
Will go for now, but hope you guys have another fantastic week and a wonderful December!
Elder Miller