Week 45

November 16, 2015

Dear Family and Friends,

Friday (last week)-
Today I was on exchanges with Sister Seaman for the last time. :( It was a good exchange though, we were able to talk a lot about our individual goals and give each other study about those goals, and giving ideas to help. It was nice.

Saturday (last week)-
Today we met a guy from Iran who we have been in contact with. He is here getting his pilots license for Europe. He just finished and he wanted to meet before he had to go back to Iran, so we met with him over hot chocolate. He is super nice and is just really curious about our beliefs, he was surprised to see that a lot of our beliefs are really similar to his religion's beliefs, but also a lot are different. He also told us a lot about the culture in Iran, it was very interesting. It was neat to talk to him about what we believe and he is a very deep thinker, he kept asking really deep questions which were hard to answer since he hadn't been taught the foundational lessons.

Sunday (last week)-
Today we had District Conference and it was broadcast from Salt Lake City to all of the Eastern Europe Area. We were even able to listen to it in English, which was so good because I definitely would not have been able to understand a lot of it in Lithuanian. The first talk was by Randall K. Bennett, he talked about following the prophets and apostles and keeping the Sabbath holy. I like how he spoke about treasured Sabbath traditions and how those precious memories come back to him. he said the teachings of the prophet will become increasingly different than the world. Carol F. McConkie spoke next, she spoke about faith. She said, "religion that doesn't require sacrifice does not produce the faith necessary." Also, "do not allow sin to become our identity or to control our life." My favorite was a talk by Larry R. Lawrence, he described in detail about the Plan of Salvation and what it may have been like before coming to Earth and in the Spirit world after we die. I learned and gained so much knowledge from that talk. He compared coming to Earth like we had grown up and now it is time to move away from home and go to school to learn. He said in the timeline of things, Earth life is really short, in comparison of a child being dropped off for a day of school. He said maybe it was like a funeral when we left. We didn't want to disappoint our Father and we were nervous because there is a chance that we could fail. They may have had a departing devotional where the speaker said something like, "don't worry, have faith, and trust in Father's promises." Sometimes we may feel homesick for Heaven. One of the classes we are enrolled in is self control. When we die that is graduation. He talked about how Earth is a living thing and every living thing has a Spirit. The Spirit World is the Earth's spirit and it is a lot like this earth, with neighborhoods. As soon as our Spirit leaves our body, we are shaking hands with our loved ones. In Spirit Prison there are two different types of spirits, one part people waiting to accept the Gospel, and one part wicked. In Paradise we continue to have callings, it is not just missionary work that takes place, but there are many different types of callings and jobs. We will be in a state of rest, which means a state of rest not from work, but from Satan. The Spirit World is a place of perfect order, I imagine it is run a lot like the Church is run on Earth. "Wherefore, verily I say unto you that all things unto me are spiritual, and not at any time have I given unto you a law which was temporal; neither any man, nor the children of men; neither Adam, your father, whom I created." (D&C 29:34) We can travel easily, like lightning. With permission, we can travel to Jerusalem if we wanted. It is fun to think about and I gained so much light from that talk. Last, Russell M. Nelson spoke about how we could respond to different questions about the church. It was cool, he just gave facts about each point of the church, so if anyone has a questions we can be ready to answer.

I am going to skip a few days because not a lot happened and I have so much to write about the other days.

Wednesday-
Today was long and tiring. We figured out why at the end of the night why the day was so hard. We walked a lot, but we didn't find a whole lot of people, we also kept missing our buses and so we would run but then the bus would leave right before we got there. It was a weird night. Then we were thinking about it and came to the conclusion that we weren't following the Spirit, we were just going wherever. By the end of the night we finally knocked on one door and the last was a previous investigator, she was really nice and spoke with us. We were so happy for that tender mercy, we finally felt like we maybe had gotten it right by the end of the night.

Thursday-
Today we had Zone Conference with Elder and Sister Klebingat. It was super good. I will have to continue the rest of this day and this week next email.

I love you!
Sister Brown