Hey everybody!
Boy do I have a story for you! But first I'm going to start with what happened at zone conference. So it never ceases to amaze me how much I can still learn as a missionary even though I've been out for nearly a year and a half now. This past zone conference really testified of that because I am still learning ways that I can keep improving my teaching skills as a missionary. It's not so much what I learned that impressed me (even though it was very helpful) but more so the WAY that I learned. Preach My Gospel mentions that our purpose as missionaries is to "Invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end." This is nothing new to missionaries as in we recite this before every meeting that we have whether it is district meeting, zone meeting, zone conference, etc. Bottom line is we say it so much it should be ingrained in our head. But this past zone conference really hit me hard on two key points of our purpose that I always seem to overlook, no matter how many times I recite this phrase by memory. It is that we are to INVITE others to come unto Christ by helping them... REPENT. No matter how many times I recite this line, it never occurred to me in my 17 months of being a missionary this is EVERYTHING I should be doing. I remembered (<--take note of that word because it is really important) that I need to be helping people to repent of their sins through invitations! Something I had started to slack on because I thought I knew what I was doing. But the important thing is that now I remember what is the perfect way to help others. I really enjoyed this little call to repentance because I realized the way the Lord teaches us, which is by helping us to remember his doctrine. As members of the church I don't think that there is hardly anything actually NEW that we learn just because we have had lots of experience in the gospel, so why is it that we are always faltering on the things of the church? It's because we are forgetting the most important things which simply become routine. The word most used in the scriptures isn't faith or repent or love (but these are all very important), but it is remember! We can learn the doctrine all day if we wanted to but if we don't remember what it says or remember to apply it to our lives, it profiteth us nothing! We need to always remember what the savior taught and the direction of the prophets if we wish to live the way that Heavenly Father wants us to live. Remembering is key to salvation! So that was my little spark of revelation that I had during my training which I think is pretty key to the gospel.
Now onto my next story. So we were just doing some regular tracting late at night and it was getting to be about that time to call it quits. But we decided to do one more door right at 8:55. And that was an amazing idea! We met this awesome lady named Melissa. And she is SOO prepared, like I can't even tell you how excited she was to see that we had knocked on her door. So she is a Catholic school teacher and knows a ton about the bible, but she has always had questions about the Mormon religion and Christianity in general. Long story short, she was super excited to have us over and even more excited when we gave her a Book of Mormon. Keep in mind this was all English and I think I've talked to people in English probably a total of one week during my whole mission. So I was more than a little worried about how it would go. But it was awesome and definitely something I will remember.
Well, that's the highlight of my week. Love you guys and talk to you next week!
Elder Biehn
Elder Tayler Biehn
