It has been a super blessed week here in Westlake! I'll be sad to see it go, because I've really enjoyed the members here, but I also enjoy the opportunity that moving gives me to reinvent and recommit myself. I won't know where I'm headed until late Tuesday morning.
This week has been Amazing. We had lessons with two investigators in different households, Delethia and Enedelia, who both accepted baptismal dates for Dec 30th! We gave Allan (who we set a date with last week) to the YSA (a congregation specifically for young single persons 18-30 years old) missionaries and it sounds like he's fitting right in! He'll be getting baptized on the 16th
To set three dates with three different households in two weeks is super blessed! I'll be sad to leave so that I can't see their conversions through, but I'm very happy to say this area is the strongest I've seen it.
Delethia's baptismal date was unusual. She couldn't meet in person before heading out to work, but we managed to fit in a meeting over Facebook Messenger's video chat feature. Can't say I've ever set a baptismal date over facebook before, but it was a super cool experience!
I'm sad to say goodbye to Elder Simmons too, but I know the Lord has plans for me that can only be accomplished with my next area. I just hope I'm not on bike any more! Haha!
This week I studied a lot out of the Old Testament (my favorite) and read start to finish the books of Nehemiah, Ezra, and a few others. I studied specifically looking for the Sabbath day. It's unusual that we seem to be in a peculiar minority that keeps the Sabbath day holy and thus obtains its promised blessings. How can a city, state, and nation which claims (admittedly less often all the time) to be Christian ignore this member of the ten commandments?
Nehemiah 13:15-18 repeats what we learned in Exodus 20:10, which teaches us that we should not do our labors on the Sabbath, nor require others to work on the Sabbath, nor even buy nor sell at all, for this requires others to work and profane the Sabbath. It's interesting that in Exodus, it goes so far as to teach that you shouldn't even make your cattle work on the Sabbath!
Before my mission, I had no problem pumping myself gas on Sunday, or buying something online, since it seems that nobody has to work to make those purchases, but with what we learn from Nehemiah I think I'll change that!
The Westlake ward finishes services at 5:30, so when we're driving home to change clothes and to go serve and proselyte, we drive past a dozen restaurants at dinner time each Sundays. It's unsettling to see several hundred thousand (maybe even a million or more?) people in this city go to church each week, and then an army of suits and dresses walking in at all of the BBQ joints immediately thereafter in what has become the southern tradition of Sunday dinner with the congregation. Truly this is the sin that The Lord warned Jeremiah against, when he cautioned:
“then will I kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched.”
I know that as we keep the Sabbath day holy, ‘turning from, nor finding thine own pleasure’ (watching the super-bowl/Sunday night football, anyone?) We will receive the blessings promised God's people (which is specifically the people who keep the sabbath in the first place, see Ex. 31:16-17) in Ezekiel:
‘I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father’
Truly it is a generous God who blesses us all seven days of the week yet requires we completely devote only one to him. And truly it is a selfish and ungrateful man who cannot hallow the Sabbath once he understands this. I've committed myself to honor the Sabbath day for the rest of my life and invite you all to do the same.
Have a great week Y’all!
Elder Derek Troy
 |
 |
| A Parking garage we stopped at for pictures, to improve our moods after a car full of... hoodlums... yelled and swerved at us. Interesting how people behave when they know they can get away/escape. Anonymity does funny things to people. |
No comments:
Post a Comment