Hi Everyone!
There was one thing that I learned (or was reminded of) this week that I really didn't anticipate learning, that I don't like to lose! Through a series of awesome events last week, we met a nice girl who hooked us up with board games. This week we played Sequence. And Elder Schenk beat me 4x in a row in a day (and I still haven't beaten him). I was not excited about this… especially since in one of the games I was sooooooo close to winning. I punched the extra mattress in the other room to get out some frustration and then in another game after he beat me I just flipped the board over at him. Not really a Christ-like way to play a game!! So I have prayed and reflected a lot about this. The thing that I learned from this experience (that somehow escaped me before) is that I'm not entirely control over the outcome of things in my life! In this case, it relates to competitions or games. In board or card or video or sport games, if you are competing against someone else, you are not in 100% control over the outcome. They have their free-will that you can't control. Maybe they are really good at the game! Maybe they got lucky! Either way, we aren't in total control. For some reason I was under the impression that I should win every game/competition I'm in. Turns out even if I do everything right, I could still lose! So I refocused. All I can control is that I do the best that I can with what I'm given. I will play to win, but am now accepting the fact that I can't control the final outcome! So that was a good thing to learn - now I actually have to implement it! Didn't realize how much of my emotions rested upon winning random things!
I had a couple things from this week I wanted to share. Something I learned about myself, something I learned from the scriptures, and some of the missionary work that's happening. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving! (I attached a photo of it).
Other thing I learned this week from reading the Book of Mormon. Alma 49&50 records Captain Moroni leading the Nephites in battle against the Lamanites. It is very interesting when you liken it to yourself and see us as the Nephites and Satan as the Lamanites. Satan likes to attack us in ways that he has succeeded before. In the scriptures, the Lamanites chosen leaders of their armies who were Nephi-dissenters because they knew the historical weaknesses of the Nephities the best. However, Captain Moroni knew they would attack their weakest points so they fortified like crazy the cities that had been captured before. The Lamanites were shocked when they saw that the former weaknesses were now strengths! In a battle at one of those cities, over 1000 Lamanites died whereas zero Nephites died. Then after that war, the Lamanites retreated. However, Captain Moroni was not satisfied with simply a victory. He took his army across the plains and expelled all the Lamanities from the areas that were Nephi lands. He "cut off all the strongholds of the Lamanites… [and] did seek to cut off the strength and power of the Lamanites from off the lands of their possessions, that they should have no power upon the lands of their possession." In likening it to ourselves, there are strongholds of the enemy in our lives - mistakes or tendencies that we have that are not Christlike. While we aren't negatively affected often by these small character defects in our lives, they will come back and be attacked if we don't fortify them now! I love to read the scriptures and have the unfolded for me so that I can see how the counsel can be applied to my life!
In terms of missionary work this week, we multiple positive member present lessons this week. We are finally gaining traction with Camden and Amanda (who we met 3 weeks ago) and even have a new investigator. I love to work with people who have a sincere heart (what to know the truth) and have real intent (will act on the answer they receive). We talked to Amanda this week about that and she said, "yes! I have that." And I Chris is still excited to be baptized and coming every week to church. That's great. We thought that it would be a walk in the park teaching Evin (an 11 yr old brother of Owen & Aidyn) because he claimed to want to be baptized. Then he told us how God is boring and how what he watched in the "Finding Faith in Christ" movie (depicting the biblical account of Jesus Christ) was impossible. And he thinks praying is dumb. Haha. I forgot how challenging it can be to work with barely interested kids! It is humbling - and I needed that more than I thought I did.
Have a great week!
Elder Jeff Campbell :)
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