9/7/2015 From Elder Gary Crye with photos

This week's been pretty good.

First off, transfer news. I'm staying in Orangeville for another six weeks.

Last Monday, we taught several of the natives, deep in the Canadian bush.

 t was pretty sweet. Bishop Morton arranged a birthday party for a member then invited all the young men to come and bring their friends.​ We ended up teaching the Restoration to a group of about 2/3 members of the church and 1/3 non-members. Two of them accepted copies of the Book of Mormon.

We got these two pretty sweet photos afterwards. The other is a glamour shot that we took before the lesson. That's Bishop on the right.

Tuesday, we helped a member move some massive cabinets into his mostly-finished house. That was an adventure.

The rest of the week, we had some pretty sweet lessons, but I don't have any photos of those. We're helping a few people overcome smoking addictions. That's going generally pretty well.

We met a lot of people this week that were content with their current knowledge of Jesus Christ. In Sunday School yesterday, Brother Jones shared an interesting story that I think applies well:

When he was a student, Elder Talmage was once approached by a man offering to sell him an excellent oil lamp. Elder Talmage already had a lamp he felt was satisfactory, but he allowed the lamp seller to come up to his room to demonstrate.

“We entered my room, and I put a match to my well-trimmed lamp. My visitor was high in his praise. It was the best lamp of its kind, he said, and he had never seen a lamp in better trim. He turned the wick up and down, and pronounced the judgment perfect.

“‘Now,’ he said, ‘with your permission I’ll light my lamp,’ taking it from his satchel. … Its light made bright the remotest corner of my room. Its brilliant blaze made the flame in my lamp weak and pale. Until that moment of convincing demonstration I had never known the dim obscurity in which I had lived and labored, studied and struggled.”

Elder Talmage bought the new lamp, and he later suggested what we can learn from the lamp seller as we teach the gospel: “The man who would sell a lamp did not disparage mine. He placed his greater light alongside my feebler flame, and I hasted to obtain it.

“The missionary servants of the Church of Jesus Christ today are sent forth, not to assail nor ridicule the beliefs of men, but to set before the world a superior light, by which the smoky dimness of the flickering flames of man-made creeds shall be apparent. The work of the Church is constructive, not destructive” (in Albert L. Zobell Jr., Story Gems [1953], 45–48; see also The Parables of James E. Talmage, comp. Albert L. Zobell Jr. [1973], 1–6).

The message of the Restoration is that brighter lamp. I know that is true.

In other news, we've now assembled the furniture in our new place and put everything in it's new home.

We got to go to the Temple on Saturday! Yay!

-Elder Crye