Hello!
We didn't get a call last night. We were pretty confused, considering we were expecting to drive Elder Meise down to Brampton. He's going home in like two weeks, but it seems we're both staying here for now. We got an email today with our travel plans that just said "No movement." I guess they'll send me up a new companion mid-transfer when Elder Meise goes home. Weird.
[Caralee Crye wrote] Last night was a wonderful World Wide Devotional for young adults (Institute age). I'm not sure if the missionaries are allowed to attend/watch. Basically, the take-away message I got from Elder Russell M. Nelson is that when we are asked to do "impossible" tasks, with a lot of prayer, wrestling of spirit, and effort, miracles happen. He shared several experiences from his life about this. One of these was the mandate to open more European countries (this was before the Berlin Wall came down) to the mission work. There were several times when his efforts seem to fail, meetings (with European officials) didn't seem to succeed, among other things. With time, patience, and a lot of prayers to seek revelation and guidance from Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, the European countries, one by one, were able to be dedicated and opened for mission work.
He also remembers when he and his wife and several others [it was a university setting] were asked by the prophet [then McKay I think] to learn Mandarin as the students will need to develop relationships and businesses with China and this, will in turn, will help with future missionary work. Years later, as a surgeon, Brother Nelson was asked to go to China to help train some Chinese doctors with heart surgical procedures/methods. He was happy to use his basic Mandarin skill. That wasn't all. Some more years later after he was called as an apostle, China asked him to return to perform a surgery on a well known star Opera singer. He declined, since he is called as an apostle and no longer working as an apostle. China kept asking him, again and again, to please come do the surgery. He then asked the quorum and the first presidency, and after prayer, was directed to go ahead to do as requested. he flew over there and was welcomed warmly as a fellow surgeon; thankfully, the Opera singer survived the surgery [it also was his last surgery he performed]. This act of service led to continuing friendly relationships between the Chinese people and the LDS Church.Basically, what Elder Nelson was saying is that we may be asked to do things that may appear, or at present be, impossible to do, but with faith, prayer, and a willingness to do everything and all that we can, miracles will happen and the impossible will be accomplished. This is similar to the quote I gave you some time ago and paraphrased, "Seek not only for missionary opportunities, also seek for the courage to do them."
Yeah, missionaries in our mission couldn't attend unless they were accompanying somebody that they were teaching. Nobody that we're teaching in that age range wanted to go. We downloaded the audio and plan to listen to it sometime in the next few days.
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