Email February 29, 2016

Email February 29, 2016 – Elder Isaac Kenneth Burton

Elder Bednar!!!

What a great week this week with the meeting we had with Elder Bednar. I don{t even know where to start, there was just to much.

Something that was interesting and that I liked a lot was that in the beginning he gave us two rules. 1. We couldn{t write down anything that he said, only what we learned from the spirit. And 2. We were to participate, it  was a discussion, not just a talk.

With these to rules in place it really open up the meeting to be a place of learning, and not just from Elder bednar, but more specifically, the spirit. Elder Bednar told us that he didn{t come to the meeting with a set topic or something that he wanted to talk about. He told us that he had been preparing for this meeting for the last 40 years and that he was just going to let the spirit take us where we needed to go. It was pretty cool. I think the thing that I took away most from the meeting is to really act, not be acted upon. Elder Bedar talkes about that a lot but he explained it in a way this time that realy hit me. He used this example: 

Almost every week in church, we always end with a prayer that includes something like this ,"Father, please bless the people who didn{t come this week that they will come next week." He explained that this is a nice thought but really a prayer like that is completly faithless. It{s asking God to do all the work, and doing nothing ourselves. Prayers like this are not prayers of faith. Faith has three parts, Belief, action, and then power. As James expaines in the bible, faith with out works (action) is dead. A prayer without action is dead also.

He then gave us another example of a prayer of faith. It was super funny and kinda long but it was something like this, "Father, as we end this meeting we are all going to leave and visit the people who didn{t come today and invite them to come next week. We are going to put action to our prayer and do what we can. The only thing we ask is that you bless us with inspiration for who we should each visit." A prayer like that, centered around action, will recieve an answer. That is a prayer with faith. It{s something that I{m trying to improve now in my life. To act and not be acted upon. To really pray with faith.

I could go on all day with things I learned but unfortunately I can{t. Way to many thoughts to put down on paper right now. But it was a great meeting, one that I will never forget. I am so greateful for latter day prophets and apostles that we can learn from. I know they are men called of God. I felt it on Wedesday.

The rest of the week was good! Kind of slow but thats alright. We set 6 bautisimal dates last week with investigatores but none of  them came to church yesterday wich it too bad. So thats our focus this week, to help our investigatore attend church. We{ll see how it goes.

I hope everyone has a great week! Thanks for everything!

Les quiero, Elder Burton