Father's Day Weekend

About 3 weeks into my mission I changed my favorite scripture to: 2 Nephi 28:30. I can't even remember what the other one was, I think it had to do something of the effect of: "with God, all things are possible..." but I don't know the reference.

I was trying to think yesterday what my favorite scripture is. It might have changed again. but for now know that I changed my favorite scripture and if time runs out before I decide, it's 2 Nephi 28:30.

By the way, I did get to see the pictures that Joshua took. You already sent it to me with a different email.

The Aususta Zone Conference was really good a week and a half ago. It probably was the same one. It was an all day event.

Something for the future: sometime in the future look up an address on google maps. We were there the other day and our appointment fell through at this address and as I was leaving a message on the phone I believe the google maps car drove past us. I don't know how often they update the maps, but it probably will be updated within the next year in which you'll then see me at that address.

The sisters in the ward made bread for every 18+ brother in the ward. So I got a small loaf of poppy seed bread yesterday =-). Good ol' sisters.

I really like being asked to give talks or teach lessons. Many of the best studying sessions I've had on my mission have been when I'm preparing to teach about a particular topic to others. It's true, when you're in the service of your fellow beings, you're in the service of your God, and he blesses you profusely. 

I must soon depart from the library. Furthermore I end my sayings thus:

Sincerely,

Elder Benjamin Ray Walker

A Georgian Macon Missionary

So it looks like I'm going to be a Georgia Macon missionary as of July 1st. We had our transfer calls last Saturday night, the last one before the transfer and I'm staying here in Evans, GA. I am probably one of few that had a trainer that was part of that mission. That probably doesn't happen very often: Mission dissolves, dissolved missionary trains, trainee joins same mission re-opened two years later.

I have three investigators that I taught in Orangeburg get baptized since I've been here, and more are on the way, is what I've heard. That is wonderful! It lightens up my days.

My companion's b-day: Elder Swenson's 20th birthday was last Saturday. He enjoyed his birthday. We attended another child of record's baptism that day. 

Over the past couple days, be have been soaked through several times. [This would be the Tropical storm Abigail.] The good thing about rain here, is that it's warm rain. I prefer warm rain over freezing cold rain, and I'd rather looked soaked due to rain and sweat, than just sweat. So, overall, rain=good, except when it gets all your stuff wet, or when you feel bad going into people's houses soaked.

We had an awesome meeting last Tuesday. It was interviews meeting, then a Zone meeting, then a special meeting (due to this stake of missionaries leaving the mission), then a pre-mission fireside meeting, then a fireside. It was a day full of great stuff! I thoroughly enjoyed it. I could do that every week. The missionary that was sitting next to me commented to me after all the meetings that she was impressed of my attentiveness throughout the entire block of meetings. Looking back on it, I was pretty aware the entire time what was going on, I never zoned out. That is something that I could not have done at the beginning of my mission. I could probably sit through entire 10 hours of conference back to back and never miss a beat now. That's pretty amazing if you ask me.

Love you all,

Elder Benjamin Ray Walker

Conversions

Mother, I really appreciate when you include your different spiritual insights. It's the best part of the emails I get to read. I've told Alexandria several times, and you and others probably a couple, but my favorite kind of present or gift I like to receive is not cookies or candy, or even truffles, it's the spiritual insights from the scriptures, from life experience, and from talks or other conferences that really hit a home run for me.

Yesterday we had two more cool experiences. First of all we attended a baptism of an eight year old child of record. She invited everyone she knew to the baptism and there were almost 100 people there, half of them non-members. She was very excited for her baptism. It was very evident how excited she was for it. When she was actually baptized (the second time, first time she got water up her nose and her foot came out of the water), it was similar to the baptism I told you before when he yelled "I'm home! I did it! I'm finally home! I made it back!" Except little Mekenna's declaration going up the steps of the baptismal font was "I'm baptized!" Same spirit, same excitement. 

Later on in the evening we found a person [with] whom we had a very sincere lesson. The spirit was most certainly testifying of the truth in that lesson, and now he's set a goal to be baptized too! Hurray!

Did I ever tell you about a man in Orangeburg? He was baptized, along with a couple other investigators that I taught in Orangeburg. Also a couple more people I taught there are preparing to be baptized too! Hurray! The gospel is awesome!

I consider myself a professional biker. We probably bike more in the hot humid heat than anyone else in the entire realm of people in a 20 miles radius... and we do it in church clothes, frequently with backpacks on.

I want to tell you about the conversion story of a member I taught with who is actually from around Fresno, CA. She bore her testimony to us in front of her friend she helped us teach this week as she was visiting.

Her first name is Jenelle.

She had taken many anti-Mormon classes growing up in the different churches that she's been in. When she was in the army during basic training (which is apparently really stressful) there was one particular guy that seemed to always be calm and at peace despite the hectic and stressful environment. She mentioned something of that effect to him and he told her that he was "Mormon". She didn't talk to him for another several weeks after that. But it stuck out to her the more how calm and peaceful he looked. One day he was reading a book and she asked him what it was. "It's the Book of Mormon! I can get you one of you want." "sure..." was the response. He said that he'd get it to her in a week. He came by that night and said, "I prayed about it and God told me to give you one right now, so I'll give you mine" (note: the military Book of Mormon is a conveniently really small red book to be able to fit easily in one of their uniform pockets.) That's weird, but ok" Jenelle replied. She then over the rest of basic training would read the book when nobody was looking, she'd slide it partway out of her pocket and read it like she'd be embarrassed if anyone saw her reading it. Afterwards when she was assigned a battle buddie and went somewhere else, someone walked up to her when she wasn't paying attention and asked, "Is that a Book of Mormon?" Jenelle replied, "No, what? No, I wasn't reading the Book of Mormon." He replied, "Yes you were I know what a Book of Mormon is." Jenelle said, "No I wasn't I was ... [and made up an excuse]" He said it's "OK, I'm Mormon too." Then her battle buddie said, "Ya, and I'm Mormon too." They talked about the church for a little bit and her battle buddie told her to read Moroni 10:3-5 and then get on her knees and pray to ask if it was true. Jenelle said she would, so she set an alarm for 3 am so she'd get up when no one else was (this would be in a barracks that she'd be able to do this). She decided that if anyone woke up that she'd pretend that she was looking under her bed for something. She asked sincerely and felt "an overwhelming blanket of peace and love" and knew then that the Book of Mormon was true. She then decided that she should find a church building and attend a service. She went to the library and looked up online for the time that the service started, found the address, but didn't find a time. Her library computer time was almost up. She said to herself, "Well, this prayer thing worked last time, it'll work again right?"

"God, if you really want me to go to your church I need a really specific answer right now!" Nothing came on the computer but when she looked up, two LDS missionaries walked in the door. She scoped them out for several minutes and finally walked up to them and asked, "Are you missionaries?" "Yes" they responded. "I don't want to talk to you all I want is for you to answer my question. When does church start?" They responded, "9am, but may I ask you something else?" Jenelle said, "...Ok, fine what do you want?" Missionary: "We could give you a church tour on Saturday, would you like that?". Jenelle said, "Oh, actually I would, that'd be great."

She was taught every lesson all at once that Saturday and they were going to schedule the baptism the very next day (because she already made preparations to live the Word of Wisdom and the other things you need to do before baptism) The mission president advised them to give her a least a week so that the ward can know who she is. She was baptized 8 days later on the next Sunday. She then became less active then received a calling to be a ward missionary a year before she was active again then for two more years she was a ward missionary. She was just recently released from her calling when I met her this past week. 

Cool conversion story right? I had to type fast.

Love you all

Elder Benjamin Ray Walker

God Leads Us

This past week has been a good week. I was able to go on exchanges with Elder Lash (Who was in the same district as I and in the same room in the MTC) about time! We probably biked faster that day than any other on my mission. (I wanted to stretch him as much as possible, I've biked pretty much my whole mission and he hasn't. But he's a really hard worker so I know he gave it all he had to keep up with me =-) )

We found a young man last night that is 17 or 18 years old and we taught him the restoration lesson and he was getting more and more excited about it. "This is finally making sense" "I'm going to start reading the book of Mormon after you leave" etc. unfortunately the lesson ended at about 9:40pm and we were an hour's bike ride home. So we called a wonderful member that drove us back and we got home about 10:10pm. It was worth it. But it did make for pressed time in getting things done last night. We ate with a member family yesterday that had lived in Modesto for about 3 months working for the "Clark Pest Control" company (now the military). The Evanson's lived there 10 years ago. Fun, fun, fun. They made us a good dinner too.

The work is progressing, we found lots of more people to teach, that's good. It is amazing how God leads us to find people that are ready to be taught. We knocked into a couple members that aren't on the roster, one of which is a part member family and they're trying to get back involved with the LDS church. There have also been some good missionary motivated lessons we've had with members to be more missionary minded.

We ordered a braille Book of Mormon for a bishop over many non-denominational churches (he sets up churches) over Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida. He is 95% blind, and is learning braille, so we downloaded the audio Book of Mormon for him and ordered the other Book of Mormon.

I love you all! Have a happy Memorial Day!

I am Blessed to Live in This Dispensation

I have been listening to 8 lectures of the "Teaching of the Prophet Joseph Smith" over the past week. It continues to amaze me how relevant the revelation he received is today. There were two great talks given this past Sunday and it seemed to me that a lot of the things that one of the speakers said I've heard more than once in the past week. (So I requested a copy of his talk, which he'll give to me next week.) Also, the scripture I've been memorizing I'm keeping memorized; it seems to have more and more relevance as I continue on throughout life. Somebody will say something, and I think to myself, "Didn't such an such scripture teach that same doctrine?" or "Doesn't such and such scriptures expound on the topic that was just mentioned?" or "Doesn't such and such scripture apply to what I'm doing right now and give be a clear direction of how I ought to move forward?"

Word of advice for Monica: Keep the Book of Mormon scripture mastery memorized, review to yourself every so often the scriptures. Also, when you have the scriptures memorized already. It makes a neat study, you take one phrase at a time of the scriptures and write down any insights you have on it (all doing so without looking actually in the scriptures, because you have them memorized that good right? if not, memorize them that good.) Something else that I wasn't quite expecting on my mission is the relevance of using scripture mastery in teaching the gospel. I now understand how to actually use those scriptures in sharing gospel while in seminary it couldn't quite connect the dots on how it would help myself or others grow.

Unfortunately, two of our most solid people we were teaching, as a surprise to us, dropped us. Our first encounter with one of the investigator's mothers didn't ever want to see us again at her house and gave no reason why; the other one missed his appointment and texted us a day later that he doesn't want to change, again without a reason, this being done after they both already had a testimony of the things that we said were true. It doesn't make sense to me. Why would anybody leave the tree of life after having tasted of the fruit? Both were over excited to learn more the couple lessons we had with them, then it's like they jumped off a cliff. It's saddening sometimes.

Since General Conference, I have used the talks that they gave in teaching a lot. How convenient for an apostle to teach about the Law of Chastity with such eloquence. How blessed are we to be able to learn about Obedience from a current Prophet, or the principal of faith from another apostle, or the importance of the family from servant of God. The prophets in the scriptures are great, they do great things, the current prophets give so much more direct and situational guidance. I am blessed to live in a dispensation where we have such things available to us.

Sincerely, 

Elder Benjamin Ray Walker

Last Call Home

You are such a good missionary mom! Way to share the gospel with the neighbors. The hardest part of sharing the gospel is the invitation to learn. The rest is easy, because now that you've planted seeds, others tend to be inquisitive and all the questions and thoughts take care of themselves by the promptings of the spirit; they are headed towards the gate that opens up to the path before they even know it.

Mother, I must say, you had a couple moments of looking defeated when you couldn't call Joshua on Skype and join him in the group 3 way conference skype call. Joshua eventually figured out that he needed to accept us as friends or add us as friends to do so, it's too bad his Skype wasn't up to date either, thus only sound came through in the conference call. I'm glad things eventually worked out.

Yesterday we were given the opportunity to teach all of the YW 12-18 as the Women were doing their Mother's Day RS thing and the Men were filling in in primary and other areas of the ward the sisters usually do. We were told Saturday night that someone heard that we're teaching somebody somewhere on Sunday, then it was confirmed to us 5 minutes before the actual class that we were teaching it. We had a good lesson plan made Sunday morning; I would have been disappointed if I had no been given the opportunity to teach the class. (partly because we brought with us 32 copies of the Book of Mormon and we planned on giving them out to be handed out ... and need I note that we biked to church and didn't want to bike back with them?)

Saturday night I decided (on a whim) that I'm going to have memorized the entire Pearl of Great Price over the next 2 years. It will be quite the challenge. I just finished memorizing D&C 121:34-46 and decided that it wasn't that hard to do so and the whole PoGP ought not be that difficult to keep memorized including individual references (so I can quote singled out scriptures within it). We'll see if I keep this up. You'll have to ask me how much I've memorized by the time I get home.

I know you may wish I would think otherwise Mother, but I did not feel a great desire to Skype home so immediately. It felt like more of a missionary phone call when I talked to you Saturday night to confirm Skyping time on Sunday and it was great to see you all yesterday, but it's no big deal, I mean, I talked to you not that long ago during Christmas. I know why I'm on a mission, and I have not and will not get homesick about it. I've got a purpose in my being where I am and I will not depart from it until I've done what the Lord has required of me to do while I'm here. I'll talk to you again in the Sacramento, CA (that's the one we went to right?) airport next time.

Love you all,

Elder Benjamin Ray Walker

P.S. it was good to meet you BJ

Transfer

Companion = Elder Swenson from Kaysville, UT

Now in Evans, GA, in the Martinez ward

Ward = great

People = great

White-washed in, no investigators (still), two potentials, some former investigators, we have a lot of work ahead of us to do.

Ward just called a ward mission leader yesterday, still an awesome ward though.

The Work is moving forward.

I get to bike a lot here (no car) compared to my last area that was huge and a long way from any other missionaries where I drove (I was the designated driver the whole time) at least 7,000 miles over the past 6 months.

Rain is not quite as bad when it's not freezing cold at the same time.

Georgia Macon mission is opening back up July 1st and is taking the Augusta, GA stake that I'm currently in. If I'm still here, then I'll be in a new mission.

Love you all, sorry for the shorter letter, pressed for time.

Elder Benjamin Ray Walker