Letter dated 8-26-10

Hola familia!

I pretty much said everything I wanted to say in the email. Good luck with everything coming up, Mom. And Jamie, we go to the temple every week and its always pretty fun. Anyways, I wanted to go into more detail about Elder Holland's talk.

First thing he said was that he loved us and what we are doing is important. Then he said it doesn't matter what we are going through, the work needs to be done. He said that we need to give it our all now because we don't get redos or a makeup chance. We had better work the hardest we ever had. Don't waste a minute, make everything count. We are here to serve 24 month missions (18 for sisters) not 17, or 8, or 22 month missions. 24 months of all out hard work. We study out of Preach MY Gospel--it's the Lord's work and we are a part of it. We can't do things our way because it's not ours. He reminded us that the people we will be serving once agreed to God's plan. We just need to remind them that they did. In a musical metaphor, he told us to always tune ourselves, to always try to make ourselves perfect. When we do, we have the Spirit which lets us teach with the power and authority we've been given and need. We need to teach the people, not lessons, act like we have authority and be bold. Every time we teach, it needs to be the performance of a lifetime. Every time. He shared with us Helaman 6:36-37. This is a time when the Lamanites are righteous and the Nephites aren't, The Lamanites would hunt for the Gadianton robbers and preach to the most wicked among them. To apply it to us, he said they wanted the hardest area of the mission. They looked forward to the hardest area of the mission. Then he said, "It was never easy for the Savior, why should it be for us?" He talked about how we will walk part of the road He's walked, shed some of the tears He shed, and at some point go through Gethsemane. If we want to be His disciples, we need to go where he went and say what he said.

Yeah, so it was pretty awesome. I love his talks. They are so good. I love you and miss you.

Love,

Elder Gilreath