Hey there!
Wow! Sounds like its a busy summer over
there! Did I understand right that the boys are leaving for Trek this
week? Woot Woot! I love trek! And it sounds like they have
High adventure right after that? That's sweet! Well, since you guys
are celebrating Daniel's birthday early, Happy Birthday Daniel!
Daniel, read the following lines to the
tune of whatever that one primary song is called. Try to imagine my
beautiful voice singing it to you...
Your gonna have a birthday shout hurray!
Just know that I'll be singing to you that day! One year older and
wi............hmmmm ...... Weirder too! Happy Birthday to you!
Well..... I can't remember if there are other
verses to the song or not....but that's pretty much all I remember. I've
been out of primary so long that I my memory really struggles sometimes to sing
those songs every now and then (hence that awkward pause in that last pull of
my performance) .....but the good news is that I was able to pull it back
together for a strong finish! Pretty good huh? Love you Daniel!
It has once again been a very good week!
D. is still awesome, but I actually want to tell you guys a story
about a totally different experience this week. I hope I can describe it
sufficiently because it was just so so awesome and so much fun! As I
thought about it afterwards, I wish I could have somehow taken a picture of the
moment because truly, I don't know that any amount of explaining or picture
painting with the mind's eye through my recounting of the story could even come
close to helping you understand how wonderful this experience was for me.
But I'm going to give it my best effort.
We are currently visiting with an amazing
family of 5. They live in one of the apartment complexes that we frequently
pass by. About 6 weeks ago when we first met this family, it was because
the mother stopped us from her apartment patio (which is separated from the
street by a fence) as we were walking by on the street and asked that we come
see her family. Through a series of events, mostly just a ton of
cancelled appointments; we ended up becoming friends with many of the kids in
the apartment complex. We would go for an appointment or to try to catch
them at home and they wouldn't be there. The neighborhood kids though
would always be there and would always approach us very excited to talk.
Its always fun to have anywhere from 5-10ish of the neighborhood kiddos
from ages ranging anywhere from 5-12 come and talk to you and ask questions
about what you do as if you are a celebrity or something of the sort!
Usually, when children are as genuinely
interested in us, and what we do, as a few of these children were, I make it a
point to meet their parents. Not only do I like the peace of mind in the
knowledge that the parents have been introduced to and personally know the
"strangers" in white shirts and ties that their kids are always
talking to, but its also a good opportunity to visit with the entire family!
However, this time, I wasn't extremely motivated to go out of my way to
meet the parents. I considered knocking on their doors on several
occasions but decided every time that it would be better to do so at a later
time.
Eventually things have started rolling with
this family (the one I was talking about from the beginning that gave us the
opportunity to meet all the neighborhood kiddos) to the point that we are now
visiting on a regular and scheduled basis. They are even working towards
being baptized later on in July. Of truth, when I say that the family is
progressing towards baptism, what I really mean is that the mother is
progressing towards baptism and is hopeful that her children will be baptized
with her as well as long as they are ready. Up till recently we have only
been focused on Mom because the kids were always doing their own stuff during
our visits. This was the way that mom wanted it to begin with...she
wanted to learn it herself first so that she could help out with what she feels
is her motherly responsibility to teach her own kids about The Lord even when
we aren't in the home. But with the growing interest from the kiddos who
have started listening in on the discussions little by little (and growing
interest from mom on behalf of the kiddos in regards to their show of interest)
we put our heads together with Mom and made new plans. We made the
decision with her that we would need to start the lessons over for her kids and
teach them separately from her beginning at the basics (and she is of course is
both allowed and encouraged to be present for these lessons, we just would have
an added focus on her children).
So, this leads us to our first lesson with the
kiddos on Saturday. We weren't able to get a member to help us out with
the lesson so we ended up having to do the lesson outside (the family doesn't
have a man in the house so that means that in order to be obedient, we don't go
inside). We gathered in the courtyard style area of the apartment. Before
we had even sat down and gotten ready for the opening prayer of the lesson, we
had 12 kids from the ages of 5-11 gathered for our lesson. We all sat in
what somehow resembled a circle and got ready for the prayer.
Because it was a VERY hot day, everyone's doors
to their houses were open (having your doors and windows wide open is often
some of the best AC you can get around here). Mom stayed just inside the
door of the apartment to stay out of the sun but still be able to participate
in the lesson. But the really cool news is that she wasn't the only
Mom/parent who was observing the lesson from just inside the door. 3
other parents had also come to their doors to observe what their kids were so
excited about.
We explained to the kids that we had a really
awesome lesson to share with them that would take us 10 minutes tops. We
started out with a quick prayer lesson. "Who knows what prayer
is?" Over the course of the next minute, the simple doctrine of
prayer was established as they answered this question. Everyone was
strangely well behaved considering their ages and the fact that it is summer
time (hands raised, silence while others spoke, waiting to be called on etc.).
We then explained that we start every visit with a prayer so that God's
spirit can be with us while we learn of Him. When we asked for a volunteer
to say the prayer, almost every one of them raised their hands in hopes that
they would be "the chosen one" to kick off our awesome lesson.
And what a kick off of a lesson starter prayer
it was! I chose one of our 5 year old (almost 6 year old) friends and he
gave the sweetest most sincere and pure prayer ever! He just simply
talked to God and thanked Him. It was beautiful! Here is a snippet of
that wonderful prayer. "Dear God, Thank you for Everything.
You always help me. I just want to say thanks cuz i used to be
scared of the dark at night but you help me not be scared anymore...."
I loved it! It was the cutest most sincere prayer I have heard in a
long time. I was worried for a second that the other kids would giggle or
laugh in an effort to act cooler than our young prayer giver, but even they
were silent participants from start to finish in the prayer. I consider
that to be a tender little miracle mercy from The Lord because it absolutely
set the tone for the rest of our visit.
Remember how I said this was our first official
visit with our young friends? My all time favorite way to kick off the
teaching experience with people both young and old is through the doctrine of
baptism. I LOVE IT! Since a few of the children in our small crowd
already knew that one of our purposes is to help people prepare to be baptized,
it was the perfect most awesome lead in one could ever hope for.
"So because we know that 2 of you are
hoping to be baptized with your mom, we thought it would be a good idea to
start out today with a few questions...."
We then pulled out the picture of Jesus Christ
being baptized by John the Baptist and started asking simple questions: Who is
this? And who is this? What are they doing? Why are they
doing that? ......
Over the course of our short question period,
the children were able to come to a pretty decent knowledge of baptism just
based off of the picture. It was AMAZING what they were able to learn as
a group with each of them adding what he/she knew. Through the course of
the conversation they even came to the realization themselves (I LOVED how we
didn't even say a word) that none of them had been baptized yet but that they
all wanted to do it.
Then we explained some simple baptism doctrine
that hadn't been covered yet....
"Baptism is a special promise with God.
Did you guys know that?"
All their heads started shaking back and forth.
They sat there stumped and in shock that their perfect answers and
limitless knowledge on baptism had seemingly run out.
"So if baptism is a special promise with
God, then what type of promise do you think He would want us to make with
Him?"
Eager to redeem themselves, they immediately
raised their hands and started naming all the things that God could want us to
promise Him by being baptized.
Among the answers were: Always be good, obey
your parents (one of my personal favorites considering our audience....although
by this point we only had one parent who was still observing), never do bad
things again, go to church, ..... and the amazing answers continued but there
isn't time to explain it all because I'm super short on time right now.
But to finish up, after we finished talking
about the promise of baptism we gave them the opportunity to ask us any
questions they wanted about what we had learned.
Among the questions were, "Can I get
baptized?" "Does a prophet always have to do the baptism?"....
We told them that those were perfect questions
to save for our next visit because our next visit would be ALL about it!
Even our mom hanging out on her balcony was
interested and was willing to set up a return appointment for us to come do a
special visit with her family.
I wish I could adequately describe everything.
But time is up.
I LOVE my mission because of all the little
experiences like this that I get to enjoy on a constant basis.
I LOVE the mission!
Yours Truly,
Elder Ostler
