This week continued to be busy from Tuesday night!
Wednesday: I drove to Mount Vernon with the Zone Leaders to have my monthly stewardship interview with President Birch. I love that man! He is amazing!
Thursday: I going to be honest. I don't remember what happened Thursday haha I know we saw a few people but that is all I know.
Friday: We did farm day at the Welkers. Elder Decker broke one of their truck back windows when we were throwing wood in the back. It was super bad but funny! It got fixed that night so that was good! We stacked wood! I feel like a red neck now stackin wood! Then we say a few families.
Saturday: Saturday was long but wonderful! Saturday afternoon I had a Bishops Welfare Meeting. I learned a lot. Also I am not the only new bishop/branch president which was nice. A bishop was just called last week so I actually was able to answer some of his questions! It was a great meeting where we got training on how to minister the Lord's consecrated funds. Then we had the Priesthood Leadership meeting. It was wonderful! I got even more excited about family history! I learned something this past weekend in that meeting. What is the work of the Lord the Lord is referring to when he says I will hasten my work (D&C 88:73)? Many members would say missionary work. Temple workers and family history addicts (my grandparents on both sides) would say temple and family history work. Well it is more than all three of those. We find the answer in Handbook 2 in the beginning paragraphs of chapter 5. It is the work of salvation. The work of salvation has 5 parts according to the handbook. They are 1. missionary work 2.convert retention 3. activation of less-active members 4. temple and family history work and 5. teaching the gospel. This helped me a lot this week. Lately I have had the internal struggle between doing branch president work and doing missionary work. But it should be the same work! It is all the work of salvation.Then we had the adult session. President Birch is amazing! He talked about how easy it is to invite. Inviting is all we are asked to do as being missionaries. Well in the middle of his talk he told of how he invited a co-worker to go with he and his wife to the YSA ward in Columbus last Sunday. She went. Then he told of how he invited her to the meeting tonight. And she was there. Then he invited her to the pulpit with him! There was a good 500 people there. He asked her questions that she already knew he was going to ask. They were questions about how she felt about the invitations and how she felt during and after church. She knew the questions but he did not know how she was going to answer! That is crazy! Then he invited her to read the Book of Mormon in front of everyone! She accepted and stayed for the rest of the meeting. If President Birch can do it so can you! We got home at 11:15ish that night so that was fun
Sunday: We had the Sunday meeting! It much like the Saturday sessions were spirit filled! How can you not love stake conference! The work of the Lord is hastening!
Here is the gospel insight for the day that I sent to my dad. It is a little scatter brained. In Ephesians 5:8 it says, "Walk as children of light" What I love is that light is a word that can be interchanged for many words. If Christ is the light we can say "Walk as children of Christ". That phrase is difficult for some people to understand , Children of Christ I thought we were children of God? Well we are and we learn about this in the Book of Mormon, "And now, because of the covenant which ye have made ye shall be called the children of Christ, his sons, and his daughters; for behold, this day he hath spiritually begotten you; for ye say that your hearts are changed through faith on his name; therefore, ye are born of him and have become his sons and his daughters" (Mosiah 5:7) Another reference to it is Mormon 7:19, "Wherefore, I beseech of you, brethern, that ye should search diligently in the light of Christ that ye may know good from evil; and if ye will lay hold upon every good thing, and condemn it not, ye certainly will be a child of Christ." There are other references to Child or children of Christ but these are the useful ones. We see in King Benjamin's sermon that to become children of Christ we must take on a covenant to change and repent. That covenant is the baptismal covenant. We become children of Christ or Children of light according to Ephesians by being baptized by the proper priesthood power. Therefore light is change. Light represents repentance. The footnote under light in Ephesians 5:8 is Romans 12: 2 that says," be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind". The foot note under transformed is coincidentally Ephesians 5:8. It is amazing! If light is change we could say we are children of change or children of repentance. We could even say that we are children of the Atonement. Because as King Benjamin taught "becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and become a child" The only way we can change and become a child in the spiritual term is to utilize the Atonement. Therefore the Atonement is also light.
Hope you all have a great week!
Love,
Elder Baird
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