Letter Home ~ One month

Having a missionary in the field is one of the most rewarding experience I've ever had. I LOVE to watch his growth! Is fun to have him see it in himself.

Pictures

 He loved your Easter package Ambur!

 I love to see his quilt and know that he is wrapped in love every night! (His is the one on the left)

 He is still Jared. Loves his hats. 

Excerpt from his letter that he wanted me to share:

They had a missionary homecoming on Sunday. The Missionary told this cool analogy.

"Imagine if there were an apocalyptic type disease spreading throughout the world. Most everyone is getting infected, but some people are immune. Doctors and scientists are looking for a cure, and they are checking the blood of the immune, but the blood they need is rare and they can't find a match. You and your family are immune, and you go in to see if your blood can save the world. They test your family and the results come back. The doctors are pretty excited, they say,  "We finally found a match!" They go on to tell you that your son's blood is probably the only blood in the world that will work. You are excited and ask how much blood they need from your son. The smiles on the doctors faces fade away and they say,  "Well..... we didn't expect it to be a child, we didn't account for a child.... In order for it to save the world, we will need all of it." Can you imagine what would be going through your mind? Would you be able to do it?

That's a similar situation to what God faced while making His plan for us. The blood in the story is Christ's atonement. The infected people are all of us. We are all infected with sin. The antidote is repentance and baptism. If someone gave up their child's life just so you could be cured of a disease, would you turn it away? Would you say, "I don't think that's for me? " or "I don't think I'll try this antidote, it might not work and is not worth it." Would you take the antidote then when you see someone else with the disease say, I don't think they want it. I just won't give it to them because I don't want to intrude.

These answers are all so simple, so why is it that when we exchange the antidote for the atonement, the answers often change? Is it not as important? Or as vital? It's really much more important, much more vital. The antidote for the disease is temporarily prolonging of life. The atonement is an eternal way to achieve happiness. We should want to share it with everyone we meet.

I know I'm not looking forward to the day when someone I knew, who I didn't share the gospel with asks me, "why didn't you help me? How could you know the path to eternal life and then just leave me without it? " I want as few people as possible to ask me that. That has become a driving factor for me on my mission, and should be a driving factor in all of our lives, to share the gospel.

The First Few Weeks

Jared has had a hard time finding a good location to email us from. He doesn't have a library card yet, so we have been communicating with Jared through a website connected to his camera. He takes pictures of his letters and then when he is by a wifi hotspot his camera sends the pictures to the Canon website where we can see them. Consequently we don't get much of an explanation with the pictures unless he explains them in his letters. Here are a few of the pictures. There are pieces of his letters after all the pictures. 

 Evidently he found a friend. 

 This is E. Olson, Luis a man they teach, 
and E. Petersen

This one makes me laugh. Anyone who knows Jared knows that it was hard for him to leave his hats home. I think he may have found one he can actually wear. 

 This must have been when they assigned him to his first area. They are pointing to Morristown.

E Petersen and E Olson

 

 These are during their stay at the mission home. 

I hope you can read this statement/prophesy about the south. 

Pretty amazing! 

It had been fun to read Jared's letters home. In just the few weeks that he had been out, you can feel the spiritual lift he has experienced. He loves his mission! He is gaining so much from his trainer, E Olson. 

Jared's favorite talk from conference is from Elder Bednar. 

His favorite quote is from that talk,  "It's the load." He likes how Elder Bednar likened our burdens to a load that gives us spiritual traction. 

I ask him about spiritual experiences he has and to share them if he wants. This was one of them. 

"We studied and read about what it means to baptize someone. It made me realize that what I share with people has eternal consequences. I'm not just trying to show people a really good church that they should join, I'm showing people the one and only way to live with God in the Celestial Kingdom. My perspective on missionary work changed a little after I realized that, and it makes me want to go teach as many people as I can. "

"Reading the Scriptures is good, but reading the scriptures because that's just what you are suppose to do isn't nearly as beneficial as reading the Scriptures because you want a better understanding. So desire is really the only way that we'll actually grow and be the best we can be. So read the Scriptures out of desire and not because that is what you are suppose to do."

( I just love this kid! )