From February 20

Dear Family -- Hi and Love! Here's this week's journal (in part).

 

 

February 13, 2012

What a great Preparation Day! Any day where you get to play basketball for a solid 2 hours is a good day, that’s all I am saying. So, today I got a bunch of spill over packages from my birthday and some Valentine’s day presents from a few different family members and friends. I got enough candy and Yogurtland gift cards to feed my fat self for the rest of my mortal existence…not sure if Yogurtland gift cards are good in heaven…but I am sure that there are Yogurtlands there haha.

MLT tomorrow…Elder M. and I have been running around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to get everything ready because on Sunday we didn’t have time to prep really because we were working in our area. There is just not enough time In a day to finish everything…especially when we come into the office and President calls us in and asks us to do all this stuff with a DVD and cutting and burning it for the meeting we will be having the next day. Talk about a time crunch…but it is good. I'm glad to put some of my video broadcasting know-how to use.

February 14, 2012

Happy Valentine’s Day!! So this morning we had our MLT and talked a lot about lifting and serving others and what we can do to make sure that each member of our Districts and Zones and missions as a result are being led and supported and prompted in the right direction. President talked a lot about how each of us was called in the pre-existence to help lift and move His work forward in each of our leadership positions. Pretty cool stuff.

February 15, 2012

Today was one of those days where we got a lot done, but then at the end of the day you are planning and nothing shows up in your planner as far as key indicators. Effective yes, but is it still effective if it doesn’t amount to numbers on a piece of paper? I say "yes!" After all, Heavenly Father isn’t counting how many of anything, rather He counts a "yes" or "no" for each individual person and whether or not they have sufficiently accepted and acted upon the Gospel.

In fact, I think that sometimes in the church we see that joining is some kind of milestone or benchmark. Don’t get me wrong, getting baptized and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost is essential to gaining Salvation, but it is not like a game of 21 in basketball where once you get to a certain point you can't get knocked back down to zero. There are a lot of really good people who have never heard of and never will hear of the Gospel in this life but will accept it whole heartedly in the life to come. On the flip side, there are members of the church that, even though they are baptized, are not as faithful to a gospel that they have a knowledge of. Just because they are baptized members does not mean that they cannot fall below the Celestial Kingdom. It is not a check list and then just a progression within that kingdom, it is about enduring to the end, and that is a more difficult task as a member of the church if anything, not something that is optional only if we want to gain the highest degree in the Celestial Kingdom.

　

February 17, 2012

Exchanges! Today was exchanges with Elder H. It was good to be able to shake some of the rust off of my Spanish and teach the people who I have grown to love so much. There is just something special about Latin people and the spirit that they carry with them that I really miss. We contacted a lot of good people and were handing stuff out in the streets like it was candy and it was a really cool area. There is like this pocket of Latins at the base of the Hollywood Hills and that is where we were. A lot of people from El Salvador and Central America and a lot of Armenians, actually.

So tonight we had this activity at the church where all of the members come with a friend and take them on a tour and help them understand some of the doctrines that we believe. Our job was to man the baptismal font room and explain all about baptism and why it is important. It was cool to be able to give like a 5 minute talk and synopsis of baptism and then testify and then send people on their way...It was pretty much our job to bring the Spirit and help them have more questions about baptism. Today was a great opportunity to feel what real missionary work feels like. I think that sometimes in the office we forget what it feels like to talk with people all day and invite them to change their lives for the better. Exchanges are definitely a must. Can't believe it is Friday already; this week is flying by!

February 18, 2012

Today I don't have too much to say. We knocked a lot of doors and got a lot of "No thank you"s...some less polite, but you get the gist. We had dinner with a family named the T.s and they are another of those awesome young couples who are down to help out however they can in missionary work and they are really nice. So nice to be in a ward where there are so many options to choose from as far as fellow shippers.

February 19, 2012

What an amazing day to be a servant of God. Today started out with an amazing personal study…I don’t know what made it so good, but I was really focused and the revelation was just flowing. Actually, I think I do know why it went so well. It seems like every time I start typing or writing in my study journal, the Lord sees that I am willing to record and remember the revelation I receive and He gives me more and more.

 

Church was awesome. I can’t believe that for the majority of my youth I used to sit through classes and sacrament meeting, getting little out of it. If you actually sit and listen and try to hear what God wants you to hear then the talks come alive and apply directly to yourself…also applicable to General Conference, which I have grown to love.

 

Speaking of General Conference, today in Elder's Quorum we listened to a talk by Hugh B Brown. Talk about passion. It was the talk where he is to prove the case of the Mormon church to a judge and he uses all these different arguments and quite honestly it just makes sense…It just makes so much sense, why can’t people just see it?…God loves his children. God called prophets to guide His children because He loved them. God is unchanging…so God still calls prophets…cuz He still loves us.

 

Hugh B. Brown just taught it so clearly and with so much conviction and confidence. I think half of the quorum fell asleep during a 25 minute talk by one of the older apostles, but I was sitting there on the edge of my seat and could not wait to get up and outta there to go share that message with someone. I seriously felt such a rush of excitement and energy and I was just so grateful to be in such a position right at this very moment in order to share the gospel with every person I talk to and see. It was awesome…it is awesome! I love my mission so much.

 

The Santa Monica First Ward works how a ward is supposed to work. Everyone is best friends with each other and everyone is way cool and way active and people get together and go surfing and play tennis and run and play basketball and do FHE groups and there are a lot of young couples with young kids and everyone has priorities straight and focuses on family and callings but still they are super smart and getting educated…It is just a great place to be.

 

That brings us to correlation…miracle meeting. Brother W. is so good at what he does. We have the 5-5-5 plan up and running and now are just trying to get all of the auxiliary leaders on board with it. The bishop is totally down to help with whatever he can, so I am fully confident that the rest of the ward will follow his lead. It has been tough not having too many people to teach with such a great ward to back us up, but I know that when the 5-5-5 is running smoothly baptisms will follow...no doubt in my mind.

 

We have a good number of ward missionaries who all have their specific assignments and all are trying to find people for us to teach. We have an awesome Gospel Principles teacher...Brother W. who is the friendliest guy I have ever met, and we have a bishop who is young and very driven to improve the ward and a lot of solid members like I have said before, we have team teachers multiple times a week who come out with us for a few hours and fellowship and help us teach...we got everything going for us and that is why this afternoon our lesson with a man named M. went so well.

 

The Lord really blessed us with this one. We had tried to contact him a bunch of times and were unsuccessful because it seemed like he was always leaving when we got there...so we figured he wasn't interested at all cuz he was blowing us off so we set one more time to meet with him and both agreed that it was his last shot. He let us right in and we taught him the restoration, really focusing on the baptism of Jesus Christ and we invited him to be baptized and he said "yes!" For the 18th of March!

 

It was truly a miracle and incredible to invite someone to be baptized after so long without having done so. It was like a huge weight that I guess I had put on myself being lifted off of my shoulders and we left the lesson on cloud 9. We taught with the Spirit and with unity and it was really my first real lesson with a real investigator that had potential in English. I think I surprised myself with how much my testimony has grown since I have been up here at the office. I haven't had a great chance to share it in depth with anyone in a while, but I was able to remind myself of things I do know to be true by boldly testifying to M. about these things.

 

It is crazy how much it has grown since the beginning of my mission and since beginning my service on temple hill. I am so grateful that Heavenly Father has helped me to gain such a strong knowledge of the truthfulness of every aspect of the Gospel.

 

So, that was my week of ups and downs. LA is crazy haha Make it a great week :)

 

Love,

Elder Molinaro