Serve One Another

Missionary work is about service.



There is a scripture in the Book of Mormon where King Mosiah (a prophet in ancient America) tells his people,  "And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings,  ye are only in the service of your God". 

It's a scripture that sums up missionary service around the world, those of our faith and those of other faiths.  We aren't weird, nor crazy,  to give of our time and talents to serve other people, we are just following a Christ-like pattern. The Savior, after all, was the ultimate example of service.  He healed the sick, taught marvelous doctrines, raised the dead, died for our sins and was resurrected.  All to be an example for us.

And the Savior himself said in John 12:26- If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honour.

So this blog post is about some of the service,  missionaries give in Latvia. 

Last week, Elder & Sister Davis gave a lesson in FHE on the scripture that states, "All things Testify of Christ".   Just imagine....all things ever created in the heavens and the earth tesitify of Jesus Christ in some way or another....an interesting doctrine to discuss.

We talked about the sun, solar system, water, rocks, trees, days of the week and even our need to sleep each night and waking up each morning... just to name a few of the things that testify of the Savior.  Christ Himself said he was "the Living Water."  And Peter called him the "Rock of our Redeemer".  He is also called the "Bread of Life".  The scriptures are replete with examples of things that remind us of Christ.  We had some good discussions about them all.

The young missionaries are wonderful examples to us of  Christ-like service.

We have found that every missionary is uniqe and special, but that every mission has some Elders that "stand above the rest" because of how they teach, speak, act and think. Elder & Sister Davis were sorry to see the two young Elders below finish their mission...it meant they were going home and we likely wouldn't see them again. 

Elders Mills and Thomas (Assistants to the President), were both wonderful leaders and extremely dedicated to missionary work.  Young men like them are the future priesthood leaders of the church. They were leaving the day after this photo was taken and were still "busily engaged" in missionary work.

They were the Elders that taught Marta #2...that led her to be baptized.

So what happens when the missionaries who teach you about the gospel of Jesus Christ, leave for home?  You don't have to worry...another set of missionaries will take their place.

The next week,  Elders Koltko and Grover (the new AP's) came to our apartment to teach Marta about temples.  She is the sweetest thing and we hate to see her move to the Netherlands where she doesn't know anyone. She already found the address of the branch where she will be living and said she would attend church there.

And she insisted we have our picture taken with her as well....

And our other service opportunities?  We are teaching an Institute class every week, cooking  (we made 24 hamburgers for FHE!), inviting people to activities, organizing YSA conference for the end of August and trying to keep up with what our families are doing back home.  We appreciate all the blog updates we get so we can see how our grandchildren are growing!

We skype with our fellow MC's (missionary couples) who might feel a little isolated in Lithuania and Estonia.  We realize we have the best spot here in Riga, since there are two other missionary couples living close by, and we try to lift the spirits of the others who don't have that support system.

And we are organizing a teacher training day for the Latvian saints who are new to teaching or just don't have a clue what they need to do to engage their students. And speaking of teachers....we watched Eva (the new member of three months) teach the Gospel Doctrine class in Sunday School for the first time.  She did an excellent job!

And lest you think we are perfect missionaries....we still have our moments of insanity. 

Like when we come home from being out and we find signs on our apartment door that we can't understand.  We now take pictures of the sign....go upstairs and have google translate what it means.  The translation isn't perfect but we get close.  We found out that one of the signs was from a "clean, single young man looking to rent  a room." 

The sign below said,  our hot water was going to be shut off, July 20th from 9-4:00:

That's good to know...we will go out that day!

And the picture below shows how far our parking lot is from our apartment....see all the way to the end of that street?  Well, that is where our parking lot is.  A long, city block away.  But  every once in a while, we find a free parking spot at the side of our building and we are so excited we don't have to walk back from our parking lot, we take it! 

And the next day, we totally forgot we parked there....so we walk all the way to our parking lot and can't find our car! Has someone stolen it?   And then one of us remembers...we parked on the street!

That has happened several times to us. We roll our eyes and head back down the street to our "perfect parking space" that didn't save us any steps at all in the long run...

because we can never remember we parked there!

Missionaries are far from perfect...

but we do feel good about serving our "fellow beings."