Elder Jeremy Duvall's Mission Blog: March 28, 2016 Week Full of Service

3-28-2016 Week Full of Service

I hope you all had a great Easter Sunday! I'm currently in the Library of Congress sending this email! We were able to get access to acquiring library cards to be able to come and do some gospel study in

the main reading room in here this morning! It's an amazing place! It's cool because there's less than 50 people in here right now, and hundreds of people are walking by the window in the upper level

looking down into the reading room. It's sweet that we were able to access getting a library card that allows us to study in here! We found a section of religious texts and were currently flipping through

different encyclopedias and historical books on Mormonism that are pretty interesting. I'll send some pictures later!

Anyways, we did a lot of service this week! 3 mornings in a row we were out doing service for multiple hours each day.

The first day, we spent about 5 or 6 hours clearing out a whole backyard full of

branches, vines, and leaves for Sister Moore. She's from Trinidad & Tobago, and is super awesome! We filled about 25 to 30 of these huge trash bags!

The next day, our whole zone did some service for a man in the Centreville 2nd ward. He owns a big piece of land and has a lot of plans for the future for his property. We spent the day digging holes, planting trees, using machetes and clippers to clear low-lying branches off of trees, and then cleared and moved a ton of brush into a huge pile, which we then set on fire!

Here's Elder Krambule and I with machetes.

This is some of the elders in our zone piled around a small tractor.

You can see some of the smoke in the background from fire,

which burned for hours until all of the branches, logs, and brush were all gone.

The third morning, we went to another members house in our ward, who is moving in a couple months and needs a lot of yardwork done in preparation for selling the house. We dug up a ton of roots from vines that have grown over their front and back lawn which took us a couple hours and we're going back again this week to help them out some more.

Along with the three mornings/early afternoons of service we did this week, we also went to the Doxeys house a couple times last week to help them move pack up and move boxes in preparation for their moving at the end of April.

This previous week felt a lot different than the last couple months, because we did not teach as many lessons or do as much finding, because we did so much service! It was a nice change in our normal routine to do some manual labor! Although we may not have taught as many lessons this week and done as much "missionary work" as we had in previous weeks, we both recognized the importance of serving others and serving God. Mosiah 2:17 states "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." So even though we felt like we needed to be out doing more teaching and finding, we know that serving and helping out other people is important! In reality, no matter what we're doing, we're always serving! When we meet with people and teach them about the gospel, we are serving them by helping them grow closer to our Savior. I'm grateful for the opportunity we had to help out a lot of different people this week!

On Friday we taught our second lesson, the Plan of Salvation, to an investigator named Ahmed. We met him two weeks ago at the end of four hours of tracting. He is about 25 and is a graduate of George Mason University, currently working on his masters degree there. We taught a sweet lesson along with two other missionaries from the Young Single Adult branch. They will get to continue teaching him now moving forward because he will start attending the YSA branch. He's excited to attend some of the YSA activities the next couple weeks and is even going to watch some of General Conference! We're slightly bummed that we don't get to continue teaching him because he's pretty solid! But in the end it doesn't really matter who teaches him as long as he's learning and growing closer to the Savior.

Speaking of General Conference, I'm stoked for this weekend! It's always a great experience to listen to the prophet and apostles speak to us and give us guidance and direction! I know that if we listen to the conference this week with an open heart and mind, willing to act upon what we learn, that we will be able to be grow based on those things which we will learn! Also if we prepare questions in our minds that we want answered, I know that we can and will receive answers to those questions through listening to the leaders of the church speak!

Just as an update, Michelle's baptism is going to be next Saturday, April 9th! And we're going to go to the Temple Visitors Center with her and her daughter Kaylie soon! And we're going to meet with Megan and her mother again this week as well! Megan is excited to be baptized at the end of April! We weren't able to meet with Luz last week, but we talked to her briefly and will hopefully get to have a lesson with her this week.

I studied a little about the Savior and the resurrection this week and in Matthew 28:19-20, the resurrected Savior tells his disciples to "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen."

I love that one of the first things the Savior tells His disciples after He's resurrected is that they need to go forth to serve and teach the people. And I love His promise that he will always be with us! I find so much comfort knowing that He will never leave us alone. However, we have the agency to choose whether or not we want to make Him a part of our lives. He promises that He will always be with us, but are we making the effort to allow Him to be involved in our daily lives? That's something I've been thinking about recently and I think it's interesting how many times in the scriptures that He promises that He will always be with us, and how many times we hear the phrase about his arm of mercy that is always stretched towards us. We need to utilize Him and make the effort which will allow Him to play a role in our lives, and when we do that, we can receive the blessings He promised us! I'm so grateful for our Savior and all that He has done and continues to do for each of us! Make Him a priority and let Him into your life.

I hope you all have a great week! I love you all!

Elder Duvall

Also, last Monday we got to go to the Air and Space Museum that it right next to the Dulles International Airport. Here's a few of my favorites: US Discovery Space Shuttle! This museum was a super cool place to visit and has a lot of history inside it!

The Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird in the middle of this panoramic picture

The US Discovery Space Shuttle

And the Enola Gay which dropped the first Atomic bombs on Japan

We ate Easter dinner at the Doxey's house, and Sister Doxey (aka Momma Doxey) put together an Easter basket for us! We are so grateful to be able to go over to their house every week and visit with them! We had a great Easter dinner with them and had some quality conversation about Jesus Christ's atonement and resurrection. Sister Doxey gave a beautiful testimony of Jesus Christ and the role He plays in all of our lives. They are wonderful examples of people who know how to find "hope through the atonement of Christ" through all of their trials. I'm so grateful for our association with them and am sad that they will be moving in about a month.

Spent P-day today at the Library of Congress

We walked up here first, it's the one spot where the public can look down in through a window.But we knew where to go to get an ID card (in another building across the street) that allowed us to have access to go down and study. Snuck a couple pictures while we were down there!