October 2, 2017 "Light"

Hey everyone!

We went to the George Washington Masonic Memorial museum today. I went outside of it once last year, but today we paid for a tour to go inside and to the top. It was really intriguing learning more about Free Masonry!Some interesting similarities, that's for sure.

Cool statue of George Washington,one of the most prominent Masons

From the top of the George Washington Masonic Memorial Museum.

With Elders Bryson, Benard, Dunn, Jones, Ure and myself

One of the upper floors,
which had some cool stained glass windows.

A picture from the top, looking towards D.C.

 A panoramic looking into downtown Alexandria, with King Street right down the middle.
D.C. Is on the far left on the other side of the river.
You can also see the Free Mason symbol down in the center of the picture

 









We had a pretty busy week, with 3 exchanges with different sets of zone leaders. We always seem to meet and find some cool people on exchanges.

We met a really awesome guy named Samuel this week. Samuel is from Liberia. I don't know what it is about Liberians, but out of all the different Africans we teach, they probably have my favorite accent to listen to. Anyways, we parked our car and got out, and Samuel was one of the first people we street contacted. We ended up walking with him for about 20 minutes towards his house, teaching him the entire first lesson as we walked with him. By the time we got to his house and finished talking to him about the Book of Mormon, we found out that his cousin is a less-active member of our ward who we've been trying to work with. Samuel didn't even know that his cousin was a member of our church, but once we found out they had the same last names, we made the connection. Samuel is excited for us to come back this evening to teach him again and to meet his wife!

 With Elders Medrum, Ure, Smith, and Williams.

They were in a trio and we had an exchange

with them this week.

We had two really good lessons with Pam this past week. We taught her the Plan of Salvation and Gospel of Jesus Christ lessons, and she is progressing really well. In both lessons we brought different members from the ward that were able to connect with her really well. She was really curious to hear their testimonies and asked them herself how they came to believe everything. Listening to her, I can tell how genuine she is with her desire to learn and to come to know if what we teach is true. A lot of people we teach seem to be really interested in simply learning about what we believe, just to increase their knowledge. But Pam is different, and is committed to finding out for herself if it's true. In our second lesson with her she brought up how excited she was to come to church on Sunday, but we had General Conference, so she was a bit disappointed that we weren't having our regular church service, but she was excited to watch some of the conference. She's awesome!

Had to pick up some Krispy Kreme

 donuts in between sessions of conference on Saturday.

I really enjoyed General Conference this weekend. It's hard to believe that this was my 4th General Conference as a missionary! I always receiving revelation from the Lord through the leaders of His church. I learned a lot from all of the different speakers and look forward to reading and studying all of their talks again in the coming weeks.

One of the talks that I particularly enjoyed was President Uchtdorf's talk from the priesthood session, where he talked about light.
He said "Darkness is not an indication that there is no light. Most often, it simply means we are not in the right place to receive the light. …
It is up to us to be in the right place to see and feel the divine light and truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Even when night has fallen and the world seems dark, we can choose to walk in Christ’s light, keep His commandments, and courageously testify of His reality and His greatness."
I think this is a pretty cool analogy. Just because the sun goes down at night, and it gets dark outside, does not mean that the sun has stopped shining. The sun is still burning brightly, but we are just on the wrong side of the earth to receive the light. This is such a great metaphor. The love of Jesus Christ, who is "the light of the world" is ALWAYS there, but in order for us to be able to fully embrace and access that light, we need to be in the right places, doing the right things. When we mess up, and we don't feel the presence of His light, does not mean that He has stopped shining. It just means we need to reposition ourselves to be in a place where we can feel the warmth of His light again.
When I first heard him say that "darkness is not an indication that there is no light" I first thought about the Light of Christ, which "is given to every man, that he may know good from evil” (Moroni 7:16). Sometimes we may meet people who we initially might think "wow, this person is just full of darkness". But rather than having a perspective of them being full of darkness, we should realize that instead, it's just a lack of the presence of light. But whether or not it's readily recognizable, the light of Christ is still within them with the potential to burn brightly once again. Once we can realize that everyone has the light of Christ, then we can do what President Uchtdorf says when he stated that "[we] are instruments in the hands of the Lord with the purpose of bringing light and healing to the souls of Heavenly Father’s children... [and that] Christ’s light brings hope, happiness, and healing of any spiritual wound or ailment."

I am grateful to have the light of the gospel and the light of the Savior in my life and I hope and pray that I can continue to be an instrument in the hands of the Lord to bring more of that 'hope, happiness, and healing' that comes from Him.

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

Elder Jeremy Duvall
Washington DC South Mission

Elder Meldrum!
We were in the MTC together,
but sadly he went home this morning because
he blew out his knee playing basketball a couple
weeks ago and isn't going to be able to finish
 his 2 years here. I'm going to miss him!