December 4, 2017 The Chief Corner Stone

Hey everyone!

Our last night with Elder Ure before he went home.
4 beds in one room was pretty tight.
It’s hard to believe that he’s home now,
especially after being companions for 6 months!

Well this week has been a blast! Being in a trio with Elder Smith and Elder Gleed has been great. I’m trying my best to help them learn how to do everything that we are responsible for once I leave and the two of them are together. I’m confident they’ll do great together. We have been working hard and having a lot of fun working together these past few days. We’ve taught a lot of great people! Teaching in a trio is much different that teaching in a normal companionship, but we’ve already developed some good flow together.

I feel like this week we’ve been put in the right place at the right time numerous times to meet and teach different people. There have been numerous occasions recently where people call out to us from across the street, or from a parked car, and say something like “Hey! Can I get one of your pamphlets or something? My grandma/grandpa/aunt/uncle/etc. just passed away.” It’s neat that people can see us and immediately recognize us as representatives of Jesus Christ, and they feel comfortable calling out to us to try find some peace. We’ve been able to share the Plan of Salvation with these people and teach about the hope and peace that comes from the resurrection and eternal life. I’m grateful for those short, yet meaningful conversations that we are able to have with people each and every day.

This is Adwa and Benard, two of the many people
from Ghana we taught this week.

We had some great success this week in finding more people to teach. One of our first lessons together as a trio was Adwa and Benard. They are a sweet couple from Ghana. We met Benard a few weeks ago, but were finally able to teach him and his wife together this week. Another was a different lady from Ghana named Edna. We found her towards the end of the night one night last week. We were about to leave the area we were in but decided to try a few more people and wound up teaching her for 20 minutes about the Book of Mormon and she’s curious to learn more.

We’ve been working with this couple, Andres and Cindy. They are a young, newly married couple that have a baby daughter. They live just around ne the corner from our apartment and they are super awesome! He’s from Chile and she is from Mexico, but they both have spent most of their lives here and are pretty Americanized. They are still proud of their Latino heritage. We met them a couple months back, but have had 2 really good lessons with them this past week. We are excited to help them continue to learn. I seriously couldn’t help but thinking of them dressed in white being sealed in the temple. as we were sitting there teaching them. I know that if they sincerely act on the things we invite them to do, that they will gain a firm testimony. We relate to them really well, perhaps because they’re only a couple years older than us. Andres has been really in tune with the spirit, and he especially recognizes it when we pray with them. I’m grateful for the unity and the spirit that prayer can bring to a group of individuals.

Eshetu and Nestanet, a couple from Ethiopia that were
baptized earlier this year. We had a really good lesson with them
about prayer, and talked about the importance of them praying together as a couple. They both said they always pray at the beginning and end of each day, but never pray together. They were excited to accept our invitation to start praying together daily. I know that that will help their relationship grow stronger!

One of the common concerns that a lot of people have that we teach is that they are skeptical of organized religion. I can understand that when they’ve had bad experiences in churches in the past, or when they see corruption going in different churches they’ve tried attending. I’m grateful to know that the organization we belong to, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, isn’t an organization merely put together by men, but rather it is an organization “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone” (Ephesians 2:20). I know that Jesus Christ is at the head of this church and that he leads it through his appointed servants on the earth today.

Last Tuesday we took the departing missionaries to the temple, and it was another great experience at the temple! I came on my mission with the expectation that I’d only get to go there 4 times over the course of 24 months, but I’m grateful to have gone many more times than that. Going at the end of each transfer for the past 5 transfers has been awesome. And being able to go with recent converts has been a great experience as well. This was technically my departing temple trip as well. We were able to have a testimony meeting and dinner at the mission home the night before taking the missionaries to the airport. There’s always such a special spirit in that testimony meeting!

We aren’t able to go up to the Temple Visitors Center this year like we were last year. But here’s a few pictures that a member took that went up there this week. The DC Temple “Festival of Lights” is a super popular event that goes on the entire month of December, with musical performances in the auditorium of the visitors center every night. 

I hope you all have an incredible week! Don’t forget to #LIGHTtheWORLD with daily acts of service throughout the month of December. Love you all!

Elder Jeremy Duvall
Washington DC South Mission