Week Forty-Four

What. The. Heck. A temple?? In Poky?? I'm blown away. That's the best thing that's happened to Pocatello since Kiwi Loco and Buffalo Wild Wings. So many blessings in Pocatello, now we just need a winning ISU football team. I don't get to see conference until next week, but I have heard good things! 

This week was great so I'll just give you a little bit of my news. It's ridiculously hot. I cannot explain it...it’s like a dry desert heat in this concrete jungle that's full of metal and millions of people.  The worst is yet to come, but luckily we have lots of McDonald's Ice cream and I can buy 20 cent 500 ml bottles of Thumbs Up on every street corner. My chicken is being taken away here in Noida, our...well, their, new Chief Minister is an interesting guy. He is a strict Hindu and is banning all chicken shops that aren't certified, which is almost all of them, and no more street stands are selling chicken. It's really sad because that's my only source of meat. And there is this food stand by our apartment where these two Muslim guys make unbelievable chicken egg kathi rolls. They are so good. Look that up on YouTube you might be able to see how they make them, it's really cool.

Work here in Noida is going great! We have some new investigators this week. We will see if they can keep commitments and read and pray about the Book of Mormon. When the work comes to India in Hindi and all the different languages, it will blow up.  Once we get this Stake accomplished and things get rolling, it will never stop or slow down. The work in Pakistan is growing very quickly.  I looked at a map a little closer this week and I'm a lot closer to Pakistan, China, and Nepal than I thought. Literally like Marsh Valley to Provo I'm guessing. 

We had a zone conference this week and it was great. One of the many blessings of my mission has been President and Sister Hodges. They were exactly what I needed to have as a Mission President and wife, they are awesome. The training they gave us was on Obedience, and we have never been a mission that pushes "Obedience, Obedience, Obedience." Instead, the Hodges usually talk about Love and how we are a love the Lord mission, because if we love the Lord, obedience is natural. It comes because we want to be obedient, not because we have to be. I have never really talked much about obedience, but it is so important. It's hard to understand sometimes, so I of course have to put it into a sports analogy. So here goes nothing.

My dad is a football coach and as a coach he has to get the team to follow the plays to become successful. That can be a struggle because sometimes kids get lazy, sometimes they want to think about girls during practice, and sometimes it's just "too hot" to be at football practice. I know, because I've been there. It's not easy to be obedient to the coach and to make the right blocks or reads of the defense, especially if you feel like you're doing it because you have to do it. It works a lot better when you want to do it. My dad is the best coach ever because he has a way of showing the team he loves them, and if they do what he says they will be successful. This was very apparent my freshman year when our JV team was almost unstoppable, we loved the game, we loved following Coach Armstrong. We would have done anything he asked, without question, because we loved him and we knew he loved us. And that made us winners. His rules or commandments, or play calls, were not restrictions. Were they tough? Absolutely. But they made us better and helped us win.

Now imagine our Heavenly Father, who has the perfect plays, the perfect reads, the perfect blocks. In all, the perfect playbook. All he asks of us is obedience, to show our love of the Savior, by following the plays. No formation or play in football that exists, doesn't work. If it didn't work we wouldn't have that play. Just like our commandments, if they didn't work, Heavenly Father wouldn't give them to us. We need to trust in our Heavenly Coach, he knows how to help us win. We just have to do as he has asked. It's hard, it always will be, and as our opponent gets better on defense, following our Heavenly Father’s plays will get harder, but not if we start practicing today. Because if we do as he has asked, out of love, we will enjoy the game. We won't complain about the heat during practice, or the lack of water breaks, we will thank Him for the rules he gave us that helped us become winners. We will thank Him for his commandments. If we love the Savior and our Heavenly Father we will keep their commandments.  We will want to play for the winning team, no matter how hard the rules or expectations given to us. We need to trust their playbook because sometimes the world wants us to run a big flashy NFL type offense, but in the end, the best thing for us is an old school Power I that brings stability and happiness, in a world worried about looking cool. 

“The FUTURE of this world has long been DECLARED; the final outcome between GOOD and evil is already KNOWN. There is absolutely no question as to who WINS because the VICTORY has already been posted on the SCOREBOARD. The only really strange thing in all of this is that we are still down here on the FIELD trying to decide which TEAM’S JERSEY we want to wear!”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

Love you, Go Jazz.

Elder Armstrong

Mission Training with Elder Funk, Sister Linda K. Burton Former General Relief Society President, Sister Cordon, and  Elder Evans, of the Seventy and their spouses.