Elder T. Traasdahl : Charity and a new goal to Dunk -- not just in baptismal waters.

Greetings from the CDNM!! Fam! Haha you all sounds like you had a wonderful week! It'll be fun having shooting competitions when Park and I get back. All I'm saying is winner gets a strawberry cheesecake because that prize needs to continue the rest of my days, even though baseball and homeruns are out of the picture. This morning I did this Air Alert 3 excercize and boom baby in a few months I'm going to be able to dunk! You've heard it here first. I, T-Titzzleton Traazydaaz, will be able to dunk by the time I get home.

Hey can you let Uncle Eric know I love his emails? I feel bad because I haven't had enough time to write him back but I get so much out of them, so tell him I appreciate them and will respond as soon as I can! Alright so let me slang it to ya straight. This week was leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeegit! My new companion, Elder Brennan is such a good missionary. Works hard, on point with his obedience, pretty funny, always trying to improve. Great guy. He's from Grand Junction, Colorado which is pretty funny. Members have a hay day with that. We work really well together, so I'm super excited for this next transfer! We share our ward with the sister training leaders of this side of the mission and man oh man they scare the heeebejeebies out of me. One's 25 and Korean, the other is 19 and has already graduated college on some advanced or condensced program, either way pretty intimidating. When they look atchya all you wanna say is "That's God's job" because hardcore judgements are coming from their eyes.

So that's the update with the comp and other missoinaries in the ward. This last week we had a really neat lesson with R. He's the one with the 4 year old son that just finished all of the court cases and what not to have custody over him. He's a super solid guy. Struggles with some word of wisdom issues but he already has a desire to quit those even before we talked about the principles. Anyhow we met with him this last week and went over the doctrine of baptism - the what, why, and blessings of obeying this commandment from God. He enjoyed it and was invested throughout the entire lesson. We invited him to follow Jesus Christ's example and be baptized on Sept. 28th and he readily agreed! It was just a sweet experience watching the Spirit work on him and do the real teaching. I've been reading this amazing talk called the 4th missionary by Lawrence E. Corbridge this last week. The principles he teaches apply to us as members so if you want a perspective builder/ testimony enhancer look it up!

One thing that really stood out to me that he pointed out was how we can act and do good deeds but it won't do much for us if our heart isn't in the right place. In fact he says "Good will be done, the poor will be fed, and the truth will be defended but the good that you do, will do you no good, unless your heart is right, unless you have charity." A scripture that accompanies this is Moroni 7:6. "For behold, God hath said a man being evil (acting for personal desires aka following our own will) can not do that which is good; for if he offereth a gift, or prayeth unto God, except he shall do it with real intent (following God's will = having charity) it profiteth him nothing." Alma describes this to his son Coriantun as living "contrary to the nature of happiness" (Alma 41:11). So the takeaway is in order to profit from our actions, in order to change and become and experience peace and joy and happiness, then we should do what God asks, but do it with charity, do it not for our own wills and desires but for the desire to serve God and live after the manner of happiness. Fam, you are incredible! Since day one of the mission I always get so excited for pdays because I get to hear from! Let me know if I can do anything for ya. Love ya tooooo infinitttyyyyyy and beyondddddddd!!

Elder Buzz