March 2nd, 2010 (Email)

Hello!

Yep, I've hit the 18 month mark.
Things have slowed down in the office because I'm all caught up on the things I'm supposed to be doing. The last two hours of the day I usually spend reading the Ensign, studying spanish or skimming through stuff saved on the computer. President has started giving me random side projects-- for example the other day he told me to start re-taping the boundaries on the giant map of the mission on the wall by his office. That shouldn't take very long though. President has had a hectic week. He's had to send four elders home- one for back problems, one for personal reasons, one for not being prepared, and one for a random mysterious stomach problem. The last one hopefully will come back in a couple weeks though. So President has been a little stressed lately. Along with all that we're having a missionary from Mongolia come to our mission this week-- right in the middle of the transfer. He's getting kicked out of Mongolia because of visa problems. One day Elder Collier and I came and had dinner in the kitchen here and we stopped by President's office to say hello. He was sitting in a chair in front of the transfer board pondering and trying to figure out what to do. He was kind of doing what I imagine to be something like "Missionary Tetris."
Our ward mission leader and his wife are awesome. Brother and Sister Minus will be moving to St. George in August so we can go visit them whenever we go down there. They're the ones who live in the little neighborhood called Naples. Their next-door neighbor is Paul Williams (rainbow-connection guy) and the Minus's are trying to set us up to teach him. They had lunch with Paul Williams and his wife a couple weeks ago. Paul Williams' wife is actually an inactive member of our ward.
On Saturday I was on splits with one of the zone leaders named Elder Warburton. We were knocking on the Peninsula. All of a sudden a car raced by, its horn honking at the mailman who was crossing the street. From the driver's seat a lady yelled out "There's a tsunami warning!" Elder Warburton and I looked at each other, befuddled. I asked him if we should leave. We decided to just keep knocking. Nobody else seemed concerned or even aware of any problem. Had there been a tsunami we would have found ourselves in a precarious situation-- after all, we were on a peninsula. Turns out there was a tsunami warning but it wasn't anything dangerous. It was just kind of funny because that lady was the only person on the whole peninsula who seemed to be particularly alarmed.
I've been having some really good studies lately. I've been studying mostly about the Restoration. I've noticed that the first three books of the Book of Mormon explain quite a bit about the Restoration. 1Nephi and 2Nephi often refer to the Restoration as a restoration of knowledge- particularly of the knowledge of the true Redeemer (see 2Nephi 10:2 and 30:5-8.) So on that note I started studying about knowledge. John 8:32 and John 17:3 make it clear that knowledge of the truth, especially a correct knowledge of the nature of the Godhead, is essential for one's salvation. Jesus Christ in Luke 11:47-52 talks about the restoration and apostasy pattern, and says that when the apostles and prophets were killed "the key of knowledge" was taken from the people. The key of knowledge is found in the Lord's prophets and apostles-- the priesthood and the gift of the Holy Ghost. President Sexton shared this verse from the Book of Mormon during our office staff meeting: 2Nephi 9:20. Here God's holiness is linked with his knowing all things. So if God's purpose, His work and His glory, is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man as He says in Moses 1:39 (or, in other words, to help us become like Him) and if knowledge is what makes God who He is, then of course there needed to be a Restoration. Church is true.
We haven't been able to teach Michelle lately and Nick and Zack are doing about the same. Things should start picking up soon. We're finding good potentials, the ward is preparing some great referrals, and the bishop and the ward mission leader are doing everything they can to help us in our missionary efforts. Miracles are bound to happen.
That's funny about the General Authorities coming to our ward. Was that Elder Jensen Elder Jay E. Jensen? He's really neat. He came to the MTC while I was there.
Have a fantabulous week!
Love,
Elder Tyler Lewis