Winter arrives in MO

Hello! Brrr...it's cold. It's currently raining frozen rain outside. This week went by quickly, we had lots to do. This weekend was the official stake split where West Plains Stake was split from the St. Roberts Stake. Elder Shayne M. Bowen of the Seventy came and gave some great talks. Here are some notes of what he said:
He used a quote by Elder Uchtdorf to be the basis of his talk, "As the world grows darker and
darker, the opportunity for personal revelation will grow greater and greater." Elaborating on that he talked about how we need to make sure we have the spirit with us always so that we can be ready for those moments when personal revelation will come. He then discussed how the wording of the confirmation is "..receive the Holy Ghost..." it shows agency, it is not forced upon you because you can be confirmed a member and have lands laid on your head and still not "receive the Holy Ghost", he said are there places, thoughts, environments, media you know that will make it so you can't receive of the Holy Ghost? Stay away from them.... he then said a statement that I have been really pondering about, "The purpose of life is the Temple." It is so true! The whole reason we are down here is to overcome the flesh and become saints through the Atonement of Christ and the way we do that is by repenting and making covenants with Heavenly Father, but some covenants are so sacred they must be done in Houses of God and without the Temple we could not make those covenants...Moroni when appearing to Joseph Smith told him:

Section 2:
"1 Behold, I will reveal unto you the Priesthood, by the hand of Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

2 And he shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers.

3 If it were not so, the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming."


Without the work that goes on in the Temple the earth would be "utterly wasted at his coming." So who shall ascend into the Hill of the Lord? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart and let him go and do Temple work and save his kindred dead and create a link from himself back to Adam. Families are meant to be forever, that scripture confirms that.


Elder Southward (the area authority) told a funny story:
He talked about how he heard on the radio a professional turkey chef was answering questions about how to cook a turkey and someone called in and said, "Is it safe to cook a turkey that's been in the freezer for 26 years?" Caught a little off guard by the question the chef answered, "Well, it probably is okay to eat however it won't taste as good nor have very much nutritional value." They then said, "Well, that's what we figured ourselves so we gave it to the church."


He then used that story to say, do we give the Lord our left overs? or do we give him the best that we got? We need to give him our first fruits our best lamb.


Anyways, the work here is a little slow but it's picking up...we are just so spread out that we go through miles like crazy if we don't have any exchanges.


Talk to ya'll later,
love,
Elder Blackburn