BREATH! (Elder Holland)

Subject:	BREATH!
Date:	Mon, 22 Oct 2018 14:22:17 -0500
From:	Brett Hogg

What a week!

First of all, an Apostle came to speak to us! A modern day Peter, James, or John came and spake to us and the Fort Worth mission combined. We also had Elder Teixeira, of the presidency of the seventy (Luke 10), Elder Robbins, of the Seventy, and all of their wives. First of all, the opening hymn was Called to Serve, and apparently we weren't singing it as fervently as it deserves, because Elder Holland, in the middle of the song, yelled over to the Elder directing the music and told him to pick it up, and then snapped his fingers at us from the stand signifying to pick up the pace a little bit.

Here are the men from the Tabernacle Choir singing the hymn mentioned above.

After that Sister Robbins spoke first, and talked about how important companionship unity is, then Elder Robbins shared a quote that scared me half to death, I don't remember exactly how it went but it basically said the kind of missionary you are, is the kind of person you will for the rest of your life, so if you want to have an awesome bright future, be a great missionary now. I got all reflective and stuff and hoping I had a successful mission lol. He called the mission the University of The Lord, and we are enrolled in some tough courses. He also talked about Chpt.6 of Preach My Gospel (Developing Christlike Attributes) and how it's one of the most important chapters, and how it is THE most important for your post-mission life/wife. 

Then the Teixeira's (pronounced Ta-shera) spoke, and they are from Portugal so they had some cool accents. They talked about the work in which we are engaged, the Gathering of scattered Israel. Sis Teixeira spoke about how we must speak to every one, start gathering israel the second we leave the apartment. She said sometimes we spend too much time worrying about logistical stuff and not enough time with our lines in the water. She shared Jeremiah 16:16:

"Behold, I will send for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them; and after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks."

She also admonished us to study fervently, and sanctify ourselves so that we may teach with the Lord by our sides. The Lord is with us when we are living righteously. To constantly be planning and thinking of the people that we are teaching, to conquer fear with faith. She shared this scripture as well, from the Doctrine & Covenants, section 84, verse 88:

"And whoso receiveth you, there I will be also, for I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up."

Then Elder Teixeira talked, and he talked about how finding people to teach and teaching are the same thing, they are related activities. He told us to talk to everyone and ask everyone we talk to if they know anyone that could use a message about Jesus Christ. He told us to actually listen to the people we are teaching and the spirit. He talked about the parable of the talents and about how Heavenly Father has entrusted us with a corner of his kingdom, a portion of his children, and we should take care of them and be able to present them to him again better than we found them.

Then Sis Holland said a few words. She seemed a little weak, so she didn't say much. She told us that our missions are the hardest things we will do, leaving everything behind, our missions themselves being acts of faith. She said don't try to do more than your best, it will wreck you. 

Then Elder Holland got up. He spoke softly about how awesome his wife was, and about how she has almost died three times. The Lord knew he couldn't do it without her so he kept bringing her back. He recounted a story about how soon after giving birth to one of their children he was called back to the hospital after he had returned to work with a voice saying "We're doing everything we can for your wife." He didn't expect that and rushed to the hospital worried, apparently there had been some complications from the birth and Sis Holland was dying. He said he told everyone in the room that he didn't know if they were Latter-Day Saints or not but that he was in charge now. One of the images that was burned into his memory was first his wife hooked up to a bunch of tubes but second was a tiny little nurse, "couldn't have been more than 80 pounds sopping wet" that was up on the emergency room gurney on top of Sis Holland pounding on her chest saying, and Elder Holland now breaking his soft spokenness yelling, pounding his fist on the pulpit, BREATH! Everyone jumped lol. Now the Holland fire had come out. BREATH DANG YOU, BREATH!! And this is when he "got in our faces a little, just enough to singe our eyebrows." He said, now all worked up, it's that kind of urgency and importance that he felt was lacking. He told us we are engaged in the most important work in all of the eternities, ACT LIKE IT.  The most important thing is Salvation. Getting married and having children, and serving a mission are in the same category, Salvation. Having a child is important because we are given the charge of saving that child. Saving souls is the entire purpose of the eternities. He shared 2 Nephi 26:24:

"He doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world; for he loveth the world, even that he layeth down his own life that he may draw all men unto him. Wherefore, he commandeth none that they shall not partake of his salvation."

He said "You are charged with getting the blessings of the atonement into people's lives, and if not, it was like the atonement never happened. The whole earth is wasted." He said he figures we are the most prayed for group on the planet. Every meeting amongst the twelve and nearly every other meeting the missionaries are prayed for. BECAUSE we are at the center of the whole plan of everything! Without bringing salvation to the world, everything would be for naught, because it's the whole plan of everything ever! The whole point of everything is Salvation and exaltation. It's so important, we send you to the temple!

Christ's last words to his apostles were the Great Commision. That was the last thing he said to them before leaving them physically. He was about to leave all of everything he had done, the entire salvation of every person ever in the hands of 11 regular Joes, and that's what he told them to do. We, as missionaries are 'spearhead unit' of the work of saving souls. In the churches humanitarian efforts, the 'spearhead unit' is a truck or group of trucks that has everything you could ever imagine for a disaster and are sent out right as soon as it is possible to get trucks in. That's us! He said we are the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a lot of these people, we are at the front lines of it all, the tip of the spear. "Feel the fire!" He said.

Then he asked some missionaries to Read a couple things, starting in Mosiah 27 about how Alma was "astonished" and shaken when visited by the angel. He mentioned that it correlates with Alma 29, where he wishes he was an angel, that shake the earth with the sound of a trump to cry repentance. He wants that because that was the way he was converted, he thinks that's just the way to do it! Elder Holland goes on to explain that the Latin word from which we get "Astonish" means "thunder", and that we should go out and astonish people! Be astonishing! "You're astonishing to me! ... The fact that 18, 19, 20, 21 year olds leave everything behind for two years is pretty astonishing to me. Go BE astonishing! Go astonish people!" After sharing Helaman 5:17, he said that the person writing this took the time to engrave in metal that they taught with power and authority, three times. "Too often we act like we have neither power nor authority."

"The salvation of the human family depends on you"

He finished up talking about much the mission changed his life and how it is the fountain from which all good things on his life have come. He said "I want you to feel the same".

So it was a good time, definitely feel adequately rebuked and energized about the work, and really giving it my all and sprinting to the finish out here.

My hand after shaking Elder Holland's hand.

That really is the highlight of the week. We were able to find a lot of new people to teach this week, and it's awesome. One is a lady from Guam, who's husband is a member of the church but has fallen off in recent years. They have a relatively new family and want to be closer to God. We also found an awesome Choctaw family. We knocked on the door and the mom answered and the 20-something-year-old son comes out holding a bible and says he was just reading. It's cool to be able to share the Book of Mormon with the Lamanites. Also a new Spanish family! Hopefully we will be able to teach them more. We've pretty much lost contact with our last ones we were teaching. 

Also last night kind of on our way home we ran across a Revival! It was in this little amphitheater thing they have here close to the center of town. We walked up and sat in back. Not sure what the difference is between a Revival and a normal church service but they were preachin' a little and then they would call people out from the audience to pray for them and give them advice. There was even a little bit of speakin' in tongues. It was all pretty interesting. We only, made it for last tiny bit, afterwards a couple of the preacher types came up to us and asked us about ourselves and we thought they were going to Bible Bash us, or try to pray that we would be saved and find "The truth" (not sure why but evangelical types typically aren't big fans of us? Well a lot of people for some reason lol). But they just said a prayer over us (at one point, two of them were praying for us at the same time), and they said us coming to Idabel was from God, and we're super nice. Also in the closing prayer they mentioned the 70/Luke 10, and that was pretty interesting as I've never heard another church talk about that before. The difference however I that they seem to think it was Jesus just blessing a random group of seventy, instead of calling and ordaining them to a specific role and office in the church. It was all pretty interesting!

Amphitheater with meager audience for the revival. 

That's about all I can think of for this week, love ya!

Elder Hogg

A shack off the side of the road in the which lives someone we contacted a couple days ago. 

FORGOT TO MENTION. We got the cops called on us! We were trying to stop by someone that had been taught a long while back, and it was 7:30 at night. The map brought us to a house with an open gate and long driveway. We parked at the gate and walked to the house to knock the door. We saw someone inside turn the lights off. We tried saying hey were just missionaries and who we were looking for, in case they were listening. But they didn't answer so we left. As we were pulling away a cop car pulls up right in front of us and stops us and the guy gets out and is freaking out. Apparently that's HIS house and his wife called him to tell him a couple of guys were sneaking around the house. He said he was on the phone telling her where a gun was yada yada. Apparently they were overreacting because we walked straight down their driveway while the sun was down and knocked on the door lol. They live surrounded by trees and stuff, Believe me, if somebody wanted sneak to their house for whatever reason, they wouldn't have strolled casually down the driveway and knocked on the door lol. Well he was all in a dander and just ran our IDs and let us go. Turns out it was actually their neighbor that we were looking for lol.

Your food being put to good use!! Thank you so much Mom and Grandma Debbie!

Can't remember if I sent these lost week or not. But the Oklahoma sign just over the red river, some more pics of the red river to follow, and just a cool billboard we pass on our way into Texas 

The cows were watching us on the bridge