First off I have to say that I think this is the shortest email you have ever sent Mom. Anyways, this week has been really slow unfortunately. Nothing very exciting happened at all actually. I guess we did have to go to Riverton to get interviewed by President Hopkin. He is the First Counselor in the mission presidency. He is a really nice guy and I have been around him a lot while I served in Cody so it was good to see him again. I think we only taught like 10 lessons this week and 6 of those were dinner lessons. I was pretty bummed. I love the area of pavillion but the work here just doesn't seem to be that great. Although after church we had a short meeting with our branch mission leader and a branch missionary which went pretty well. I hope if we start working with our branch missionary more we will be able to teach some more lessons.
As for my talk (a copy of Jake's talk is below minus the extra stories he put in) yesterday it went pretty well. I added a couple of stories in there to take up a little bit of time because it ended up being a little shorter than I thought. Guess what?!? We get to speak again in DuBois this Sunday! Haha. I can't wait until I am not the person people look to when someone bails! So don't ever do that to the missionaries in your ward dad if speakers cancel.
I think the whole one email/one hand written letter thing isn't working out to well. I liked it better when you both just sent an email, so lets go back to that. Mom, I didn't get your letter this week until Saturday :/ Especially this week don't have dad send a letter because we are going to be in DuBois for a week and a half! If you can have him write me an email today and I will keep checking my email. I have not got the shirts you ordered for me yet...maybe they will show up today! Thanks.
We'll I think that is about it! Transfers are in a week and I really hope I stay here! I have really gotten to know a few families in the wards and I would be sad if I already had to leave, but we shall see what the Lords plan is for me!
I love you tons and think about you guys all the time!
I hope you have a good week!
Love,
Elder Richardson
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(I was able to call Scott when I got Jake's email today and he was just about to put the letter he wrote in the mail to Jake. He scanned it and emailed it to him instead and his reply is below.)
Sounds like your week was a little better than mine haha! It is to bad you didn't get to see any bucks. I got to see a ton of bucks this week. Some real nice ones to. They were way to far away to get any pictures though. Sorry. By the way I met some more Sweats from Heber, Utah yesterday. They seemed to know grandma and grandpa and their cousin is the Sweat that sent you the picture of us in Harlowton at the diner. Pretty crazy. I think his father is a man named Theon. Pretty unique name. I wonder if grandpa and grandma know him? Her husband just had an accident on a quad that involved a cow and he broke tons of bones including his back so he can't work for awhile so I hope they take us up on our offer to help out and provide some service. I think it would be fun to do some service on a farm!
I am pretty pumped to go to DuBois. Hopefully we will be able to stay a little bit more busy!
I seriously can not wait to chase deer with you next year! IT IS KILLING ME!!!!!!! It will be worth it though! We'll I hope you can get out and see some bucks and maybe put a narrow through one! I can not wait to get a bow of my own when I come home! I miss shooting so bad! You better keep practicing so you can give me a run for my money. Also I heard there might be a peep sight that you can put a lens in for those people that have bad eyesight. Google it or something. I can't believe you broke the spotting scope!!!!!!! NO!!!!
Anyways I hope you can have some fun this week!
I love and miss you!
-Jake
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JAKE'S TALK:
Good Morning Brothers and Sisters! It is great to be able to be here and speak to you. For those of you whom I have not met yet, I am Elder Richardson. I have been on my mission for 14 months and have been serving in this area for about 5 weeks! I would like to thank all of you for helping make this branch feel like home! It is great as missionaries to be serving in an area where you are comfortable and loved so thank you! Anyways, We have been asked to speak to you today about New Year’s resolutions and how we can keep Christ in our lives. Elder Kilmon and I discussed the topics and we decided I would talk about resolutions and he would talk on keeping Christ in our lives. I have never really been one for making resolutions and I have definitely not been one for keeping them so this was a great topic for me! I have learned a lot as I have prepared to speak to you today and I hope the spirit may uplift and edify you as it has me.
When I started thinking about making new years resolutions for myself I was looking at all the things I was struggling at the last year or that I simply wasn’t doing which isn’t a bad thing but we need to remember some advice Elder Holland gave us last April during general conference in his talk “Lord I believe”. Elder Holland talks about the story in which a father in distress over his sons violent illness comes to the Lord to have him heal his son. Jesus asks the man if he believes that he can heal his son. The man’s response is “ Lord I believe, Help thou my unbelief”. Elder Holland respond to the story with this. “Observation number one regarding this account is that when facing the challenge of faith, the father asserts his strength first and only then acknowledges his limitation. His initial declaration is affirmative and without hesitation: “Lord, I believe.” I would say to all who wish for more faith, remember this man! In moments of fear or doubt or troubling times, hold the ground you have already won, even if that ground is limited. In the growth we all have to experience in mortality, the spiritual equivalent of this boy’s affliction or this parent’s desperation is going to come to all of us. When those moments come and issues surface, the resolution of which is not immediately forthcoming, hold fast to what you already know and stand strong until additional knowledge comes.” I know this talk doesn’t have anything to do with resolutions but I believe we can apply specifically one portion of this talk to setting resolutions which is “Hold the ground you have already won.” When setting resolutions we need to not only set goals to improve at what we are struggling with but also set goals for those things that we are doing good at. We need to push ourselves in those categories, those things at which we are exceeding, i.e. the ground we have already won and keep going forward.
I will be basing the majority of my talk off of an article titled “Keeping New year’s Resolutions” from the December 1990 Liahona.
The Article starts out:
“Do you start out each new year with lots of plans to improve your life but, after a few weeks, lose your enthusiasm? If so, here are a few ideas to help you keep the best of your New Year’s resolutions:”
The first idea the article talks about is setting realistic resolutions. It says “Make realistic resolutions. Don’t try too much too quickly. For example, if you are presently not reading your scriptures at all but your resolution is to read half an hour every day, you may be setting yourself up for failure. It may be more realistic to resolve just to read something, even if it is just a few verses, every day. After that becomes habit, then you can work on increasing your goal.” This step is crucial. As missionaries we get to make tons of goals whether it be for baptisms, how many lessons we want to teach, how many investigators we want to try and have at sacrament meeting or it might be goals we set for ourselves to improve as missionaries. Whatever the case is we set a ton of goals and one thing preach my gospel says is. Be specific and realistic, but set goals that will make you stretch. I think this is perfect advice when it comes to setting goals for the new year.
The next thing the article says is: “Set a series of smaller goals. Divide your big goal into smaller sections. Say, for instance, you want to save money. Instead of leaving your goal so vague, plan a reasonable amount to work toward in the first month, then a larger amount to have saved at the first quarter of the year. These smaller goals will keep you encouraged as you make progress.” This step is very important if you are one for setting large goals and you want any chance of meeting them. I like to look at this step in a sports perspective. Say a team sets a goal to go undefeated. That is a great goal but might be pretty difficult to reach. So the coach has to break it down into smaller things at practice like, Conditioning, drills, teamwork, and so on. But once the team practices these things diligently and reaches these smaller goals that they have set to be the most conditioned, hardest working, and increased team work that goal to be undefeated this season may become a reality but only through these small things. It is like the scriptures say in Alma 37: 6-7 “6 Now ye may suppose that this isafoolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by bsmall and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.
7 And the Lord God doth work by ameans to bring about his great and eternal purposes; and by very bsmall means the Lord doth cconfound the wise and bringeth about the salvation of many souls.
The Next step the articles has to offer is: “Make reminders. After you decide the things you would like to work on, make several reminders for yourself. The old method of taping a sign on your mirror or somewhere where you will see it regularly might work. But if you usually ignore your signs, try something different. Sometimes simple things can work. Take the resolution to read your scriptures every day, for example. When you get out of bed in the morning, place your scriptures on your pillow. It will be difficult to say you forgot when you have to move them before going to bed.” We cannot possible fulfill our goals if we can’t remember to do them in the first place. We need to constantly be reminding ourselves of our goals whether it is putting a note somewhere around the house or setting an alarm on your phone you simply can’t reach your goals if you don’t remember. Also when planning out your day remember to make time for your goals. Set aside time to run if you are trying to lose weight or in my case set aside time to sleep since I am always so tired haha but really if you do not make time for your goals it is going to be easy to forget about them!
The last little bit of advice the article gives us is: “Be kind to yourself. If you find you’ve made resolutions that are making you miserable, be willing to change them. After all, they are your resolutions. Sometimes you can resolve to do things that are really too big to handle. Instead of giving up as a failure, modify your goals so that they will be a true help and result in improvement.”
Like the article says, These are our resolutions we are the ones that set them and we can change them! The point of making resolutions and setting goals is to better ourselves or improve in something we are lacking. We cannot do this if we are not reaching our goals. When we set to high of goals and do no reach them it makes us lose motivation and from there we will simply stop trying because that is better than failing. Always remember that these are your goals and you can tweak them to where you can reach them but they are still making you stretch!
I would like to share some scriptures with you from Alma chapter 32 regarding to helping us reach our goals. This is the chapter where the word unto a seed. In Verse 28 it says “Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seedmay be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten myunderstanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.” Just like Alma said the word would become delicious to us as we nourish it and let it grow within us so will our resolutions. As we do the things we need to, as we nourish our resolutions so to speak, we will reach our goals. Later on in Chapter 32 verse 41 it says “But if ye will nourish the word, yea, nourish the tree as it beginneth to grow, by your faith with great diligence, and with apatience, looking forward to the fruit thereof, it shall take root; and behold it shall be a tree bspringing up unto everlasting life.” As this scripture says it will take great diligence and patience to nourish our resolutions, but as we have that diligence and patience with ourselves while trying to reach these goals we will succeed!
In closing I would like to share a quote with you out of preach my gospel from Elder M Russell Ballard. He said “I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When one learns to master the principles of setting a goal, he will then be able to make a great difference in the results he attains in this life.”
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