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October 16, 2017 - Building the Kingdom of Sarnia

Greetings,

I'm loving it in my new area Sarnia! There are so many good things happening in this ward. There's a 10 year old named Kari who's a daughter of a new convert. She's investigating the church and doing well with reading the Book of Mormon and coming to church. It's the first time for me teaching someone who's not an adult which is a great experience. Angela, an investigator in her 50's, came to church for the first time yesterday and brought her 11 year old granddaughter as well. She loved how she felt at church and enjoyed the gospel principles class. 

Our residence is a guest suite connected to a members house only 1 km from the church, it's a perfect set-up. We only had one dinner appointment last week but we've got 3 this week, soon enough it will be everyday :) It was fun cooking lunch and dinner everyday (we do simple stuff for breakfast), my comp likes to cook as well, so we made some good stuff including a stake dinner.

This coming week is packed full of appointments with INV's, NC's, less-actives, auxiliary leaders and activities which I'm excited about. There's about 15 young men to work with and a bunch of YSA to work with, there's so many things to do it's awesome. I loved my first 2 areas but my last area especially was way less busy than this one. The aspects of my last area has helped me appreciate this area so much more. I'm thankful for this opportunity to really work with a ward unit and make things happen. Another blessing is our ward mission leader who is very determined and hard working, he is a huge support. I'm going to take advantage of my time here to utilize ward members to find, teach, and baptize. As members and missionaries work together to build up the kingdom, our conversion to Christ will inevitably develop and deepen. That is the genius of missionary work. 

If you haven't noticed, we are a missionary minded church. My mission has taught me a few things. If our energy is not focused on growth, the only alternative is depression. Thankfully the church does not work like an economy so there's no need to worry about a great depression. The point is, the kingdom of God cannot sit still because the adversary will catch up. If we were to idly survive as a church we would not last long. I've learned that we should never ever lose our vision of progression in anything we are apart of. Perfection is our eternal goal; however, it is not attainable in this life which means we can always be improving. 

Obviously, this doesn't mean we must be getting better at everything every second of every day. That would be impossible (Nothing is impossible? Not quite). We can only focus on a few things at a time. This realization has helped me to focus my attention on the important things in life. The world is filled with enough fluff and shuff which we don't need to waste our time on. So this brings up the question I would invite you to ask yourself: What is most important to me? Am I dedicating enough of my time and energy to what is most important to me?

What's most important to me is my relationship to family, friends, and the Godhead. I'm doing my best to focus on that.

Keep up the important work you're doing and have a great week,

Elder Johnson

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