"I am he, the beginning and the end" (D&C 19:1) - March 14, 2022

 Spiritual Thought

Throughout our lives we will all face moments when we are asked by our Savior to pass through experiences intended to test our faith and dependence on him.  Each of these is an opportunity to increase our personal devotion to and love for the Savior.  As we stand at the beginning of such moments we are asked to step into the darkness and rely fully on the plan our Savior has for us.  We show our faith in our Savior's plan as we, like Peter, step from the safety of our boat onto a storm-tossed sea, trusting our Master to support and uphold us.

In the Doctrine and Covenants the Savior stated "I am he, the beginning and the end"  I have pondered a great deal on this statement in recent weeks.  It is my belief that many of us only think of the last part of this sentence, "I am...the end".  We recognize our Savior's hand in placing learning experiences before us and we anticipate reaching the end of such periods when he stands ready to receive us.  We trust our Master to be anxiously anticipating our arrival at the end of our trials.  I wonder, however, if we may overlook the first piece in this description.  The Savior describes himself as the beginning.  He does not stand at the end of our path beckoning us to him from a distance.  Rather, his nature and character will forever be to walk beside us during the struggles of this mortal world, from the beginning to the end.  Just as he said to humble fishermen so long ago he says to us "Come, Follow Me".  My testimony and witness is that Jesus Christ is our truest friend and dearest ally as we face the struggles placed in our path.  He is eager to lead us by the hand and be our personal "Light which shineth in darkness".  He is a God of eternal beginnings.  The sweetest evidence of this is a tomb with the stone rolled away from the door standing as a witness of his triumph over death.  That each of us may depend more fully on our Savior, "the beginning and the end", is my prayer.

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Weekly Update

Hello everyone,

Sometimes you just don't have any new or creative way of saying "this week went by really fast and I can't believe it's over" to start your email.  I will let you all imagine I had an exciting way of starting off this week's email.  I have mentioned in the past that my zone is going to have a lot of baptisms this transfer.  It is very exciting because they have been anticipated all transfer and are finally starting to happen.  Saturday night the Palacios family was baptized.  This family has been taught for about four months.  They are so prepared and it was a neat opportunity to watch them make their first covenant.  The Rosales family was not able to attend in person but they watched on Zoom.  They seemed to appreciate being able to watch a baptism take place.  I had the opportunity to interview the Palacios family before they were baptized.  As a side note, completing four baptismal interviews and filling out a baptismal form after each one takes much longer than you would expect, especially when the people you are interviewing arrive an hour late.  Random fun fact.  I was able to complete the interviews for Julian, Cristina, and Jose Friday night.  Susan, however was not able to come on Friday so we had to do it before the baptism on Saturday.  The baptism was scheduled for 5 and Susan did not arrive until 4:45.  We managed to get everything taken care of in time though.  It was a neat opportunity to see this family enter the waters of baptism.

The other excitement of the week happened last night.  The APs gave us a call and said that President Johnson had decided to make some changes to my district.  Elder Morse and I are no longer companions.  He has moved to a YSA area in English.  I am now companions with Elder Porter.  Transfers are only a week away.  It is a little strange to make changes so close to the official transfer but I'm sure the Lord has a plan in place.  I'm excited to be with Elder Porter for at least the next week!

I hope you all have a great week!

Elder Payne

My district.  From L to R: Hermana Berkabile, Hermana Lopez, Elder Jorgensen, Me, Elders Kolberg, Morse, Smith, and Gray.

We were given permission to watch Encanto, the new Disney movie, last p-day.  A member invited us to their house to watch it.  I've seen the movie before most of my family members which feels strange being a missionary.

Then the Elders went to play basketball for the rest of p-day.  One of the APs, Elder Jorgensen, is like trying to play basketball with a Rhino who just broke up with his girlfriend.  In other words, when he has the ball get out of the way.  Elder Kolberg was a little slow and ended up being slammed in the shoulder by a tank.  This is me and Elder Morse waiting for him at urgent care.

You get to meet so many interesting people while knocking doors.

It's a long story but we got kidnapped by a member and taken to eat at about 9:20 one night.  It's tough being in Utah, everyone wants to buy you food.

We met some really nice English members a couple weeks ago.  As we were talking I told them I was originally called to Madagascar.  The husband is a linguist (and by that I mean he is fluent in eleven languages) and gave some good advice for how to learn two languages at once.  He knows this because he decided to learn languages 12 and 13 (Amharic and Korean) at the same time.  They were at a bookstore and found a Malagasy copy of the Book of Mormon.  One day this week we were in their complex and they waved us down to give it to me.  I was very flattered they remembered.

Last Monopoly game before the house was broken up.  We won't mention how much sleep we ended up getting…

How full can you pack an Equinox?  This is five elders, all of Elder Porter's possessions, mail for the district, a new box of Books of Mormon, and all of our groceries for the next week packed into one car.