E-mail: Jan. 19, 2015: "We're here to save people from Eternal Dalmatian."‏

"Eternal Dalmatian"- My companion had a slip of the tongue the other day while he was describing our purpose as missionaries and I couldn't help but write it down. ;) I've come to realize that there are a lot of words and phrases associated with the Gospel that are, at times, not only hard to understand and explain but hard to pronounce as well. On top of that English is a second, or sometimes third or fourth language for all the members here, and so during our lessons on Sunday it's easy to misunderstand what's being said sometimes. For example, last Sunday the Teacher tried to explain how we show love to other people:

"You can't just say you love your fellow man, love is a worm."
"...Excuse me, love is what?"
"A worm, a worm, love is a worm."
"Brother, do you mean 'verb'?"
"Oh yes, that's it, love is a werb."

We have a lot of fun with it sometimes. ;) However I still have to laugh at how appropriate it is that my companion replaced the word 'damnation' with the dog that's traditionally associated with firefighters and places that are burning.

One of the most important Christlike qualities that we can learn to possess is charity, and I think I finally began to know what that feels like this week. There's one boy in our area that we met six months ago who's in a part member family that we've been trying to get to come to church and accept the gospel ever since. From our second visit with him I was really irritated with him and the choices he was making in his life. I was annoyed with his overly casual attitude lack of dedication towards us and everything else and I thought that we had very conflicting personalities. That was my attitude towards him for a long time, and it got so bad that I disliked visiting him. These last few weeks the mission president has been pushing us to do better at teaching with the spirit, and he even provided training to help us improve. When we went to visit this boy last week I tried really hard to listen to the spirit and teach him the things that the Lord wanted me to teach him. As the lesson began and we started talking with him and asking him questions he opened up and I saw a side of him that I hadn't been able to see before. As we sat in the lesson all the bad feelings I'd been harboring against him melted away and I felt myself beginning to love him as my brother. The next day he broke his commitments again, but this time instead of feeling angry I felt a desire to try even harder to help him overcome his obstacles. When the spirit is with you, whether you be at home, at school, at work, or in any situation, the Lord can help you to love and care about anyone. I testify of that. :)

Anyways until next time- oh be wise, what can I say more? ;)

-Elder Cloward