It's Already Been 1 Year!!! - July 29, 2013

Greetings,

 

I can hardly believe it. I entered the MTC one year ago this Thursday. It can't be that long already! A year ago today I spoke in Sacrament Meeting and had a bunch of you over to our house. It is going by so fast. I hear that as soon as you hit the year mark the rest just goes by even faster. I believe that that is a sad reality.

 

Great week. We did about 20 hours of service, helping one member family prepare for their house to be bought, helping a couple of non-members help clean up their yards, and helping a member of our branch presidency prepare some of his house to so he can move out sooner rather than later. I feel like I was in "civilian" clothes for way too long this week!

 

Our Branch President is fantastic! He had us in his home to teach some of his friends in response to asking him "Who can we teach in your home this week?" It was a great blessing to be there. Elder Newhouse and I could have taught better, we taught too much of a lesson and not enough of teaching to their needs. So much to learn! Our Branch President was also lacking speakers for Sacrament Meeting, so he asked Elder Newhouse and I to each speak for 10 minutes on the Work of Salvation Broadcast. It was awesome! I spoke on charity and conversion and told the members we no longer tract, and Elder Newhouse recreated Elder Holland's telling of Peter and Christ's interaction from the October 2012 General Conference (http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2012/10/the-first-great-commandment?lang=eng). It touched some members and we are excited to see where that leads.

 

We heard about the Church of God based out of Korea and a member who lives here. They believe in Heavenly Mother and so she was really excited to speak with us. Turns out it isn't quite what we thought it was. She tried to teach us but was just very confusing, we were the first people to listen to her. We listened to her last week, so we will get to teach her this week!

 

There was a severe thunderstorm here on Monday night. We had just finished teaching a lesson at the Stake President's home and they had fed us a dinner of homemade stir fry. We were about to leave as it was about to get serious. So we stayed for an extra hour to wait out the storm. If you think you have seen a severe thunderstorm, and it wasn't in the Midwest, think again about it being severe. Wind bursts of upwards of 60 mph and lightning all around, back-to-back-to-back for an hour. With some rain. There were broken branches and bark off of trees everywhere! We spent a good 4 or 5 hours this week at least helping pick up branches, rake leaves, and mow lawns because of all of that. Crazy! Worst storm I have ever been in. Just wait for the tornados... (Just kidding Mom. Story City hasn't been hit by a tornado in a long time. *knock on wood*)

 

This week my focus has been charity. Nothing moves forward without Charity and the Spirit. So I am striving to increase those as time goes on. Study and pray for Charity, the pure love of Christ. And do your best to act on it. That is my invitation to you.

 

Love,

Elder Zachary R McKenzie

Iowa Des Moines Mission

    D&C 6:34, 36

Doubt Not, Fear Not.
550 Souls to Christ