Week 7: "A" for Anniversary, Apostle & Awesome

This week (Monday) Van and I celebrated our 31st Anniversary.  What an incredible journey, and the adventure continues.  We went to a place called Boat House 19 for dinner.  It's right down by the Puget Sound.  Great food.  We'll go there again.

Zone Conferences were this week on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday; each at a different part of the mission.  Van had to do some Safety Training and inspect missionaries' cars each day.  Busy week for him. 
Look at what our missionaries drive --!  Just kidding.  This is a truck owned by Elder Bingham who is over mission finances. Van is an admirer.
The Wednesday conference was here in Tacoma so Sister Harwood and I helped Sister Weaver with the lunch that day. Always a treat to be with the missionaries. They sang to us at the end of lunch.  They are so appreciative, but it made me cry. Also got to see Sister Whitney Jenkins that day.

Sister Jenkins & Sister Brady

Big event this week was a special mission conference on Saturday morning.  Knowing that an apostle was to come speak, we've been anticipating this event for a couple of weeks.  As we arrived at about 9:15 a.m. I as really impressed with how quiet it was in the chapel -- despite it already being full with missionaries. No one was chatting. Wow! If we could be that reverent and focused in all our Sacrament Meetings, the spirit would not be restrained. 

We didn't know until we were at the chapel which apostle was coming.  At about 9:20 a.m., President Weaver announced that he'd just received a text that Elder Neil L. Andersen, accompanied by Elder Craig C. Christensen a member of the Presidency of the Seventy, had just arrived at the Seattle airport and were on their way. He requested that we take 30 minutes to read, ponder, and prepare ourselves.  

Elder Anderson had everyone come up to shake his hand before the meeting began.  Elder Christensen, President & Sister Weaver and a Brother Call gave brief remarks.  Then Elder Andersen spent an hour talking with the missionaries. He talked about many things, but I'll mention two points that most impressed me.

One, each of us will experience, in our lifetime, some kind of trial, difficulty, disaster, tragedy, heartache, etc. No one is immune to life’s experiences, not even the righteous and faithful.  He emphasized that through it all, Jesus Christ is the ONLY source of peace and strength.  He said something like:  “If you will seal in your heart a testimony of the Savior, Jesus Christ, you will have no issue with the message of Joseph Smith and the restoration. – It is this firmly planted faith in Jesus Christ that will get you through life’s experiences and difficulty. He talked about the mercy, merits, and grace of Christ.

Two, what I’ll remember most is what he said about the seen vs the unseen.  He used 2 Corinthians 4:18: “While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen:  for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

As we serve the Lord and become more sensitive to his spirit, we see and discern things that are unseen.  We should focus on the things that are not seen.  The atonement is not “seen,” but it is very real.  We can sense through the spirit (the unseen) what is real. We are here to learn to understand things through the eye of faith.

I think he might have been trying to tell us (me) that we need to learn to rely on the spirit more.  We need to learn how to discern through the spirit what is right, not necessarily rely on what we see, touch, etc. That's my take on it.  

Wish I had a picture of Elder Andersen, but I wouldn't have dared try that one.   Anyway, it was an "A" week for sure.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone.