If You Give Us Anti-Mormon Material, At Least Make It Good

       I love being in Utah. The work here is often just given to you. Yesterday was a tough day. We were exhausted both mentally and physically and just had a really really hard time getting out the door. We were just walking around and I kept thinking, I just want to stop here, I just wanna lie down and take a nap. I'm way too tired to be doing this, which was my own fault but I'll get to that in a minute. So we're walking along and a car was there and they stopped us and said, hey we're the Allred's in the Emerald Ward, etcetera etcetera. Then we're talking to them and they mention, we're headed over to the Carr's home their daughter is in my primary class, they were at church today and the daughter wants to be baptized. We did literally nothing except for show up and because we were out, we now have a missionary opportunity. 

       Now for why I was tired, I'm both very proud and very not proud to say this but for the first time this week I've been waking up on time. No, that doesn't mean I was getting out 5-10 minutes late, I mean 1-2 hours late. I'm a really confusing person I've realized, I've never gotten up on time because I was too tired even though I was going to bed on time, but the day that I started getting up on time I obviously decided that it would make sense to go to bed 2-3 hours late, because that just makes sense, totally. 

       I also love James. James is this super cool guy that's inactive, he's the guy that gave us his garage code so that we can grab drinks from his outside fridge that he keeps stocked up for us and loves basketball so Italk to him about that. So this week we helped him out with some service, which obviously started with a trip to Dutch Bros. Then we removed his old washer and dryer, ripped up the flooring, put in new flooring, and moved the new washer and dryer in. Then the most amazing thing happened, he gave us his old washer and dryer! None of you guys realize how exciting that is, the washer and dryer function properly. The old washer we had every 10ish minutes it would stop the cycle until you went up there and would start punching the machine, then it resumed the cycle. The dryer was even more annoying though, the dryer wouldn't dry clothes. It would, but very slowly, it took 3 or 4 full cycles for it to dry. None of that anymore though because James's washer and dryer work properly.

      James also gave us 48 cans of Mountain Dew, which don't help us sleep but were very tasty. Our household drank all of them in 48 hours, Utah has rubbed off on us. Then yesterday, James bought me a pair of basketball shoes. He bought Zion's!! He says he saw them and they were crazy cheap, which is a relief I don't want him spending a ton of money for me. They're so nice though, I love them and they're so comfortable. The only thing is, I haven't been able to play basketball in them yet, but I'm excited. 

      We put Chy on date this week, they keep giving us food and it continues to be awesome and then we also taught a really old guy who gave us an anti-Mormon book. The whole purpose of the book is to prove the Bible and to prove Mormonism false. It's a hilariously poorly written argument though and he clearly doesn't understand what The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints believe or as he says, Mormons. He claimed that Heaven to Mormon women is being eternally pregnant (absolutely no idea where he got that from, no references included), he quoted the Book of Joseph Smith Chapter 2 verse 19, to be exact (doesn't exist, there is no Book of Joseph Smith and the closest thing Joseph Smith History only has 1 chapter), and apparently doesn't even understand his own religion, "God never asks for blind faith, only the devil does that." Hebrews 11:1, 2 Corinthians 5:7, the story of Thomas. Clearly that was all the devil especially in the story of Thomas when Christ was speaking. It was very disappointing, we were hoping for some interesting Anti stuff, but what we got was totally pointless. Oh well, at least we got a new washer and dryer. If you can't tell I love that we got those. 

Here's a link to a talk I gave about Doctrinal Relativism. We asked to speak in a ward (because that's how it works in Utah) and they asked what we'd like to speak on and we said that we love speaking on missionary work. A week later they said we want you to speak on Doctrinal Relativism and me and my companion had no idea what it was, but if you're curious there's an attachment below. 

                               Adi-toast, Elder Blacker

Talk:

Hello everybody, my name is Elder Blacker. I'm from Dallas Texas and I've now been on my mission for about 5 1⁄2 months. I also love In-N-Out, I worked there for about 18 months and I loved it so much that I'm going to try to be the manager of an In-N-Out store when I get home. That's right, my aspirations in life are to flip hamburgers for a living, not exactly what your parents want to hear. My parents were actually totally cool with my career decision (I think) because 1. In-N-Out managers make a surprising amount of money and 2. My aspirations aren't actually to flip burgers, they're to have a job that supports my family where I'm happy, and I've found that at In-N-Out, plus... the food is amazing, by far the best fast food burger that there is. Speaking of trying to be happy, that's a great segway into why I decided to serve a mission, which is what I'll be speaking about along with Doctrinal Relativism, which if you don't know what that is don't worry neither did I, but we'll get to that.     Serving a mission is something that I've always wanted to do. Growing up I never questioned if I was going on a mission or not at least not until the age of about 14 or 15. This is the time in my life when I could no longer rely on my parents testimony and needed to gain one for myself. The only problem is, I didn't do that. Instead of gaining my own testimony I was lazy and did nothing. It was also about this time that I was experiencing depression and if you've never been clinically depressed, the way that I would describe it is the inability to feel joy, not the choice to not feel joy, but the inability, it's just about not possible to feel joy.     This is my experience with depression. Imagine your thoughts just putting you in this dark place, all the time. You're unable to pull yourself out of this darkness, how do you avoid your own thoughts? It's just about impossible. You try to do something that you enjoy and you feel nothing, no happiness, no hope. The absence of the good feelings that you expected only deepens the emptiness you feel. Now that you've learned you can't be happy and being around happy things only makes you feel a bigger and bigger void, you avoid things. You want to be alone, you hear someone talking or laughing and you turn away because you're afraid of what you'll feel when you're around them. You just keep having all these awful thoughts and feelings and you would do anything to prevent them. Yet somehow, someone asks if you're ok and you manage to smile and tell them you're fine, even fantastic, despite the pain that a simple smile brings because it further reminds you of what you're missing. Everything becomes a chore. Productivity no longer gives you fulfillment and consequently all the little things become a lot harder to find the motivation to accomplish. Why would I brush my teeth if I'll feel the exact same way regardless of if I do it or not? You don't get any fulfillment by staying busy so you stay in bed. Somehow though you feel even worse when you don't do anything. You pretend to be happy, but inside you're dead. You feel nothing and have no hope of getting out. This was my experience with depression and I imagine I'm not the only one to experience depression this way.     Once this depression hit instead of turning to the gospel like I'd been taught growing up I turned to the things of the world. Let me tell you guys something, if you feel depressed and like you would do anything to feel happy because you haven't felt like that in a long time the world is not the answer, it just isn't, it'll only make you more depressed. Unfortunately I didn't learn this for about 2 years after I was depressed and I was caught in this loop. I felt an emptiness of joy and     So I turned to the world. The world can only give you momentary happiness which, a lot like alcohol, after you've felt your spurt of happiness you crash and fall to a lower level of depression than you were before you started. It's a terrible loop to be caught in which after about 2 years of being caught in this loop I was just about ready to end my life. For me it wasn't super pressing, I wasn't going to kill myself the next day, but suicidal thoughts were increasingly becoming something I thought about more and more and if I had to guess, I would say I was only 6 or 7 months away from going through with these thoughts, which is scary to me now. So what saved me? Going to seminary. I didn't like going to seminary, I didn't believe in the gospel so to me it was a waste of time and unlike here where it's in the middle of the day, seminary in Texas is in the morning. My parents still made me go every morning and I would actually listen, but what eventually got me out of the loop was my seminary teacher. My seminary teachers' name is Sister Wyeth and she has this amazing ability to light up a room just by being there and I was drawn to this light because this light was different. I don't know why, but the light from Sister Wyeth that she so freely shared with everyone didn't make me feel worse about myself, the light that she radiated made me get a taste of something I'd been missing for a long time and because of this light I started enjoying seminary and eventually started looking forward to going to seminary every day. I still didn't have a testimony or believe in the church or the Book of Mormon, but if anybody out here is depressed and you don't believe me when I say that the way to find happiness in this life is the gospel the next best advice I have for you is to find something, anything to look forward to each day, it makes such a difference and gives you a reason to keep living until something changes. That's what happened to me, seminary became my reason to live until things changed.     Eventually after continuing to go to seminary and observe this light and joy that my seminary teacher had, and so freely gave to everyone around her, I realized that she was getting it from her love of Jesus Christ and her love of the Book of Mormon. Once I realized this, I finally started to read the Book of Mormon for myself to know if it was true or not, and it took a lot of effort, but eventually I got there and I can now say with surety that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and Jesus Christ is my Savior. You know what else happened when I learned that for myself? I became so much happier. I was once again able to feel my own joy and my own peace. A knowledge of a loving Heavenly Father and a Savior who loves me enough to die for me is something that I wouldn't give up for anything. So why did I decide to serve a mission? I think the scripture on my mission plaque says it best, 1 Nephi 8:12 reads, "And as I partook of the fruit thereof it filled my soul with exceedingly great joy; wherefore, I began to be desirous that my family should partake of it also; for I knew that it was desirable above all other fruit." Now that I've been blessed with the joy of the restored gospel I wanted everyone around me to be able to feel the joy that I felt and continue to feel. Missions are awesome, if you're considering going on one, do it. If you're considering sharing the gospel with somebody, do it. The joy that it brings can save a life along with bringing their soul immense joy.     Now, onto Doctrinal Relativism. From my understanding, Doctrinal Relativism is the concept of applying Doctrine into our own lives the way God wants us to as opposed to the way we might want to. For some reason it seems to be human nature to take what God has said and apply our     own rules and guidelines to it. Most recently, I've done this when it comes to missionary standards. When I first came out on my mission, I didn't really care if I was an obedient missionary or not, I just didn't. Obviously, my mission president didn't understand how tired I was when he told us to wake up at 6:30 otherwise the rule wouldn't be in place. Actually, that doesn't even come from my mission president, that guidance came from the Quorum of the 12 Apostles. They gave inspired direction and I was applying my own rules to it, saying that they meant it was only when I wasn't super tired. There are a lot more rules that I wasn't following as well, but we won't get into the nitty-gritty of it.   When we choose to apply our own rules to the direction that God has given to us we're missing out on blessings. This last transfer, so for the last 3 weeks, I've been doing a lot better with being obedient and not applying my own guidelines to the rules and I've been seeing the blessings that come with that. Numbers aren't everything, but in the last 3 weeks that I've been here in this area, where I've been being obedient, we've found more people to start teaching than I've found in the first 18 weeks that I've been in this area. I was even out of the house and putting in work during those 18 weeks, the only major difference between the first 18 weeks and the last 3 has been my obedience. I love what it says in Alma 57:21 "Yea, and they did obey and observe to perform every word of command with exactness." The Stripling Warriors followed with exactness, they didn't put their own thoughts into what was being commanded of them, they followed the directions that were given to them. Now here's where I get to apply it to all of you guys. We have a living prophet on the Earth     today. Russell M. Nelson is the mouthpiece of the Lord and just because what he says doesn't become the Book of Russell doesn't mean we can choose whether or not to follow it any more than we can choose whether or not to follow what's written in the Book of Alma. Both of their teachings come from the same place, Jesus Christ, and we need to stop taking what the prophet says so lightly. Not so long ago the prophet commanded us to minister as Christ would to those around us. Ministering is supposed to be a step above Home Teaching, but for some reason there's a lot of us that didn't take that to heart. Another example is with the name of the Restored Church of Christ. For some reason we keep doing things halfway and make excuses for doing so.     It would be like if your friend asked you to grab some butter from the fridge and instead of doing that we think, well clearly he doesn't realize that my elbow is bruised so what he must've wanted is for me just to open the door to the fridge. How upset would you be if your spouse did that? If you asked for butter and instead they simply opened the door and walked away to let you grab it. Now imagine the frustration of the Lord when he gives us direction and we make excuses and add our own direction to what he tells us. Sometimes we do have legitimate reasons to be hesitant to follow. Let's say you were too short to reach the butter, a very legitimate reason to not grab it, but you need to ask the Lord what to do. Sometimes he might say it's OK I'll grab it, but I think more often than not when you tell the Lord about your inadequacy his response will be to grab a stool. I invite all of you guys to look at what our prophet has been instructing us to do for the past couple of years and to really take a look at how you've been following his word. I     promise you that as you do this and you make an effort to better follow his counsel, you will see the blessings that come from that. I'd like to bear my testimony that I know that the Book of Mormon is true. I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior and that as we come closer to him, we're able to feel more joy and more peace than we could otherwise imagine possible. I also know that Russell M. Nelson is a prophet of God and that by following his words we'll be living as God would want us to. In the name of Jesus Christ Amen.