Epistle - 4.28.10

Good Wednesday Everyone!

I had a renewed correspondence with an old love this week.

This past Sunday Sandra Turley came to the Visitor's Center. Sister Turley lives down in Virginia, she was Cosette in the original Broadway cast of "Les Miserables", and she was in one of my all time favorite off-broadway shows, "Children of Eden".  Needless to say, we made sure we had an investigator willing to go with us =] Then, when we showed up to pick him up and he was so sick he could hardly stand, we frantically called everyone we could think of to find someone to go with us (We can only go if one of our Investigators, Recent Converts, or Less Actives wants to go). We ended up taking Sister Tom and her kids, and she had a great walk around the temple, she's hoping to go in a couple  months, then we went in to the Visitor's Center for the performance.

She was VERY good. She sang songs from most of my favorite shows, and all the ones she picked were ones that had spiritual meaning to her. She'd sing a song then say, let's take this out of context. In the show it means THIS  but, let's just look at the words, think about this song talking about God.

It was a really neat show, and reminded me how much I LOVE to sing. Being out hear and focused on other things I had sort of forgotten how much fun singing Musical Theater is. I'm positive that whatever might be in my future in my life, singing will be some part of it.

On top of that my companion and I were asked to sing a duet at the upcoming Night of Music and Inspiration in May. We found a beautiful peace called "Because He Lives" by Sally Deford. Gorgeous peace that I look forward to singing.

Other then that, Elder Smith blew out his ankle really bad playing football on the mall today, we're hoping it's just a sprain and Missionary Medical has ordered him to bed rest for 48 hours with ice. If it's not better by then we try the hospital.

Tasha and Jaymie are both still on track for their baptisms, the area is great, and time is flying by.

I love you all!

-Elder Ted. E Bear

Epistle - 3.14.10

 

Good Wednesday Everyone!

 

The weather has been a bit of a rollercoaster lately. Got very hot, then cold and wet, now it's sort of evened out to very pleasant and partly cloudly. Just about where I like it.

 

The green is finally returned to the forests also. The shade is still a little bit too light for a washingtonian, but whenever I'm near a couple pine trees the aroma gives me my fix!

 

 We have two investigators right now who are on date for baptism. Both are really neat people.

 

Jaymie is an interesting kid. When you first meet him he doesn't seem like the type to have any interest in God. He's been shot in the head before and his brain works a little interesting now, but he's still very intelligent, and completely there. He's the only investigator I've ever taught who completely on his own bikes ~8 miles to church on Sunday, pretty cool kid.

 

Tasha is a very nice lady. Her 2 year old daughter Tashae (Tah-Shay) (Welcome to the Ghetto people!) is a sweety. Tasha has been to a ton of churches, but says that right about the time she was about to join each one she felt like she lost the spirit and left. We explained that was because each had good things to teach her, but did not have the fulness, so as soon as she had learned everything that church had to offer, the spirit told her to move on, but that the full gospel was restored and she could have that in her life. She has been trying to hard to read the Book of Mormon, even though it's difficult for her and continues to pray every day. A very neat lady to work with.

 

Things are great out here. Life is indeed what you make of it, and we're making it out to be something akin to teriyaki chicken. Which for anyone who knows me equates to pretty darn good =]

 

I love you all!

-Elder Ted E. Bear

Epistle - 4.8.10

 

Hello Everyone!

 

So general conference was last weekend, and I had a very unusual experience.

 

As I was watching conference I sat tapping my foot, and my foot landed on something. That felt sort of weird, so I looked down and saw that my shoe had come untied and one of my brown shoe laces was laying off to the side of my shoe. I wasn't sure how in the world my shoe got untied so that was strange. Then I looked closer and saw that, in fact, my shoe WAS tied. So what is that brown thing?

 

Upon lifting my foot what do I see but a pretty dazed looking little brown snake (The harmless kind for any snake fearers out there)

 

However, even knowing he was harmless my first reaction upon seeing a snake right under my foot was to jerk both of my feet off the ground. The Elder sitting next to me saw my quick movement, At first thought I had a charley horse but looked over at me and I pointed at the snake. He grabbed a piece of paper, together we coaxed him on the paper and escorted him forcefully back outside where he belonged.

 

As I settled in to enjoy the rest of conference, my brain sort of pondered over the snake incident.

 

We know in the story of Adam and Eve the snake represents temptation. Temptation to sin or transgress the laws of God. My first reaction upon spotting the snake was to jerk back. How often do we forget that this ought to be our first reaction to temptation! How often when we spot a temptation do we lean right on in to see if it's something we actually might want to try? It should not be so. We should jump back so fast a cobra itself couldn't catch our toes. One of those close to me saw my distress and instantly jumped in to help me, and immediately we set about casting this unwanted thing from where we were.

 

Spot. Jump Back. Forcefully remove from our presence (By either moving it or moving ourselves).

 

I dare saw if we could all do that consistently, the Devil and his angels would be pretty bored all day with very little to do.

 

-Elder Ted E. Bear