26 August 2009

First off, I still don't know if you ever received the letter I sent for Grandma. Please let me know if you have.

Thank you, thank you, and thank you for the package! It was absolutely wond=
erful. I had totally forgotten that Life Savers existed. Also, the conference reports are a welcome gift. I hope I can ask for more of those in the future. And I think Lyn would like it here: there are no ice cream cakes.

I was holding out my hope that I would return to the same bishop I left. Oh well, that means I can call him Jay wherever I see him now!

As far as my mailing address is concerned, you can all just send any letters to the mission office. We live with the district leader and he goes by there every Thursday because we're so close.

Okay, so I know a little more now about where I am. I am serving in the city of Curitiba in a bairro(buy-hoe) called Novo Mundo, which name I have already explained. The equivalent of a bairro in English I think would be somewhere in-between a suburb and a city district. We are very close to the center here, and the people are great. This is my first time serving in a stake and in a ward, and we actually attend church meetings in a chapel! Outside of that, I don't really know what more to write right now, but I'm sure some stuff will pop up this week.

For this week's message, I would like to turn to the 143rd Semi-annual Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints held on October 5, 6, and 7, 1973 (report courtesy the Floyd family). Elder Sterling W. Sill, Assistant to the Council of the Twelve, spoke about laying up in store earthly treasures. Says he,

"Someone said, Money ain't everything," and his friend said, "Just name me three things that it ain't. But we also should think of some of those things that it is. Money is preserved labor, it is industry made negotiable, it is stored up accomplishment. It is the medium of exchange that we can trade for things that we can take with us and a great many of them we can actually send on ahead. We can take our families with us. We can take our education with us. We can take our great character qualities with us. And money is the medium that we can use to share the treasures of the earth with others who need our help."

The point I would like to make here is exactly how we can manage to be both missionaries and normal people. In today's world, it would be almost impossible to leave behind all your worldly possessions and become a full-time missionary. Even the missionaries of the Church today need a constant supply of cash sent to Church headquarters. God does not ask us at this time to sell all that we can, but we do have our time. We can lay up treasures on Earth if we have our eyes on how that will help us lay up treasures in Heaven. We can be missionaries while working, while studying, and while resting. It just requires an effort on our part.

I pray that we can use our earthly treasures to buy heavenly treasures (which includes laying up souls). I know that I am not very eloquent in writing, and this whole thing is probably a little scattered, but I also pray that the Spirit may testify of the things I write. Time is up now, but I will write again next week. Tell Amanda I say hi too.

Until next week,
Elder Daniel Floyd