| Weekly Letter February 29th, 2016
Well, happy leap year. Hope everyone has had a great week.
This week we played truth or dare with the people in the old folks home and had a bonfire with the branch. On Sunday we were able to visit a village called El Oreganal and we found a member there who is willing to use her home as a meeting house on Sunday's for the members that live there. Hopefully this means that we can start forming a little group of members that in the future can become their own branch.
I've been especially happy this week about the relationship we've established with the young men in the branch. This Sunday we left with four of them and they were able to give away over 100 pamphlets. We hope that as these young men participate in missionary work their desire to serve a mission will grow and their capacity for future leadership roles in the church will increase. This week I'd like to share a scripture chain that I really like that is instructive on the relationship of obedience and freedom. In John 7:17 we read "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine." Therefore, obedience leads to knowledge. In D & C 93:24 we read that "truth is knowledge" and in John 8:32 we read that "the truth shall make you free". Logically, therefore, we can see that obedience leads to freedom. But how can this be? Isn't obedience just self-subjugation? The opposite of freedom can somehow be freedom? I love an example given by David A. Bednar. Elder Bednar explains that on Sunday his wife Susan loves to sit down and play the piano for hours. She can play beautiful music and is free to do so. Elder Bednar, however, is not free to do so. Why? Well, Susan's freedom comes from her obedience. By practicing for years and years, obediently putting in time and effort, she has gained knowledge and therefore truth about how to play the piano and that truth has made her free. Elder Bednar is free to sit down at the piano and bang on some keys, but his lack of knowledge in that particular skill comes from a lack of obedience that ultimately results in a lack of freedom. "He that keepeth his commandments recieveth truth and light, until he is glorified in truth and knoweth all things." - D & C 93:28.
May we choose to obey so that we might increase in truth and light continually, waiting for the day when we shall become beings of infinite knowledge, freedom, and joy.
I love you all, have a great week.
-Elder Dawson
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| Dog with Shades |
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| Young Men in the Branch |
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