Y'all are EMO

Howdy,

This week has been more of the same but I am becoming more comfortable in church and with the members of the ward and just being a missionary in all. It's good to be feeling more comfortable and I know the Lord is helping me with that because I am beginning to open my mouth more to everyone and that's the first step as a missionary is to be willing to open our mouth. Not even preaching the gospel just talking to people. I still struggle a lot with it but it's getting a lot better and I still have so much time to improve.

Now for the title of my email today. We were teaching members again and one of the members children out of no where said to his sister you're EMO and then went to explain that EMO stands for Emotional Music Overdose and all teenagers are emo. His sister, brother, and myself were dying. I thought of all of you who listen to your feels music and it was so funny. He's also 12 years old. Then yesterday his younger brother went up in front of the congregation to bear his testimony. He started out with the "missionaries have been teaching my family the gospel and my siblings don't really pay attention." And goes to share how his brother said he saw a sign that said you either go to Heaven or Hellokitty.org. That was the best lesson ever and reminded me to have fun.

Now time for spiritual messages. In my studies this week I came across a scripture that reads "And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:" that's Genisis 3:14 so did snakes in the garden of Eden have legs? I'm joking that's not my spiritual thought.

My real thought comes from one of my favorite Book of Mormon stories the 2000 stripping warriors. These 2000 warriors were young men around my age. Their parents made a covenant (promise) with the Lord to not take up their arms. So the 2000 stripping warriors volunteered to go to war to protect their liberty, their lands, their families and their religion. In the end none of the 2000 stripping warriors were killed because they had no doubt that the Lord would protect them. The had extreme Faith and were obedient and because of that they were safe. Alma 56:47-48 reads "Now they never had fought, yet they did not fear death; and they did think more upon the liberty of their fathers than they did upon their lives; yea, they had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them. 48 And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers, saying: We do not doubt our mothers knew it." We all have doubts and fears but when we put our trust in the Lord and know his plan and his love for us we have nothing to fear not even death. When we cast out doubt and fear we can do amazing things but, the only way to cast out fear and doubt is to have Faith.

Love y'all

Elder Park