Encourage People to Come Up

Dearest Mother,

I love the pictures you all sent me of Charles and Henry!! They are super cute!! I printed a bunch of them out so I could see them every day:) Thank you so much for the pictures!!! I love them so much!! I can now sympathize for Josh when he was on his mission and you had Charles.. But the pictures are definitely appreciated:) Ps I'm totally printing these out and putting them on my wall.. I have a Prince Charles wall in my apartment all of pictures of my nephew. And now there will be an add on for King Henry.. Cutest pictures in the world! I love pictures of you guys! They are all super awesome!

A member who lives in a retirement home because she has Alzheimers. We visit her at least once a week since missionaries are some of the few people that she can recognize anymore.. Super sad but she is so sweet:)

It's interesting that you said that you learned something different about Lehi's dream the other day, mostly because I was reading that the other day and noticed a lot of things I hadn't known before. One of the things I noticed, was how when Lehi had partaken of the fruit, he immediately wanted his family to taste it, and instead of waiting for them to come over to him, he shouted at them and waved for them to come over to where he was. He actively worked to help them get closer, he didn't wait for them to see him. At the same time however, it wasn't like he left the tree, and went and pulled them over to the tree, he let them come at their own pace, but he stood at the tree waiting for them to come to him. It was an interesting parallel I thought with how we should be an example today. We shouldn't be going to someone else's level by lowering our standards, but by encouraging them to come up to the level we are at. Continually being that example for them, never degrading, but always encouraging. 

The lady with the green jacket we surprised on her 90th birthday.. (we actually crashed her birthday party Wednesday night and then crashed her birthday on Sunday.. Didn't actually plan that, it just happened.. We didn't even know that it was her birthday until someone came in and gave her a present.. Whoops.. Super funny though).

I also looked at Nephi's record of the same vision and I noticed something I hadn't before. In 1 Nephi 11:25, it talks about how the iron rod leads to the "fountain of living waters, or the tree of life; which waters are a representation of the love of God." I knew that the tree and the fruit on it represented the love of God, and how sweet it was to behold, but the way this was worded made me think of an even further analogy. In the New Testament, Jesus tell the woman at the well that He is the source of living water. When you put that with this vision, and how it was said that it was the fountain of living water-fountain being the source-literally it is saying that Christ is the representation of the love of God! How true that is! Heavenly Father has done what he has done to help us His Children, and Christ is the focus of it all. It is through Christ that we experience this joy and happiness and peace. By no other name nor any way can we feel that eternal bliss we so desire! And then further in that same chapter, it talks about Christ'd life, and how He was judged of the world (v32). Compare that to how the great and spacious building judged those who went to the tree, they are essentially mocking the tree and belittling it, just like the world did to Jesus in His mortal life. There are so many other things that I gained from reading it this time around, and one day I will have to show you all my notes on it, and we can have super long conversations about everything that you and I have learned while I am on my mission. For now though, I just wanted to give you that to think over.

The lady with the pink blanket is our 96 year old investigator Willie Mae.

I really do love the scriptures! There is not enough time in the day to do all that I want to do to learn and grow from them. Every time I study them I really get something new out of them. Things that I skimmed over, things that I never connected, all of it suddenly making sense. Speaking of, real quick since I have to go in a minute, there was a member who was able to go to the temple for the first time last Saturday. It was super awesome and so spiritual because this persons journey to getting there are led her to some really rocky roads. On Sunday when I saw her after that, we were having a regional broadcast from Salt Lake for all the South Eastern area. Before we tuned in for the broadcast, we sang Hymn #6. During the broadcast for the intermediate hymn, we sang... hymn #6... again... Later the next day, we went and visited her, and she pointed out something to us that I had never considered. So for those of you who have been to the temple, you will probably get it, but the rest of you wont. Go look at the hymn though and read through it thinking of the covenants we make. It's super cool when you figure it out. :) Its interesting to me that I have sung that hymn so many times and I never really understood its potential worth to me. The same works with the scriptures but a hundred times over:)

Love you all! Hope all is well with you:)

Love,

Your favorite child, and the most excited Aunt in the world,

Sister Monica Walker

Me trying this ab wheel workout thing the elders gave us and failing miserably.... and comforting myself with donuts after:)