April 25, 2016

Hey family,

This week was a bit slower.  There just weren't a lot of people who were able to meet and we didn't find any new ones.  We had fun though.  It was trainee takeover week so Elder Roos led all the planning and teaching.  We would help him out when he needed it though.

We had two exchanges and then a sleepover with some rural elders in preparation for stake conference.  We didn't get near enough sleep and I am so flippin tired.

So last week I made a point to write things down that I wanted to share with you but I didn't do that this week so this email will be disappointing.  Hmm... yeah my companions can't think of anything noteworthy that happened this week either.

So how do we want to do the Mother's day call?  What times will Emily be available?  

One of the things people tend to struggle with is keeping the Sabbath Day holy.  If we look at the commandment of keeping the Sabbath Day holy as just a list of do nots then it can be difficult to be properly motivated to keep the Sabbath holy.  In my mind the do nots are given to us because of the hardness of our hearts, to keep us from being distracted from the true purpose of the Sabbath: "For verily this is a day appointed unto you to rest from your labors, and to pay thy devotions unto the Most High." (D&C 59:10)  There are so many things we are asked to do or are prompted to do that we don't normally have time to do.  We have responsibilities for church and callings, family history work, missionary work, personal and family scripture study.  There is so much that God expects us to do and he gave us time to do it.  As we actually keep the Sabbath day holy we are blessed so much.  No excuses people!  Rant over.  Seriously the more we actually try to live  God's commandments we are blessed with the understanding of how much sense they make.  In other words a testimony.

Love you all,

Elder Stapley