Week #35

Dear Family,

We had a pretty solid week this week.  It's funny how as soon as I get close to leaving the work seems to explode.  We had an investigator come to church on Sunday for the first time, and this guy that we found yesterday was practically waiting for us to come because he had been reading in the Book of Mormon and had questions to ask us.  There's all sorts of little miracles every day, and it's crazy to see how much God's hand is in all of this work.  The grace of the Atonement is real, because I find myself doing stuff that I would not be able to do otherwise.

So here's my little tidbit for the week.  Elder Burnett and I were rulers of the office this past weekend.  All of the senior couples were at a conference with some visitors from church headquarters, so Elder Burnett and I dominated.  He was in the back working on editing the video, and I did my thing up at the front, answering phones and taking orders and sending out referrals.  Living the dream.  

But I had a pretty cool series of thoughts the other day.  Sister Mills asked me if I could design a business card for the mission office since we don't have one here.  Since I otherwise would have absolutely nothing to do, I agreed.  I've never been super good with graphic design, but I felt comfortable enough with some of the design work that I did for Cole and for Sandy Amp that I thought that I could do it.  I sat at the computer and it was super hard, I just couldn't get things figured out like I used to, and it didn't flow.  After working on it for a while, it started coming together, but it took quite a while.  I just haven't exercised the visual side of by brain in so long that it's undergoing some super crazy visual atrophy.  My ability to think in visuals has been debilitated by not exercising it through actions on a medium.

So here's my thought: When we have a physical body, we are able to create symbiosis between the way we think, a creative process to create something, and the actual something that is created.   When we create something based upon a thought, that thing reiterates to our mind what we were trying to think in the first place.  It's like plastering your mind on the world so you can see it in clear light.  

Here's another way to look at it.  This is why we needed to leave our Heavenly Father's presence in the pre-mortal existence and gain a body.  In the pre-mortal existence as spiritual entities, the most we could do was try to create in our minds. 

Here's an analogy:  it is like we are sitting in the middle of a room with yellow walls, and then trying to imagine to ourselves that the walls are actually blue.  It's not super hard to do, but as soon as our train of thought changes or we forget, the walls go back to being yellow, because that's how they really are.  But with a body we can physically change the color of the walls, paint them blue, and then our thoughts and reality are aligned, and they speak to each other.  We can only make our thoughts real by acting with physical body.  Faith without works is dead.  

That may have made no sense at all.  I'm still trying to get it all figured out in my brain, but it did help to right it down.  

But yeah, Portuguese!  I'm gonna speak it here pretty soon.  I'm super excited, even though I'm sure I won't understand a thing when I get there.  I've been studying language every day, so I'm sure that will benefit, but we'll see what happens.  

Thanks again for all the birthday wishes and gifts last week.  Happy Birthday, Addie!  You are 24, going on 25, and Calvin is 23, going on 24.  You can probably take care of him.  

Love you so much,

Jack