04-07-14

The leadership training was fantastic. I learned so many things. One of the things that impacted me the most is that President Willard talked to us about sacrifice, about how the Lord asks for 100 percent. 80 percent is great. 90 is fantastic. Those missionaries and people are great, but the Lord wants 100. Like with the sacrifices of old, you had to kill all the animal, not just a part of it. The difference between Abel and Cain, is that Abel gave a blood sacrifice; Cain didn´t. The Lord knows that when we give Him our all, we can love Him the way we need to, rely on Him the way we need to, to trust in Him the way we need to. That was just one thing. 

As for wanting to go to BYU, it kinda ties in with what I just said funnily enough, (really though everything in the Gospel is connected) I´ve learned so much on my mission to this point. I´ve changed a ton of who I am and who I want to become. I´ve come so much closer to my Heavenly Father, but I know I have so much more to do. God wants us to live up to our potential. Every one of us is the son or daughter of a Heavenly King. And that is what our potential is. God gives us talents, attributes, and capabilities, so that we can grow them, and then use them to help others reach their potential. God has given me the potential to do a lot of great things with my life, and I want to reach my full potential. So I believe that requires the best of everything that I can get. BYU would give me the chance to grow in so many different ways, and especially spiritually. The greatest men that I´ve ever seen, or met, are rock solid in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They know that they have potential, and that others do as well. And they do everything they can to be the best version of themselves that they can be. God has given me the opportunity to do more, so that´s what I want to do. :) 

Here´s a fun experience that I had this last week :) (I wrote this to the president, but I thought i´d share it with everyone :) )

I do want to share with you in this letter a really cool experience that Elder Burrola and I had this last week. So as you know, our goals for this week were high to say the least, and I believe it was Wednesday, but it was about 630 in the afternoon, and we had a grand total of 0 lessons for the day. I was a panicking to say the least. Elder Burrola said, ¨just three lessons. We can get three.¨ Now we had been working, a lot. We had at that point visited every planned person, talked to more that 20 people in the street, and couldn´t get anything. But I got the determination to find three lessons. So then it was 730, and still, not one lesson. I just knew though, there were three lessons out there for us. We were walking and searching with purpose, and Elder Burrola had the idea to go to one of the older investigators that we had and they let us in! So we taught a short, powerful lesson, and charged out, looking for our last two. We just started walking, and I had the idea to go the main plaza and see if we could find some families enjoying the evening in the park, so we went there. And there were families there! Before our last hour of the night was up, we found two families to teach, now they were horrible lessons and they had no interest, but we got our three lessons. I learned that the Lord always has people for us to teach, it just depends on how much effort we´re willing to give. We did everything to find those lessons, and the Lord blessed us in His time, not ours. :)

Haha really im learning so many things, I can´t always remember what to share :D That´s awesome for Mckade :) And I´m so happy that you guys are reading together! That will help you all more than you can know. All of you should write the thing that impacted you the most from conference and send it to me in an email :) The priesthood session was probably the most powerful session of general conference i´ve ever heard in my lifetime. I didn´t get to see a lot of the sessions, only priesthood and the sunday morning session, but I just loved them. Also study Preach My Gospel as well! Elder Ballard talked about that I believe, Its amazing how inspired that book is. Every single sentence is so important. :) Truly it is scripture of our day! Love you lots!

Elder Evenson