February 15th - Savior's first message - Baptism

Hello!

I hope you all had a good valentines day out in utah and yeah they do celebrate it out here. It's cool to here that there's a member in Sister Alapa's area coming to the best mission in all the land! haha. Also shout out to Alton for doing business with the money and the women hahaha!

Anyways this week was awesome. Not only did we have great success in helping our investigators come unto Christ we also had a marvelous and unforgettable experience and shaking the president of the quorum of the 12 apostles hand, President Russell M. Nelson, his wife, and the Philippines area president and his wife President and Sister Ardern. It was a sight to see a man that's aging away but he is still able to travel around the world. I get carsick just going from my area to Legazpi which is about an hour and half away.

President Nelson had a great message for us and involved a few of the missionaries. I love how he immediately shared 3 Nephi 11 and emphasized to us the Savior's first message to the Nephites was about baptism, His doctrine, and having no disputations. He invited 2 elders to go up and one would read verses 10-41 and the other would tally the amount of times the word or reference was made to 3 words: baptism, doctrine, disputations. The left benches would stand up for baptism, the middle (my group) for doctrine, and the right benches for no disputations or contentions. Lets just say there was a lot of standing done. It really put it in perspective and it reminded me of something I discovered in my personal study last December.

Sometimes or a lot times missionaries are afraid to invite to baptism in the first lesson. We are to always invite in the first lesson to baptism. I find it interesting that that was the Savior's first message to the Nephites. Peter invites thousands to baptism on the day of Pentecost. Baptism was practiced among Moses and the children of Israel. Adam was baptized by the spirit. Baptism was practiced from the days of Adam all the way up to the Savior in America and all the way down to us in these latter-days. This is the most important path that an investigator will ever take and they need to know why we are there as missionaries. Baptism! This was done by the Savior himself and taught by Him in His first lesson. So of course that must mean that it is our missionary responsibility to do the same.

There are so many other great things that President Nelson shared with us but time does not permit me to share all of what I had learned from him and all the other leaders that spoke to us. He shared a lot of inspiring personal experiences from his life and applied it to us. I love how he shared scriptures from D&C that we were hid from the world for this time, that among the noble and great ones were the rulers of the church of God. Now of course we might be thinking about the general authority but President Nelson shared that the mothers and the fathers are the rulers of the church of God because they are the ones who put the plans of the leaders into action. They are raising those who are great in the sight of God. We all knew and we all felt that he truly is a prophet, seer, revelator, and president of the quorum of the 12 in these latter-days. I learned that he is a man that loves to teach from the scriptures, experience, and testifying by the spirit.

I know that the spirit bore witness to me and everyone present that God does communicate to man in these latter-days.

Love,

Elder Brown