Note: For the duration of Riley's mission, this blog will be produced and edited by his parents, Daisy and Todd Stonely.

Monday, October 10, 2016

Week 69: The Temple

Dear Friends and Family,

This week I have pondered a bunch on the Temple. For any missionary who has ever served in a mission without a temple, or for anyone who lives far away from the temple, you all know what I mean. I think EVERY day I think about going to the temple and feeling the peace and love that is found within the sacred walls. It is the best place for us to go to be closer to our savior. And well if you all haven't heard, TALLAHASSEE IS GETTING A TEMPLE!!!!

HAHA totally kidding. I mean there will be one some day :) But not today :) I encourage you all to go to the temple :) Its amazing :)

We had Elder Satati, from the Quorum of the Seventy come and do a mission tour. He talked to us on what it meant to come unto Christ and how we come unto Him. He tied it in with how if "we" as missionaries come unto Christ, then we will better help our investigators come unto Him. It is such a very simple concept, but we all took so much out of the visit with him. I realized that most days I forget about what it truly means to follow our Savior's example and walk in his footsteps. It is easy to forget who we want to become. Though, through prayer, diligent work and a whole lot of faith, we will get there. And we may see tender mercies along the way every day :) I am grateful for our inspired leaders! It was pretty hard NOT to feel the spirit in the same room with a 70.

Well funny experience this week. We were out walking about. We headed to a referral's house, though he was not home. So we decided to head back. On the way home we noticed a white car on the side of the road. Though we noticed it while we were taking the exit, SOOO... thinking to ourselves we felt like we should go help them. THAT required turning around on the freeway, backtracking a couple miles till we could take the same exit we got on to go home. Nonetheless, 15 min later, we arrived at the site. We got out of the car and talked with the people. Their first words were, "Did y'all know we were members?" HAHA and you could probably guess where the story goes from there. Their wheel had blown out and we helped them get it fixed. After it was all done, we hopped in our car to head out, and to what most people would call "great luck" our own car wouldn't start. The battery was dead. HAHAHAHA AWESOME! So we called some people, but nobody was answering. After about 5 minutes of waiting for people, we both decided to say a prayer and try the car again! we did, and the Lord must have been waiting for us to use a little faith, cause our car started again!!! HAHA I laugh because throughout the day the car did the same thing a couple times, but after the first, it was easier to believe that the Lord wanted us out and about so it kept going :)

Well this email was pretty long. But I hope for some of you its a great story :) I know that the Lord does watch over every single one of us. It is amazing to see so many tender mercies every day and be able to be a blessing to others lives. I love it! 

As our mission president always said, "GO OUT AND GIV'EM HEAVEN!" 

I love you all! 

Hope you have a great week :)

Elder Stonely




Here is a cucumber :)

Here is me and ELDER STURDEVANT!! we are loco...

Riley's district???
 

ANd me and ELde4r Shaw on a tradeoff :)