Email May 12, 2014

Hello Everybody! I hope you all are doing fantastic because you deserve it! So this week was Mother's Day week! Woo! I'm sad it's over, but I'm so happy that it happened!!! I got to see my family and, the celebrity of the day who is included in the family but I'm separating her anyway, my Mom! Wow I'm so glad to have seen her and everyone else! Again to her and everyone else in my life who is a mother, a grandmother, an aunt, a younger sister, - basically any female I've ever met in my life because you are all going to be, are, or have been a mother: Happy Mother's Day! I hope it was absolutely fantastic! The world today is turning motherhood into a downplayed, old-fashioned way of life. And that is so, so sad! I'm sure we have all heard at least a few times this weekend how much mothers truly play a role in helping their children out, and I know personally that my mom has made me who I am today, yet they're destroying that critical role in the world. Stay-at-home moms are frowned upon and women are being fed the lie that if women are not equal to men then they aren't important. THAT IS THE BIGGEST, FATTEST LIE. Just because women don't have the same ROLE as men doesn't mean that they aren't equal or important! Men and women have different responsibilities and roles and if the world didn't have one or the other how sad of a world it would be! Mothers and motherhood are way too important to be downplayed. Taken from motherhood.mormon.org, "Motherhood is the 'highest, holiest service . . . given to mankind.'” And I agree wholeheartedly. I encourage you, if you haven't already, to go to that website (motherhood.mormon.org) and read what is has to say concerning mothers and their role, it is amazing! Mothers are incredibly important, we all know that to be true. I am so thankful for my Mom. I love her so gosh-darn-flipping much! So, again: Happy Mother's Day Mom! I LOVE YOU! Well, this week minus Mother's Day was pretty boring. We taught the Francis family the Word of Wisdom and they are striving to live it, so keep them in your prayers! She has a baptismal date still set for June 7th so keep her in your prayers! We stopped by their house Saturday night to remind them about church in the morning, but they have a complicated question about marriage so hopefully we can help them work through that. It's a good thing that they have a setback, though, because if there wasn't opposition then that means there wasn't progression. But there is opposition so there is progression! So please pray that they'll progress! Had a lesson with Rick, he's still just kicking the idea of being baptized around. Good, but he's been doing that since before I got here so it could be a while. We are just starting from the beginning again to see if we can get something to click this time around. I pray that something does and it would be great if we could get your prayers for him as well. :) We had a visit with Kyle, I'm not sure if I've told you guys about him much. Our very first visit with him went like this: we had just visited with an investigator and were walking up the street to our bikes which were at another house and he called us up and talked to us about our beliefs for about 30 minutes. And the information we picked up from him since then is that he is a marine and thinks God is great, but has said doesn't really know about God and doesn't have a lot of time to learn about Him either. He has a testimony that God answers prayer and that is a great start. We gave him a Book of Mormon and he has said that he will set 10 minutes a day to read from it. He hasn't done that yet, but his wife said she'll get him to do it. His wife, Brenda, is a good story too. When we first met her she said that she isn't religious, just spiritual. We said alright and we kept visiting with Kyle. But this week when we were over and we were closing with a prayer, he asked her if she would come pray with us and after a little hesitation said sure. WOOOOOOOO! Making progress. It's fantastic. Please keep Kyle and Brenda in your prayers as well as the Francis family and Rick. They are all amazing people and I love the heck out of them! Funny story for the week: When we were over at Kyle's, there were a lot of super funny things that happened. At one point, Kyle was trying to throw Cheez-Its into his wife's mouth while she was getting angry at him for throwing the Cheez-Its across the room. And somehow we got on the topic of his wife making a "belly-flattening" water. Kyle, Elder Solomon, and I were all like, "whaaaa...?" haha. And she pulled it out of the fridge and said, "Yeah. This water is supposed to flatten your belly. Kyle said I needed to flatten my belly after having my baby." (They're a really funny, playful couple if you can't tell.) She just had a baby I think 9 weeks ago. So she pulled it out and had Kyle try some then asked us if we wanted any. We were like,"...uhh...yeah, sure..." She went on to explain that there was cucumber, lemon, lime, and ginger mixed in the water and that it's supposed to flatten your belly. However, she didn't realize that she needed to skin the ginger until after we all started drinking it! Hahaha! So there were furry chunks of ginger floating around in our drinks, it was hilarious and kinda gross. The water itself wasn't too bad, it was more the aftertaste haha. But I do have to say that I don't see any results of the water, haha! But that's probably a good thing because I don't want to lose any weight! So that's basically it for this week. I'm so very grateful to be out here! The mission is incredible and I'm so thankful for the changes it is making in my life. It is bringing me closer than ever before to my Heavenly Father and that is incredible. I'm getting so much out of my scripture studies and things are just going great! I've hit a little bit of opposition in different areas of my service and life and that has been super tough...but I know that the principle of opposition is true and real: that if there is no opposition then there is no progression. But I've hit opposition, so I must be progressing! I know I said that principle twice in my email, so I guess that's my message today: Progress is so important and you can tell you are progressing by if you are having opposition at different times of your life. And oftentimes the opposition is what helps us progress! Keep progressing, even when it gets hard because that is when you progress the most! I love you guys, have a fantastic week! Love, Elder Jacob Cevering