Saturday, February 20, 2016

Week 99 - Pondering

I have had some really neat studying experiences recently. With Elder Hirst doing a lot of the office work, I can study.  I find cool little things all the time. I’m in 3rd Nephi and I was reading in chapter 17 verse 3 where Jesus tells the Nephites to go home and to pray and ponder about the things which He taught them that day.

Sister Silcox is always talking about how President Silcox has such a great knowledge of the gospel. For the last twenty something years he wakes up at 4:30 am everyday to study for three hours.

I had some time so I went and talked with President Silcox about the verse.  I asked him how he studies and specifically about pondering. President Silcox told me when he reads something he can’t understand or he has a question he can’t get out of his head he’ll spend sometimes weeks just thinking about it non stop.

I’m the opposite. I’ll find something and I’ll think about it, but then my mind starts to wander. President Silcox uses scriptures.byu.edu to study all the time. It’s a site that shows all the talks a general authority used a given verse of scripture. So I checked it and out and found a talk.  Apparently there is a gift of pondering.

I pondered the scripture more and more.  What later stood out to me was how the Savior tells them to prepare their minds for the next day.  So that’s what I have been trying to do.  I prepare my next scripture study the day before and my study is a lot better now.

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This week has been crazy busy. Lots of traveling and police station stuff. Brazil keeps changing how they are renewing the visas and it just gets more complicated. Now we have to take the visas in 90 days before the year date of when missionaries entered Brazil. One day earlier we can’t renew the visa. One day later we receive a fine. It’s a handful.

We still have to do peoples CPFs which we haven’t even started. There is lots of medical stuff.