Hey! I had a good week. I had the opportunity this week to attend leadership council and it was cool! I was able to learn a lot, especially about the importance of being a good example. President really focused on the point that in order to teach something, you have to put in in practice and live it in your own life. The talk that he had us study in preparation was Repentance is Always Positive by Stephen W. Owen from last General Conference. It really helped me remember that we need to repent everyday, because like he says in the talk, we are all prodigal sons. You guys should for sure check it out!
The weather here actually hasn't been too bad during this past week. It's been raining off and on and so it's stayed a bit cooler. Sure, like I said last week there are some periods of hot humid sun, but in general it's been pretty good! So on Sunday, a member gave us a name of a family of inactive members that we should go visit. We went there and we talked to a man named Claudinei. he was super receptive and said that he would like to start coming back to church. He has a lot of other people in his family that were also baptized and there are even a few that weren't baptized yet, so we're going to start working with them to get them reactivated!
Anther cool experience that I had was on Tuesday night (the day before leadership council) I got to go out and work with Elder Vilas Boas again, and President actually asked us to go to our old area, Vila Virginia, and talk with our recent converts there. They've been passing though LOTS of problems, and because of that they have stopped going to church. They were pretty surprised to see us at their door when they came outside! We talked to them and found out that they still have testimonies of the gospel and don't have any intentions of not being members anymore or anything, but the problem is that it seems like they are allowing their personal problems to take priority over their spiritual lives. This is something that I've really seen a lot of on the mission. So many people are missing out on blessings and happiness just because their priorities aren't what they need to be! During the rest of the week, I've thought about my own priorities before the mission. How many opportunities did I lose just because I was putting other things before the gospel? What do my priorities need to be here on the mission? What do they need to be after? Often times, it just requires a simple change of habit. Instead of getting home and sitting in front of the TV, open up the scriptures and read a chapter from the Book of Mormon first! Before you leave for work/school, make sure you say a quick prayer! There are so many small things that we can do that make a big difference. If we don't let our "temporal" concerns take up all of our thoughts and we give necessary time to spiritual things, I know that it will make a much bigger difference than we realize. One scripture that I love talks exactly about this. It's in 3 Nephi 13:31-34. If we do our part and make sure our biggest concerns are spiritual, then we can leave the rest to Heavenly Father and he'll make it all work out!
Next week we'll have zone conferences again, so it should keep me pretty busy.
Elder Odom
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