The Beginning of the End

Hey Everyone,

So the big news first, I'm staying in BYSA for my last 6 weeks, but I am getting a new companion (10 companions back to back!!) 

So the most exciting thing that happened this week was a personal miracle. So since our schedule was all messed up because of Memorial Day, we ended up having Preparation Day on Tuesday, as you might've noticed, and District Council was on Wednesday. And since we didn't have the opportunity to do so on Tuesday, we got permission to go buy me new shoes on Wednesday, I've been having problems with my knee for the last few months but I've just been ignoring it until Elder Stubblefield, who's a chiropractor, told me to stop ignoring it. So we went out on the hunt. A member suggested we try DSW in Towson. It put us in the right place, but wrong store, way wrong store. The clearance rack started at 80 dollars... So we went to the store next door. TJ Maxx, which had no male shoes, at all... So we went to Burlington, which had a few, but I had the thought to keep going. Marshalls had a couple, but nothing that I really loved, so we went to Target (mind you, all these stores were right next to each other in the same building, so it wasn't hard to hit them all at once) When we got to Target, I found the exact kind of shoes I was wanting, and they were marked at 50% off from their original $45. So I got them and when the cashier rang them up, they came up as $11.43. When I asked her about it, she said that that's what it rang up as, so she wasn't going to charge me extra. So what I took away from all of that, is that the Lord really does look after his missionaries!

We were supposed to have a lesson on Friday night, we even invited along one of our other investigators who's more like a member than not, but sadly the girl we were going to teach forgot, so we rescheduled for tomorrow. 

On Saturday, we took the light rail down to the very bottom of our area, the very top of South Baltimore, which I had never gone to even when I was in Inner Harbor, so that was interesting to see somewhere new. And found a huge cemetery that hasn't really been kept up very well, but it was still cool.

So I was reading an article in a really old Ensign this past week (September 1975 to be exact) and I found an article by Bruce R. McConkie on how we can understand the Book of Revelation. The biggest thing that stood out to me is that he stated that a large portion of "Christian Intellectuals" as he called them, don't believe the Book of Revelation was actually written by John, which makes the statement in 1 Nephi 14:27 take on a whole new meaning for me, it's another example of how the Book of Mormon and the Bible complete each other. Another interesting quote I found in that talk was when he was talking about how we can understand Revelation, he said that God will not give us a book of scripture that we are meant to understand without also giving us a revelation with the explanation in it. He then cited about 4 or 5 sections of the Doctrine and Covenants to reference for understanding Revelation. (Sections 46, 76, 77, 88, and 101 among them).

Also, I heard a quote recently, I don't remember where so I'll paraphrase it, it's about establishing what is doctrine and what is a well-considered opinion, "Doctrine isn't something that one speaker is going to obscurely mentioned in one paragraph of one talk. It is going to be something that all the Apostles will have woven into their talks." Or something like that, I don't remember it all. But it's a good reminder to me that if you have to go hunting for the one person that said it in one talk, it is most likely not doctrine, he may express a doctrine in a different way that is incredible, that's different, but if it's an isolated idea, you should probably double check what our living prophets have said about that subject.

Love you all,

Elder Howell