COMPANION: ELDER BURTON
zone leaders
THIS week. Holy moly.
Quick aside (is it an aside if you haven't started?), if you know anyone else that wants to be on the list of people that gets these, you can just let me know.
Well from the pictures you know the story of finding the kittens, stalking the peacock, filling the font, and the Nights of Lights. There are just too many stories. Some good highlights:
1) In testimony meeting, one of the members bore testimony of how they can move things with their mind.
2) A member of the bishopric taught the doctrine of exaltation at the baptism instead of doing the traditional welcome to the ward.
3) Our next-door neighbors (the elders) are being replaced by Sisters. This makes eight sister companionships for our zone. 16 Sister Missionaries in all. Zone Meetings are like Enrichment Nights but with more nametags.
4) I will be in St. Augustine at least another 6 weeks. It is living up to its reputation as the most sought after area in the mission. It is fantastic here. Hopefully I'll get to stay another 8 months! That's when the Pope visits to commemorate the 450th anniversary of the founding of the city. #BaptizethePope!
5) It's about 70 degrees.
6) I like lists.
7) Elder Neal A. Anderson is visiting our mission in January. That will make 4 visits from general authorities (2 being apostles) in 5 months. Outside of General Conference, I have now heard Elders Perry, Holland, Christofferson, and soon to be Anderson speak. I'm well on my way to Apostle Bingo!
8) Please don't judge me for playing Apostle bingo.
9) I have probably eaten cake, candy, and cookies for every meal since December began.
10) Elizabeth got baptized.
A lot of cool things happen as a missionary. We get to teach people. We get to serve. We have crazy stories (the actually crazy ones we don't tell, so just take a minute to think about the degree of craziness that is really involved here) and laugh a lot and occasionally things go a little sideways and people throw radios while we pray. BUT! By far the most fun thing that we do as missionaries is administer in the ordinances of the gospel. Sunday, I got to baptized Elizabeth. It. Was. Awesome.
It was AWESOME! It does not get better! It is exactly as fun every single time and it is more fun than anything else I can imagine! Here is a scripture for the week:
"Behold, he changed their hearts; yea, he awakened them out of a deep sleep, and they awoke unto God. Behold, they were in the midst of darkness; nevertheless, their souls were illuminated by the light of the everlasting word..."
Changed hearts. Awakening. The illumination of the soul. It goes along well with last week's scripture:
"And I have been supported under trials and troubles of every kind, yea, and in all manner of afflictions; yea, God has delivered me from prison, and from bonds, and from death; yea, and I do put my trust in Him, and he will still deliver me."
Deliverance! That is what happened on Sunday! That is what has happened and is happening and will happen for me. I have been supported! I have been delivered! I have been awakened. I have been changed. I have been illuminated. No genius or falsity could manufacture these things in me. I am a witness of Christ, for He has worked in me.
I just... I just want everyone to know. Special chance for bonus points this week: who in the Book of Mormon uses the word "know" the most often? I know of these things myself. I do know. I know of their surety. I know these things of myself. I do know of myself. I know of myself. I know that Jesus Christ shall come.
I know! I remember what it was like in a deep sleep, in darkness, in prison, in bonds, and in death. I remember what it felt like to wake up. I have seen what deliverance and illumination look like, feel like, sound and taste and smell like. I can identify without a doubt the hand of the Lord because I have sought it from sea to sea, from the north even to the south, I have run to and fro and now finally I see it in my life. I hear it in my bones. I feel it in every unmapped depth of my soul. I know Him to be loving, trustworthy, real, present, and good. I know that my Redeemer liveth.
I love to celebrate Him. I imagine what it was like to watch from heaven as He entered the earth. I imagine I felt then much as I do now. I can almost remember straining against the veil and shouting with a voice of mute thunder:
"Turn ye about oh Jerusalem! Forsake ye your waste places, your heathen groves and idols made with your own hands! Cease to defile and come to adore! There is a King among you! There is a Prince born to Judah tonight! Cast your burdens, and your gifts, at His infant feet and wonder in silent peace at His marvelous condescension. Bring ye praise and works and adulation to the Most High! Dare not to demean, tremble to conceive to ignore. For unto you is born this day in the City of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord!
"Angels go and praise your God! Tear through this flimsy space and throw yourselves on, onward to command the captivation of this wayward, fallen man. Apostate nation come and kneel! And kiss the dust He one day will tread! And thou oh moon, and thou oh stars! erupt from celestial pedestal and race to shake the heavens with your hallelujah cries! And thou oh man, oh Israel, bend and bow before your benevolent Master. In this, His first innocence, crystallize the tendrils of your minds with but a glimpse of His incomprehensible glory. Sink into the unfathomable, and be filled with the oncoming ascension of His grace. Banished be thou sound, shade, and sensation. Let naught distract from
that focal point of all Creation, the inception of the life of our living Lord!
"All glory to our God and King! Let saints and angels sing! Let earth's upheaval justify and heaven's sanction testify that God's own Son will sanctify and save a destitute humanity! God bless that virgin Mary, pure and fairest above all other maidens who ever will live! God bless our faithful Joseph, noble in heart and by birth, step-father to He who will yet beget us all! God bless our sweet Immanuel! He fulfilled His promise! Unthinkably and yet most certainly, He has come
again! So then wonder at His mercy even in His infancy! Contemplate with the whole faculty of your souls upon His thrice blessed grace. He walks the earth and has accepted this sweetest tabernacle of flesh! Entering mortality, He comes as champion, riding wings of destiny against twins Death and Hell. And what then are ye doing? Where than shall ye go? He hath the words of eternal life! Do not miss, do not waste, do not squander this, the moment of the consummation of all existence! Come and sing Noel! Come and have the merriest of Christmases! Come and leave the putrid filth ye are want to wallow in, imagining we, the silent, unborn witnesses of heaven, do not see and know and record even the most fleeting ounce of your eternal shame!
Come and kiss the air with your praise to the flesh of that man whose blood will wash your sins from even the mind of the Almighty God, and erase the impossibility of your ascent to Him! Look and live, oh rancid, captive Israel. Come and see where thy Master dwelleth! There is yet hope! There is yet light! There is yet a glorious, unspeakable, brilliantly, ecstatically, eternally, joyful gift to be given! Come and bathe your affections with you afflictions in the Fount of every blessing! Come and shout, and bring Him glory! and cry Hosanna! Or dear GOD at least let me! Dear God, at least let me go and shout and praise and comfort Him! Dear God, let me, let me!!"
And then I can imagine the steadying hand of Elder Burton on my shoulder, sturdily bringing calm to that first Christmas in another realm, in another life, as he does now. He is a wonderful blessing and example of moderation in my life. Just another thing to be thankful for.
This Christmas, though, is different. This Christmas, I am a missionary. I am an ambassador of that Jesus Christ whom we celebrate! I am a member of His Church! I have a knowledge of His name! I share a living, pulsating, everlasting covenant with Him! I will CELEBRATE! Oh will I celebrate. I will rejoice and laugh and weep and laud and SING. This Christmas, I DO have a body. I DO walk this gorgeous earth, the same one upon which Jesus Christ was born! I will not miss this opportunity. This Christmas I WILL shout, and I WILL give Him glory. This Christmas I will give Him my love and my attention and my heart and study and mind and prayers. This Christmas my dream of eons, my longing of ages, will be realized as I go forth and proclaim His Word! This Christmas will be the very best Christmas ever. It will be better for me than any April night was for shepherd pure or magi wise, for as we bring His sheep to His fold, we may yet approach His nativity in the most solemn, sacred way. In the name of Jesus Christ I testify, we have NOT yet missed our chance.
Merry Christmas.
~Elder Jorgensen
