As I search the Holy Scriptures

So, nothing too exciting has been happening here lately. There was some snow. 6 inches maybe. No big deal. No ice storm, disappointingly enough. It was a very underwhelming storm.

Nobody came to church yesterday. Except this time I wasn't surprised, so it wasn't nearly so disappointing. Still struggling to find new people to teach, unfortunately. The Bible belt is hard, I tell you what.

My birthday is almost here. I am excited about that. We have dinner with the Bishop that night though, and I never like their food haha. I'm going to bake myself a cake and gorge myself. :)

I'm not sure what we're going to do on the Superbowl. I'm pretty sure we aren't allowed to watch it. And I sure as heck am not tracting while the game is on. That would not go over very well. So we'll see. It will likely be a very boring superbowl for me. But that's okay. :)

Yesterday we had dinner at the Johnson's home. It was pretty good. It was this stuff called Chicken Alabam. It's from the Lion House cookbook, apparently. So you might try looking in ours to see if we have it. I know they have multiple cookbook's though, so who knows? Anyways, you should try it. It was good.

So, I learned something cool in my personal study the other day from an old book I got for free from the church library. The part I was reading was talking about the Sacrament. I'd invite you to go look in Moroni 4 and 5 at the two prayers. The book pointed out something I've never noticed before. The prayer over the bread talks about us being "willing" to take upon us the name of Christ and always remember Him and keep His commandments. Now, when we take the Sacrament, we should do a self-examination, spiritually, about how we've performed the past week. It is an opportunity to repent and covenant with God to do and be better. Then, the prayer is said to bless the water. It says that when we partake of it we witness to God that we "do" always remember Christ. So, from the moment on, the moment we partake of the water, we are supposed to DO those things we have been thinking about. We must immediately change and become better the minute we take the sacrament. I thought a lot about this and applied it yesterday as I was partaking of the sacrament yesterday. It was a very spiritual experience for me. I'd urge all of you to think about that this week and try to apply that the next time you partake of the Sacrament.

Also, when are you going to go to the temple in February?

I don't know what else to talk about this week honestly. Nothing eventful has happened. Sadly. So, I'm going to get going now. Have a wonderful week!

Love,
Elder Bracken