First week in mission home

This has been an interesting week!

This past week was super busy as my new companion, Elder Paskett, and I helped with incoming missionaries, outgoing missionaries, our Mission Leadership Council, and preparing for the Zone Conferences that start tomorrow. So we didn't really have a lot of time to go proselyte on the street or teach lessons, but we still got a lot of good things done in the office. 

It was a really neat experience seeing the new missionaries come in and the old missionaries heading home within just a couple days. The difference is so apparent. We had a testimony with the new missionaries on Wednesday night and a testimony meeting with the outgoing missionaries on Thursday night and it was so amazing to see what I imagined as the "one day mission," seeing the changes that happen across 2 years all within 24 hours. It wasn't a situation that you could say one set of people was better or worse than the other, but if I try to express the difference in words, I think I would say that you could tell the outgoing missionaries had made an exchange. They had sacrificed 2 years of time, thought, effort, and soul, and in return you could feel that their "confidence [had waxed] strong in the presence of God" and they had gained a deeper conviction of the reality of their Savior and His love for them. They gave lots away, but the result was priceless. It really was a testimony to me that this is God's work and that when we give our all in the work of the Lord, lives change, almost always beginning with our own. The more we lose our lives in service to others, the more value and fulfillment our own life gains. 

I am so grateful for my Savior and for the opportunity to represent Him in this work! I know that the gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored and that lives change every single day as people accept Christ as their Savior and come unto Him. I know that God truly gave us families for a reason and that there is nothing more important to Him than us and our families. Our priorities ought to be the same!

I love you all! Have a splendid week!

Love, Elder Tolman