Dear Mom,
It’s good to know that Dad is back home safe. I do get to go to the temple on P-days and I actually go every P-day at 7 am is when we have to be there. The first week I went I did an Endowment, last week I did 10 Initiatorys, and today I had the opportunity to do Sealings, which was my favorite so far. I didn’t realize what it meant to be born into the covenant until today. So it was a sweet experience.
It’s cool that you got to donate blood with Maddi. I always liked to do that whenever I could. It’s a very good cause.
Also I read and discussed Lehi's vision with a few Elders from my district and everyone had a different take on it. Something cool about the scriptures is that almost every parable or vision or story can be related to the plan of salvation. If you were to relate this vision to the plan of salvation then the man in white could have been Jesus Christ in the pre-existence. We were asked to follow His plan and came to earth (the dark mist) while we are here on Earth all of us are lost. As we call upon God to deliver us He gives us the word of God (the iron rod). At that point we must still follow the iron rod to receive the fruit of the tree of life. The tree of life is symbolic of Christ and the fruit on the tree is the atonement. There are also many different ways that this vision can be taken and I think depending on where someone is at in their life it can mean different things, and I think that’s probably why it is at the begging of the book because it will get read more often than most other scriptures.
Here in the MTC we are also taught not to take notes on what a speaker says, but what the spirit says. During conference this weekend I took about 6 &1/2 pages of notes. I would write the speakers name and write my impressions as they spoke. Some of the stuff I wrote didn’t have to do with what they were talking about at all, but now everything I wrote is much more valuable to me, and I am much more likely to go back and read them because of the feelings I received while I was writing. So I would encourage you to never take notes of what someone is saying unless the spirit also says it to you.
Thank you guys for your support and prayers. I pray for you all very often. I am in the MTC choir but I didn’t get to go to conference. … but everyone who was in the choir missed the first session of conference which I thought was very powerful and I was glad that I got to hear it. Anyway I gotta go.
Love you all
Elder Raleigh