Beauty in Diversity

Elder Butler with the four young women who will be baptized this Saturday!

Hello Family!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful week! :)

Our training for zone conference went very well and I know that the Lord had a big part in that. I gave a training about communicating with your companion, focusing on applying Preach My Gospel chapter 6, highlight patience and humility, and my companion gave a great training about working with members from Preach My Gospel chapter 9.

In preparation for training I really wanted to treasure up as much as I could about what I was training and I also wanted to base everything I could out of the scriptures, using them as a source more than just a support, and I actually used mostly the New Testament (with additional scriptures from Proverbs that Elder Baird had done studies on previously) to teach the concepts that seemed important.  All in all I feel like our training was a success and all parties came out with some new revelation on the topics we presented. I've come to appreciate the value of leadership training meetings like zone conferences and trainings and such after having had so many great spiritually feeding experiences that result in fast tracked spiritual growth after being able to apply the revelation I've received.

Update on the four girls we've been teaching: they have all been officially signed and interviewed and their baptism is this coming Saturday! I'm very excited as well as the rest of the branch, and of course the girls themselves. Being able to reap the fruits of your labors is one of the most rewarding part of this work and makes all of the other things that you may have to struggle with all worth it.

Something that I realized a little this week was about how the gospel of Jesus Christ really thrives and is beautified in diversity. The world is always talking about how we need to break out and be different, this being a counterfeit of Satan which usually ends up with all those involved having to conform to fit some mold and everyone ending up the same. But when we introduce someone to the gospel, suddenly the things that the world scorned and painted to be typical and not unique become beautified and enhanced, making weaknesses strength and each person’s spiritual identity becomes more defined and expressly "theirs", only showing the master craftsmanship of our Heavenly Father who created everyone one of us different and unique.

I saw this as I saw four teenage girls who before were caught in the lie of the world that they needed to conform and be accepted into an ever more wicked world become freed from those shackles, all the while being mocked and put down for it. They rose to their divine potential as daughters of their Heavenly Father, their differences not being looked any more at as flaws, but master strokes in a much larger painting from the hand of someone much wiser than they.

The world will continue to mock and to scorn, and call good evil and evil good, but they will never be able to separate them from the simple truths they have learned by the Spirit that cannot be counterfeited or reproduced by any effort of the adversary.

Just thoughts. I rambled a little there, hope it was worthwhile. :)

Well that's about all the time I have for today.

I  love you all!

~Elder Butler