March 31 2014 "Always Striving For Perfection"

I think I forgot to tell you all about an interesting story that
happened about 3 weeks go. It was at the Fifields home. The Fifields
have 4 daughters...and that's it. They wish they could have gotten at
least one boy but I guess God had other plans for him. Anyways they
had us over for dinner on a Sunday night and this was right after they
saw the movie "Son of God" at the theater. The entire
conversation during dinner was about Jesus Christ and the stories
about him in the Bible. Now we aren't allowed to watch movies while on
the mission so I couldn't tell you much on what I thought of the movie.
From what I heard, sounds like it followed the King James Version of the Bible.
They have one daughter that especially loves missionaries named Jada.
She is 8 and is the hippest, coolest, most missionary focused 8 year
old I know. She asked me specifically a question that has been in my
mind constantly, talking about the movie she asked "Will this help my
testimony?" It kind of caught me off guard. I thought for a second and
decided that I couldn't answer that for her, she would need to pray to
see if it has. We talked about what Moroni talks about in the Book of
Mormon when he mentions everything that inviteth and enticith us to do
good and the learn of Christ is of God, so we must see if watching the
movie has done that. She mentioned that she is thinking more about
Christ and wants to learn more about him so maybe it did, I'm not to
say.

Lately we have been trying to use this cool way of getting to know

your neighbors called the "Cookie Drop." It is a fun and easy way for
people to get to know their neighbors because not many people here in
Arizona reach out to those near them like they do in the Mid-West.
Take a plate of cookie to your neighbors and get to know them!

We had a zone meeting this past Friday and it was the first one that

Elder Mullenix and I did together and it was great! It all went
smoothish...but in the end we all learned a lot and had a good time.
The preparation was the difficult part. I have turned into a person
that learns best from mistakes and capitalizes on them while on the
other hand Elder Mullenix is a missionary that doesn't want to learn
that way but be as prepared as possible. It stressed us all out. We
had to learn how to distress ourselves to plan by the Spirit.

Talked with Sister Schroeder the other day about how she is doing with
everything and with reading the scriptures. She has just recently been
coming back to church and 3 of her kids have just gotten baptized. The
3rd one got baptized on Saturday and she had a question for us about
feeling the Spirit. She said that the day before the baptism she was
having these bad feelings and wasn't sure where they were coming from
and how to make it through what ever feelings she was having. She
thought of 2 things that it could be; one of the kids wasn't living
the gospel anymore or Satan trying to stop her from doing something
good. We talked about it and figured that she needed to talk to the
bishop about what to do.

A lovely lady at church named Leca Catsakis talked about a great story

about the Book of Mormon and the truth it has. She is from Greece and
translated the Book of Mormon from English to Greek. She talked about
the man that was asked to translate the Book of Mormon from English to
Arabic who was from Egypt and wasn't a member of the church. The man
said one day that he could no longer leave the church because of this
scripture that he came across while translating, Mosiah 18:4. I had
always overlooked this scripture but it talks about a place called
Mormon. Named because it was infected by wild beasts. In the ancient
Egyptian dictionary Mormon means wild beasts and Joseph Smith would
never have known that. I don't have an ancient Egyptian dictionary
near me, most people don't, but check it out and let me know what you
find!

Had the chance to go to the Schwartz home the other night and say a

prayer with them. If you don't remember William Joseph Schwartz it's
okay, he is pretty famous in the music field. He mentioned that he
could keep in mind the siblings relationships because some of them are
kind of getting after each other and not being the nicest to each
other. That is a me specialty. I have a lot of background in that...I
mean never... I couldn't help but think that we all are normal in
the struggles that we have whether you are poor or not we all have
struggles and the family ones are normally the toughest but the
sweetest when overcome. That's why the gospel is so important, to
always be there when we are in need and want to be striving for
perfection.

Love Elder Leonhardt