September 8, 2014

Hey everybody how’s it going? 

My companions and I are doing pretty good. Its great being in a tri-panionship, were like the three musketeers. That get lost going everywhere. None of us are familiar with this area so we get lost a lot. We’re just figuring out all the bus routes and everything, and were getting better. 

The other day we accidentally ended up in the Castro... WOW. I’ve never seen so many rainbow flags in my life. We even walked by a house that was entirely painted like a metallic rainbow - like a car. It was awesome. We don’t go down to the Castro to do missionary work though. The people there don’t take missionaries seriously... there like "wow, where did you get those cool costumes - your badges look so real"

Anyways, we had an interesting experience the other day. We got permission to teach a man at his own church. Saturday we went down to a local Lutheran church to teach Reggie. He’s like a priest or something. It was a good short lesson, the spirit was strong. Reggie was so involved and excited about everything we taught him and it was great. He has a lot of soul. 

We taught him briefly the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and he was like "maaaaaaan this stuff is easy. I could be teaching you all" he like literally quoted a scripture out of the bible to back up everything that we said about the gospel. But then we moved our lesson into the priesthood, and the restoration. And he was dead silent. It was good though, because the spirit was testifying to him about the restoration of the priesthood. 

Reggie rejected our message unfortunately. But that’s okay. He’ll get another chance someday. 

After our lesson, i was thinking hard about the relationship between the Gospel and the Priesthood. Reggie knows the gospel. I’ll be honest, he probably knows it better then I do. The gospel is everywhere - most people we talk to already know the doctrines of faith repentance baptism and receiving the gift of the spirit. 

It makes me so sad though, because even with true doctrines, people are still living in spiritual darkness. It’s like having a house all wired up with lights and switches and outlets and TVs and stuff - but you can never turn anything on, because you have no power. 

The power and authority of the priesthood - is required - in order to live the fullness of the gospel. Without it our houses are dark. And we know that after centuries of being lost - the priesthood has been restored on the earth through a prophet in this day and age named Joseph Smith. 

Thanks for reading my emails everybody! I pray that this letter finds you happy and healthy. If it finds you nether happy nor healthy, then have someone tell you a joke while eating a salad. 

Love 

Elder Allison!