Hello everyone,
It's been a good 4 days since I last emailed.
So
December 7th was a special day. It was Pearl Harbor day. And other than
that it was the day that we had the youth service project for the
community that we've been planning and organizing for the last few
weeks. It was super cool. We had gathered a list of names of people in
the community who needed firewood and/or Christmas cheer. And we divided
those names into smaller groups of names. And Saturday morning after
picking up our order of 200 donuts we went to the church building and
set up just as many tables as we had groups of names. And as the youth
filed into the room we split them off into the various tables, each of
which was assigned a slip of paper with one of the small groupings of
names on it, and they decorated sugar cookies and prepared plates to be
taken to the people on their list. So they split up and went their
separate ways to deliver wood and cookies to people. And with only a few
minor hiccups, in about an hour or so we showed "The Christ Child"
video to everyone on a big projector when they got back. After which, we
ate donuts. It was a really fun day.
So
ever since a conversation I had with the other Elders this morning,
something on my mind today has to do with the title of this email. In
the Bible a lot of the Psalms mention "tender mercies." For example
Psalm 145 verse 9 says: "The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works." And
there are a few other vague mentions of the phrase "tender mercies"
throughout Psalms that I should probably try and study harder about. But
the way I think of tender mercies is how the Lord is always mindful of
us and from time to time He gives us simple little blessings that are
really meaningful to us. And there have been some tender mercies this
week.
One example, I'll start
with it because it's humorous and I don't want to ruin this spiritual
thought by ending it with a joke. But so today, true story, we went to
KFC and I ordered the 3 chicken tender meal. And I realized that I got
not 3 but 4 chicken tenders on my plate. So that's a tender mercy of I ever did see one.
Anyway
though, joking aside, when I start looking for little blessings and
tender mercies from the Lord in my life, I can't stop seeing them. My
birthday happened this week, and being a missionary, the day wasn't all
about me like it might have seemed to be when I was a little kid. And it
was honestly kind of nice to not be selfishly focusing on myself and on
presents and whatnot all day. I really liked that. But a tender mercy I
recognized was that as silly as a birthday might seem, it is always
nice to know people care about you, and there were a couple times that
people went out of their way to help me feel that love and care. One
specific thing that happened not even on my birthday, but the day after
was a family who found out it was my birthday and made a cheesecake for
me. I just thought that was so nice and unexpected. Another thing, also
on my birthday, we went to a baptism, and the refreshments: cupcakes.
Coincidence? Probably. But in hindsight, cause I didn't think anything of
it at the time, it was still really nice that I got to have cake on my
birthday. Another thing was that our friend Tyler is going to be heading
back to his family in Ohio for the holidays and also for a few months
to work and get some money, and our schedules lined up just perfect to
see him one last time and help him out with stuff before he left. So
that was cool too.
But the
coolest thing is that we got to help out so many different families in
the community with that service project and be a light in their lives.
And who knows how many of those people are recognizing that service as
"tender mercies" in their lives. And that's just such a blessing that we
can be involved in helping other people and that we can help bring the
light of Jesus Christ to others by loving and ministering to people
around us. So I just really like that.
But
anyway. That's my thought for the day. I might be misunderstanding what
exactly tender mercies are and some of my examples might not be the
best examples but I think I'm at least close and so I'm sticking to it.
But I do know that the Lord is mindful of all of us and He does bless us
with things, we just sometimes need to open our eyes a little more to
recognize them.
Well, I hope you all have another great week!
Bye!
~Elder Oswald
P.S. -Pictures
1. Our Christmas tree we got from Dollar General that we can tell is from Dollar General
2. Our Dollar General Christmas tree after we decorated it. We were limited on Christmas ornaments if you can tell.
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