This week has been yet another slow week here on my mission. I started off the week by giving a talk in Sacrament meeting and turning right around to give a spiritual thought at prayer meeting at the Global Service Center (GSC) the next day. I’ll write more about that in a minute.
This past weekend I ate more than 350 grams of protein, which was hard to get in, but I accomplished it. Hopefully that will have been enough for my test to come back positive. I’m fairly confident that it will for two reasons: 1) My previous results were just border line too low, and 2) most 3 day periods I eat approximately 150 to 200 grams of protein.
This week at the Conference Center has been slowish. I’ve been lucky enough to have gotten one tour each night on my normal shifts. Those tours were comprised of mainly members. On Friday though, I was able to give a tour to a couple who were not members and it was my pleasure to teach them more about the church as they asked questions about it.
At the GSC, I started my new schedule, now staffing the front desk on Monday afternoons. It’s nice to be more involved with the operations of the building and interacting with fellow missionaries and emplyoees.
Also at the GSC, we are currently ticketing for the upcoming closing concert for the ACDA and Meet the Mormons. In February we will only ticket Meet the Mormons for the 7pm showings as the other showings have not been having quite the demand they were expecting. People are really excited about the ACDA concert as Santino Fontana is coming back.
The Tabernacle Choir is obviously very excited about being able to share their gifts to choir directors from not only the country, but also the world. This past Sunday we had a special guest on the broadcast who played a beautiful harp solo.
In Sacrament meeting, I was asked to give a talk about conversion. I had recently read an article on LDS Living’s website about a man who had set a goal of losing weight and relied on the Lord and became more converted to the gospel through his weight loss journey and subsequently used this as the basis for my talk. You can read more about this here: http://ldsliving.com/story/77640-how-i-lost-140-pounds-by-relying-on-the-lord
At the GSC prayer meeting I gave the spiritual thought about repentance or hopefully not needing to repent by having a firm foundation with Elder Donald L. Hallstrom’s recent CES devotional talk titled “How Firm a Foundation.” He shares an example of the building of the Philadelphia Pennsylvania Temple and how if the contractors hadn’t built a strong foundation, the temple might not survive the Northeast’s torrential weather. We too must build a strong spiritual foundation that we may be able to endure the temptations that come our way and be able to repent, if necessary. You can read more about this here. https://www.lds.org/broadcasts/article/ces-devotionals/2014/01/how-firm-a-foundation?lang=eng
Today I got groceries and then went to the organ recital with Clay Christiansen who performed the brilliant toccata on “O God Our Help in Ages Past.”
