Week 4: First Baptism!
Dear Loved Ones,
This Saturday I had the opportunity to see someone I have been teaching be baptized. Her name is Taylor, and she is 20 years old. I just swooped in at the end when she had already been taught pretty much everything, but I'm crediting her as my first.
Her face shone with such joy as she came up from the water. That made me feel joy as well and I was proud of the part I was able to play and grateful to be a missionary. Sometimes I think everyone's okay during this life if they have some religion that lets them believe in a God who loves them and teaches them good moral standards and we can always try to get people to our own faith in the next life. But seeing the joy it brought Taylor reminded me why I'm here, why this is all worth it. I am so grateful every day to finally be a missionary.
I gave a talk in church this Sunday on Come Follow Me. I like that CFM is rooted in the New Testament this year so we can hand it out to people with an interest in general Christianity. In my talk, I discussed how people usually read the scriptures with eisegesis, meaning we see all the verses as they apply to us her and now, rather than reading them with exegesis, meaning researching what a scripture meant to the people it was written for at the time it was written. Exegesis is harder, but CFM makes it simpler. This week, I was reading in the Book of Ether, where God is seen in the flesh, and in 1 John 4, where it says "No man hath seen God at any time." This confused me and I began making up personal explanations to reconcile those two seemingly contradictory things. Then I studied in Come Follow Me and found a reference to another scripture, John 1:18, which seems to say that God has never been seen by man.CFM goes on to explain that the Joseph Smith Translation clarifies the interpretation of this verse as "No man hath seen God at anytime except he hath borne record of his son." So it's not that no one has ever seen God, but that no one has ever seen him without God bearing record of his son.
Reading that this week drove home the important of exegesis to me. We can't make up own own interpretations of the scriptures and apply them to show us how we ought to live our lives without first understanding what the scriptures are actually saying. I want to make a sincere and thorough study of the scriptures.
The other day, we were teaching a woman whose three year old son got up in my face and asked me, in a tone of awe, "Do you know everything about Jesus?" I laughed and told him no, I only know some things. But I also want to learn more!
Love you,
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
This Saturday I had the opportunity to see someone I have been teaching be baptized. Her name is Taylor, and she is 20 years old. I just swooped in at the end when she had already been taught pretty much everything, but I'm crediting her as my first.
Her face shone with such joy as she came up from the water. That made me feel joy as well and I was proud of the part I was able to play and grateful to be a missionary. Sometimes I think everyone's okay during this life if they have some religion that lets them believe in a God who loves them and teaches them good moral standards and we can always try to get people to our own faith in the next life. But seeing the joy it brought Taylor reminded me why I'm here, why this is all worth it. I am so grateful every day to finally be a missionary.
I gave a talk in church this Sunday on Come Follow Me. I like that CFM is rooted in the New Testament this year so we can hand it out to people with an interest in general Christianity. In my talk, I discussed how people usually read the scriptures with eisegesis, meaning we see all the verses as they apply to us her and now, rather than reading them with exegesis, meaning researching what a scripture meant to the people it was written for at the time it was written. Exegesis is harder, but CFM makes it simpler. This week, I was reading in the Book of Ether, where God is seen in the flesh, and in 1 John 4, where it says "No man hath seen God at any time." This confused me and I began making up personal explanations to reconcile those two seemingly contradictory things. Then I studied in Come Follow Me and found a reference to another scripture, John 1:18, which seems to say that God has never been seen by man.CFM goes on to explain that the Joseph Smith Translation clarifies the interpretation of this verse as "No man hath seen God at anytime except he hath borne record of his son." So it's not that no one has ever seen God, but that no one has ever seen him without God bearing record of his son.
Reading that this week drove home the important of exegesis to me. We can't make up own own interpretations of the scriptures and apply them to show us how we ought to live our lives without first understanding what the scriptures are actually saying. I want to make a sincere and thorough study of the scriptures.
The other day, we were teaching a woman whose three year old son got up in my face and asked me, in a tone of awe, "Do you know everything about Jesus?" I laughed and told him no, I only know some things. But I also want to learn more!
Love you,
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
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