Mango . . . It's A Good Fruit

Well, the video was small enough to come through! I laughed cause wouldn't you know, it was the strangest thing... Cameron didn't have his phone out, nor Maddie or even dad! But lo and behold, who was workin’ out their thumbs? That’s right, it was mama!

So everything is going well right now! The work is moving along. Slowly, but it's moving. Mostly, we still only have Diana, Logan and Brandy. Diana is doing well, not much to report there. Brandy is still doing very well, we've taught her twice in the past week. She didn't come to church though; her daughter had the flu, so I guess it's a legitimate excuse. She had actually the same concerns about heaven, hell and the 3 kingdoms. Once again, I studied pretty hard core on that and found out hopefully what will solve that concern, so we'll address that next time we see her, on Wednesday.

Logan, is still not progressing... And I hate to say it, but his less active parents are holding him back. They won't take him to church, and he doesn't want to go without his parents, so now Elder Peterson and I are going to try to teach the family instead of just Logan. This week though, I actually did a really cool lesson, just to toot my own horn. I bought a mango and took it to Logan’s lesson. I placed it in front of Logan and asked him what it was. There were like 5 other people in the room, and they all agreed it was a papaya. I told them it was a mango. I then asked Logan if it was a good fruit or not, and how could he find out. He said that the skin color and softness would determine if the fruit was good. I asked him if he was sure, and he wasn't. And truth be told, I still don't know when to tell if a mango is ripe or not. The skin color doesn't matter, although the softness of the fruit does matter a little bit. But at length, he concluded that to ultimately know if it was good or bad, he had to take a bite. And so I explained to him that if it was a good fruit, he would desire more, but if he bit into a worm or something, it would be okay, just spit it out and rinse your mouth out, no harm done.

I likened the fruit to the Book of Mormon. The scripture in Matthew talks about false prophets and that by their fruits ye shall know them. The Book of Mormon is the fruit of the Prophet Joseph Smith. How do you know if it's a good fruit? Take a bite, read it! If it's good, then you'll want to read it more. If not, then put it down, throw it away, there is no harm done. I showed Logan the Book of Mormon that I used to highlight all of the references of Jesus Christ and told him the Book is truly a testament of Jesus Christ. I also explained the "arch" analogy, that all the principles of the gospel stand or fall on the Book of Mormon. The Book is the keystone of our religion, take that away, and everything crumbles with it. That's why people go through such great lengths to prove the Book false. I explained all of this and committed him to read. I hope we finally got through to him the importance of reading the Book of Mormon...

Haha, oh man, tell Cameron to HURRY UP with his papers!!!! I'm tired of waiting around to hear where he's going, plus I'd rather not not see him for 3+ years!!! And yeah, being the stud-muffin he is, plus that missionary mantle, those girls are going to be flockin'!

So we talked to this guy the other night, his name was Carlo, and he was totally sloshed. He came up to us and told us all about how he was an angel, apparently our guardian angel, so don't worry mom, Carlo is looking out for me. haha! But yeah, he went spouting off on how much gold was worth and all sorts of stuff, it was HILARIOUS! We eventually got away though.

I'm loving being a district leader, only my trainings haven't been very good the last week or two, cause my zone leaders keep forgetting to tell me what I'm training on until like a day or two before, leaving me very little time to prepare!! It's okay though, I love those guys. Everything is whack cause we are having a mission tour this month which I'm really looking forward to!

Other than that, nothing else is really going on, I'm enjoying the mission life, Elder Peterson is awesome, and I learned that bananas are the healthiest fruit and that they have many, many medicinal purposes... It was pretty sweet what I learned. Hope everything is going good on the home front! I love you all and give Brig a hug for me.

Love,
ELDER LOGAN BROOKS