Dear Everyone,

I have really good news. An Elder let me borrow his picture attaching device and I will send you pictures with captions today. It's gonna be sweet.

This last week has been very missionary esque. Rather similar to the weeks before except the number between Dec. and 2013 is different. However, the day right after I sent my last email, we were in class and our teacher showed us this super awesome talk by Elder Holland. It was from General Conference in 2003 and it might have changed my life a little bit. Its called The Grandeur of God and you can look it up on lds.org but here's some of my favorite parts.

Basically, in order to love God and keep His commandments, we have to understand who he is. That's kind of a difficult thing to do because there's only like 3 times in the scriptures that we actually hear His words and they are few. Also, a lot of the time that we hear about God in the Old Testament they are talking about Jehovah who is Jesus. However, Elder Holland talked about how we can come to know God by coming to know the Savoir. We can do this because of what Jesus said that, "I can do nothing save that which I seeth the Father do" (sorry I don't have the exact reference on that. It might not even be an exact quote. Sorry.) 

The most important part of what we need to know about God, is that He loves us. He loves us more than we can even comprehend. Read in Moses 7 about Enoch and his vision that he saw of God. You can really see how much God loves us all and wants us to be happy and is so sad when we sin. It's actually quite a tragic chapter, but it's very touching. 

Anyhow, I'm obviously not portraying the meaning as well as Elder Holland did, so go watch his talk. Its so good.

On Sunday, we got to hear from the BYU Men's Choir instead of our usual devotional. That was pretty awesome. There was a guy in it that had this awesome beard and made me wish I could grow one. The more I shave, the more optimistic I become about being able to do so one day but until then, I guess I'll just have to comply with the MTC guidelines. We also had a cool devotional on Tuesday (that's how it works. One on Tuesday and one on Sunday) from Elder Ronald A. Rasband. He was a really neat speaker. It was good to hear from him. He spoke on Spiritual Gifts and opened it up to sort of a question and answer type thing, but my favorite part was from his wife. She told this neat story about a missionary from the mission that they used to be President and wife over. He said he always wanted to get his shoes shined and one day he got the opportunity from this grubby looking old man who didn't have any good equiptment or a chair to sit in or anything but he did a great job. He asked that the Elder pay him as much as he was willing to pay and the Elder related this to the Savior, shining our souls. How much are we all willing to pay to get our souls shined? That was a pretty quick summation but I hope you get the main idea and feel warm inside.

You're all the best. I got a bunch of great packages and letters this week and those always make me think of you all. I hope the holiday season goes well for you and you all keep your thoughts on the Savior. He's the man (In the most reverent respectful way possible.)

You're favorite missionary, or at least one of your top ten,

Anderson Elder.