WEEK 78- We Must Know the Gospel is True, & Be True to the Gospel!

Ran into the Shaytards at Deseret Book!

They are an awesome LDS family, who make daily videos on Youtube!

They have like 3 million subscribers!!!  

They live in Idaho, but were here in SLC for their anniversary :)

Click Here for the Shaytards Youtube Channel

Gilgal Gardens!

An old Bishop back in the day (1940's) 

sculpted a whole garden full of LDS doctrine.

Yeah, that's Joseph Smith as a Sphinx.  Kinda weird. lol

Click here to visit Gilgal Garden website

Hey!!

Some days can feel like weeks, but some weeks can feel like days! That was definitely the case this week. 

A lot of great work is going on here in the downtown Salt Lake Pioneer YSA stake. Everyone is just getting home from holiday and there is so much potential that we will make the most of in the next few months! We fasted yesterday with a girl we are teaching named Liz, from Vietnam! She is 18 and is currently going to LDS Business College downtown. She lives with her sister who is a recent convert, so she is surrounded by great people. We fasted with her in order to help her receive that life-changing answer she is looking for. Good things are in store for her!

Yesterday at church, 6 of 7 recent coverts in one of our wards came to church yesterday and one of them taught the Gospel Principles class!! It is great to see retention and to see them progress in the Gospel!  Brittany, who was just baptized about a month ago, went to the Temple for the first time to do baptisms for the dead this week! Darius, baptized in September, got the Aaronic Priesthood yesterday.  Like I said, great things are happening! :) How blessed we are as missionaries to see the conversion process of these individuals, first hand! I love it! It strengthens my testimony and conversion.

Yesterday, I was privileged to speak in one of the wards that we cover.  Bishop told me I could pick any topic, so I decided to speak on the subject of Personal Conversion.  Over the past 18 months or so, the Lord has made it very clear to me that only the deeply converted with survive.  Here are a few points from my talk…

Why is being personal converted unto the Lord even important?

In order to be able to stand strong against the trials that life has to offer, we need to do all we can to build our foundation upon Christ.  I've seen many people out here in the field who, when faced with a difficult trial, have nothing more than sand to stand upon.  When they do not have a solid foundation to stand on when challenges come, there is a loss of hope and courage. I know that as we do our best to become converted unto the Lord, he will be able to help us through those trials. If we don't, unfortunately, we are on our own.

Testimony and Conversion, although both essential, are not the same thing.

"Knowing that the gospel is true, is the essence of a testimony. Consistently being true to the gospel is the essence of conversion. We should know the gospel is true and be true to the gospel." -Elder Bednar 

Testimony alone will not be enough to stand up against the adversary. We must be consistently true and faithful to the light and knowledge we receive from God. That is how we become converted.

May I suggest 5 simple ways that we can help ourselves to become more converted unto the Lord:

1.) Use the Atonement. Repent daily. We need to humble ourselves, get on our knees, say "Heavenly Father I know I’m doing these things wrong, please forgive me and help me to be better." Then change.

2.) Drop our "weapons for rebellion" (Alma 23). Such as pride, disobedience, selfishness, nasty habits. We can't keep fighting against the Lord with these things. He can't help us until we are ready to help ourselves.

3.) Recognize and remember your Divine Potential. We are each a son or daughter of a Heavenly Father. We have potential to become as He. Every single one of us has this potential!  A missionary from China, in our last Zone Meeting, gave an analogy in his broken English. He said, a puppy grows up to be a dog. A kitty grows up to be a cat. What does a son or daughter of God grow up to be?

4.) CPR. Visit the Temple regularly. Family Home Evening. Be in places where God can work with us. Do what you know you need to do and go where you know you need to be. Make goals to accomplish these things.

5.) Strive to have a Christ like character.  Faith, hope, love, charity, diligence, obedience, virtue, knowledge, patience, humility. Chapter 6 of Preach My Gospel outlines this very effectively. Study it!

I know as we all do all we can to become personally converted unto Him, our burdens will be lighter. We will have so much for power to overcome challenges that are thrown at us. We will be able to prove ourselves worthy to return and live with our Loving Father. The only lasting happiness available can be found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Keep it up, the Lord will bless you for it!!

Love,

Elder Carroll

My favorite scripture this week: "And as sure as the Lord liveth, so sure as many as believed, or as many as were brought to the knowledge of the truth, through the preaching of Ammon and his brethren, according to the spirit of revelation and of prophecy, and the power of God working miracles in them—yea, I say unto you, as the Lord liveth, as many of the Lamanites as believed in their preaching, and were converted unto the Lord, never did fall away." (Alma 23:6)

WEEK 77- Where There Is No Vision, The People Perish

January 5, 2015

Morning scripture study

Fellow missionaries in my Zone!

Hey everyone,

2015. Where in the world did the time go? We have to make the most of every single day of our mortal lives and not "procrastinate" anything! The time to do what we need to do, is NOW! :) (Alma 34:32-34)

We are currently working with multiple individuals and they are all progressing at different rates. We are lucky to be working with a few recent converts and helping them get to the Temple! Lots of people (including people we are teaching) are finally getting back in town from the holiday so we plan on finding a ton of new people soon! :)

Over the past few weeks, probably because of the new year, my studies have often taken me to the topic of goals—or goal setting. A few months ago I was lucky enough to come across a book from D.I. called "Success Is..." by Paul H. Dunn. If by any chance, you can get a copy of this amazing book, I would invite you to do so and read it!  Within a total of only about 50 pages, this book will change your life if you apply the principles taught!! I wish to share a few points that Bro. Dunn makes in the wonderful book.

He makes it a point to lay out how the world views success and how God view success. While the world usually views success through external goals and achievements, God views success on the internal goals and achievements.

Bro. Dunn makes another good point that while pretty much all Latter-Day Saints (and non-Latter day Saints) have great intentions while setting goals such as daily scripture study/prayer, church/temple attendance, reading the entire Book of Mormon/Bible within a certain amount of time, etc., those are are external goals. The goals that we should really be making are internal goals. Goals such as to increase our character to be more like Christ, to build our relationships with God/family/friends, to build our faith/testimony/conversion, to increase our knowledge of God, etc.. The external goals we usually set are the steps we must take to achieve these goals, but should not be our ultimate goals. We must see beyond the external goals we usually set. Read the book, you won't regret it!!

A senior couple missionary gave a great training to our zone this past week on goal setting. He outlined S.M.A.R.T. goals:

Specific

Measurable

Act

Realistic

Time Frame

If a goal we set does not have each and every one of these principles, we are most likely not going to achieve that goal we set. An example would be...

Specific - I wish to increase my charity (internal goal) so in order to do so I will do 5 hours of service for my neighbors (snow shoveling) every week for the month of January.

Measurable - Yes. 5 hours.

Act - Snow shoveling.

Realistic - Yes. I have all the supplies I need to achieve this goal.

Time Frame - Every week in January.

It takes practice to make SMART internal goals, but when you get it down, you will be so much more effective in achieving things in life.

“I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When one learns to master the principles of setting a goal, he will then be able to make a great difference in the results he attains in this life.” -Elder M. Russell Ballard (PMG Chapter 8)

We must set goals and make plans. That's what God did. He had and has the goal to "bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man" (Moses 1:39), so he made a plan that we know as The Plan of Happiness! A SMART goal! And now he is doing all he can to achieve it. Everything in the Gospel just seems to fit right together :)

I know that as we set goals, the Lord will help us achieve them. We must humble ourselves and ask for his help. With Him, all things are possible.

Love you all, keep up the good work. Stay close to the Lord and I promise he'll bless you.

Love,

Elder Carroll

"Where there is no vision, the people perish..." (Proverbs 29:18)

"There is not effort without failure." -Theodore Roosevelt

"If the Savior stood beside me,
Would I do the things I do?
Would I think of His commandments and try harder to be true?
Would I follow His example?
Would I live more righteously if I could see the Savior standing nigh,
watching over me?

If the Savior stood beside me,
Would I say the things I say?
Would my words be true and kind if He were never far away?
Would I try to share the gospel?
Would I speak more rev’rently if I could see the Savior standing nigh,
watching over me?

If the Savior stood beside me,
Would my thoughts be clean and pure?
Would His presence give me strength and hope and courage to endure?
Would His counsel guide my actions?
Would I choose more worthily if I could see the Savior standing nigh
watching over me?" 

~If the Savior Stood Beside Me, Primary hymn

Week 76- Make the Exercise of Faith Your First Priority

DECEMBER 28, 2014

Temple Square on Christmas!!

It's finally snowing!!!!

Helloooooo Family & Friends!

I hope your Christmas was as wonderful as mine! It was good to see the families face's thru Skype! After 25 days into December we finally received a decent snowfall! It has snowed every day for the past 4 days and just keeps coming! I love Utah…The people are amazing, it actually has all 4 seasons, and the Lord has blessed this place to be the Headquarters of his Church.  I can testify confidently that people are being brought here from ALL around the world, for the purpose of investigating and joining His true Gospel.

Skyping with my family on Christmas Day!

As I mentioned in my last letter, we are teaching people from all around the world! It is such a blessing to be able to become acquainted with these wonderful people on their pursuit for happiness & purpose. The Lord works in mysterious ways, one of those being how he prepares individuals and send them to Zion to hear His word.

I wish to write today boldly and in plainness, that "no man can err". Elder Oaks gave a beautiful talk in April of 2011 titled, "Desire" in which he speaks of the importance of desire. Please read this talk if you have a moment now or in the near future.

VIDEO: "Desire" April Conference 2011

He states:"Desires dictate our priorities, priorities shape our choices, and choices determine our actions. The desires we act on determine our changing, our achieving, and our becoming."

As my past Tahitian companion would say, it all starts with a desire. With no desire, we can get nowhere. Our desire to learn of and obey God ultimately determines our Salvation. If we have no desire to obey God, we mustn't be surprised when we do not receive the blessings we want in this life or in the eternities.  As Lehi states, we must "act for [ourselves]" (2 Nephi 2:26). We can only expect to receive the blessings of the level of laws that we are willing to follow. We were put here on this earth "to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them;". We are here to see if we will live the Higher Law (3 Nephi 12) as taught by Jesus Christ.

Elder Scott of the 12 teaches that, "Feasting on the word of God each day is more important than sleep, school, work, television shows, video games, or social media. You may need to reorganize your priorities to provide time for the study of the word of God. If so, do it!" If you haven't read his most recent Conference talk on this matter, I invite you to do so.

VIDEO:  "Make The Exercise of Faith Your First Priority"
October 2014 Conference

He concludes that prayers, scripture study, family home evenings Temple and church attendance are of most vital and essential importance. Are these our priorities? We aren't just asked to do these things for the sake of just doing them or for obedience. We are asked to do them so that we can build upon a sure foundation of the Rock, so that we can withstand the tornadoes that life has to throw at us. Only through these simple things can we expect to become "converted unto the Lord" and stand strong through the trials of mortality.

Wrapping this all back up to the point of desire… We must (if we do not already) have a deep desire to follow the Lord in all things. It all starts with a "particle of faith" (Alma 32). I invite you to look deep within yourself and honestly evaluate yourself on the meter of desire. If you don't feel as if you have a strong desire to do these simple things, I invite you to repent and turn to the Lord in prayer to ask for that desire and then get up off your knees and go to work. Do what you know needs to be done.  I promise the Lord will bless you for it.  If you feel like these things are too hard, overwhelming, time consuming or that there isn't enough time in the day, I invite you to repent and slow your life down to a point where you can put the Lord first in your life.

If you do have a strong desire to follow Him, I invite you to continue do what you know if right. Don't slip up one bit. The adversary will be joyous to jump in at any chance he can get. Stay strong in your words, thoughts and actions, and He will take care of you. 

The Lord will bless you as we do our personal best in following Him. He, through the Atonement, will make up the rest for us. He is a Just God, but also infinitely merciful. I know Jesus is the Christ and that He is doing all He can to help us, as we help ourselves.

I love you all, keep up the good work. Stay close to Him and I promise he will bless you.

Love,

Elder Carroll

"Feast upon the words of Christ; for behold, the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do." (2 Nephi 32:3)

"It is not just that the Book of Mormon teaches us truth, though it indeed does that. It is not just that the Book of Mormon bears testimony of Christ, though it indeed does that, too. But there is something more. There is a power in the book which will begin to flow into your lives the moment you begin a serious study of the book. You will find greater power to resist temptation. You will find the power to avoid deception. You will find the power to stay on the straight and narrow path. The scriptures are called "the words of life" (D&C 84:85), and nowhere is that more true than it is of the Book of Mormon. When you begin to hunger and thirst after those words, you will find life in greater and greater abundance." 

-Ezra Taft Benson

" I believe in Christ--my Lord, my God!
My feet he plants on gospel sod.
I'll worship him with all my might;
He is the source of truth and light.
I believe in Christ; he ransoms me.
From Satan's grasp he sets me free,
And I shall live with joy and love
In his eternal courts above." 

(I Believe in Christ, Hymn 134 v. 3)

pic1- (12/25/14) Temple Square on Christmas!

pic2- (12/25/14) Snowwwwww