This week absolutely zoomed by. It was the most productive week I've had on the mission since Brazil. It felt like we were always doing something and never had time to take a break, which is a pretty awesome problem to have!
Today we had one of the coolest p-days ever. A family took our district to a private beach to play some ultimate frisbee and make some sand castles. Then we went bowling and got unlimited wings. The district is really funny right now- we all have really different personalities and backgrounds but we get along so well and laugh really hard. Too bad transfers are in a week and we are all probably gonna get split up :/
This week was a total spiritual high for Elder Ahlstrom and I! Ahlstrom had an idea to start praying for opportunities to use our priesthood. Well in the first four days of praying for these opportunities, we got to give five blessings!
We started doing this on Tuesday. That day we had a lesson with Barry Allen (yes that's his real name) and he asked us for a blessing. As we were leaving, a man named Joe stopped us and told us of his history with the church. We had an awesome conversation with him and he also asked for a blessing. Everything was just SO obviously guided by the spirit. When we were walking away I just started tearing up out of gratitude for having opportunities like this and being one of the Lord's servants.
Funny side note: when Barry asked for a blessing, he pulled out some lottery tickets and asked that we used some extra blessings for those.
I did exchanges in Melbourne with Elder Checketts (one of my fav former comps of all time!) We visited a family that had hired some people to help them move, led by Jerri. Jerri is the most stereotypical strong-personality and loud Italian man. He basically yelled orders, cursed at us in broken English, and made us laugh our heads off for 4 hours straight. Well, we ended up being absolute homies with the workers, especially Jerri, and they all committed to coming to church. Jerri was really inspired by the work we do as missionaries and praised our parents for raising us well (shoutout to Vicki and Stu). Too bad they're not in my area.
A deaf young man named Noah has been coming to church the last few weeks. We have had a hard time communicating with him and teaching him, so we referred him to my cousin, Elder Bryce Wormell, who is assigned to teach in sign language! We are super pumped about Noah and it's really cool that me and Bryce are able to do work together even though he's serving far away in Texas.
Other than all that, we taught some good lessons and did a ton of service this week!
This week I started doing an in-depth study on grace. In the next week or two I am gonna be looking up scriptures about grace and listen to some talks about it. I think grace is not understood very well in the church and I don't think we talk about it enough! Many people think that Latter-Day Saints believe we are saved by works, but that's just not true! We are saved by grace and we are elevated by our works (and elevated by grace as well!). Without grace we are DONE-ZO. Christ's grace completely saves everyone from being subject to the devil and if we allow it, grace can help us change and become more like Christ! That sounds pretty great if you ask me!
<3 Elder MacLay
PS most of my pics from this week are just straight up of my family back home. MAJOR SHOUTOUT TIME to Marli and Brandon on their engagement!!!!
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