Jack - October 11

Hey guys! I hope everything is going well for everyone back home! Not a ton happened this week, other than the fact that I´m kinda sick of the MTC now. I´m gonna miss hanging out with my district all day, and it´s gonna be weird to get used to just being with a companion everyday, hopefully I get some good companions. But yeah not much really happened, it´s kinda just the same old again. Yesterday though we had a cool surprise, we were walking around the grounds of the MTC and some guy stopped us and was asking if we were the missionaries giving a tour of the MTC to a bunch of kids from a nearby school and we were really confused but we were like no that´s not us. Then about 10 minutes later in the middle of class another teacher runs in and is like ¨come on! you guys get to go teach all of these students!¨ It was actually really cool though. We started setting up some chairs so that each companionship would be able to teach a kid, then about a minute before we started they were like Oh actually there´s like 100 kids here so you´ll each be teaching about 8-9 kids. It was really cool though, we were able to answer questions and teach a bit of a lesson. Other than that the other cool thing that happened was that this past Sunday I was assigned to teach a lesson in our priesthood meeting about the Holy Ghost and it was probably the best lesson I´ve ever given, and by a long shot because I´ve always been bad at teaching anything in general. But now my district keeps telling me I should be a motivational speaker or something, it´s strange. Anyways as I was preparing I first figured I would just teach about the gifts of the Spirit again because that´s one of my favorite topics, but then I figured I should say a prayer for guidance from the Holy Ghost about what I should teach about the Holy Ghost, which is kind of a no-brainer now that I think about it. Anyways I was looking in the Preach my Gospel manual for some good scripture references to the Holy Ghost when I found a reference to the word earnest in the Bible Dictionary. Before I tell you what it means, Paul the apostle uses it in reference to the gift of the Holy Ghost in the New Testament about 3 times. In 2nd Corinthians 1:22, 2nd Corinthians 5:5, and Ephesians 1:13-14. One of the names for the Holy Ghost is also the spirit of promise. And in each of these scriptures it talks about God sealing us with the earnest of the spirit. Or in Ephesians it´s a little clearer, ¨...ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, 14 Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.¨ The Bible Dictionary says this: Earnest. A pledge or security. The word thus translated is a commercial term denoting the deposit paid by a buyer on entering into an agreement for the purchase of anything. As used by Paul it means that the Lord gives us his Holy Spirit in this life as a foretaste of the joy of eternal life. The Spirit is also the Lord´s surety that he will fulfill his promise to give eternal life to the faithful.¨ WOW! How incredible! The gift of the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost after being baptized and confirmed is just a foretaste of the blessings in store for us, just a initial down payment to show the Lord will follow through on His end of the deal. This ¨little downpayment¨ is the 3rd member of the Godhead, if the companionship of someone so important and capable of so many things is just a taste of the blessings to come then truly God has so many blessings in store that we won´t even have room to receive them all. What an incredible and loving blessing, I explained it better in my lesson, also going over many of the other things the Holy Ghost can do to help us, but I don´t have a lot of time, so I´ll leave that to you to study. If you have preach my gospel, there´s a brief list on page 96 and 97 I think. That blew my mind though, my perspective on the Holy Ghost completely changed. I encourage everyone to be worthy of the companionship of the Holy Ghost. I hope everyone had a good week this week, I leave the MTC on monday, so i don´t know what emailing will be like next week, it may be even longer than a week until I email you, but I´m hoping for the best.

Elder Blaylock