Elder Joshua Thayne in Indiana: Week 24 - Transfer this week, Zone Conference, and choosing the Lord's plan

Wow what a crazy week! I was so surprised to find out I am being transferred, and anxious to find out where I will be on Wednesday. This week has been a cold one, and I am anxiously awaiting the warm weather that will come as soon as winter is over. I can only imagine how much enjoyable it will be! It was literally -20 degrees on Thursday and I'm not kidding when I say that half of my face literally froze numb. I was trying to smile and talk and I couldn't do it right because the whole right side of my face couldn't move. It was miserable! Hurry up summer! (I'll probably be complaining about the intense heat when July comes around)

So P. is still doing great as she progresses towards baptism. We have been able to visit her almost every day, so we have already taught her all the lessons and now we just go over there and read key chapters with her from the Book of Mormon. She really loves our visits and she's making a lot of friends at church. She even volunteered to help decorate for the branch activity we were going to have on Saturday, but due to all the snow we received the night before, the activity was cancelled. It's great to see how willing she is to follow the Gospel.

Some more great news is that P. and M. still want to get baptized! M. was always one who had a desire to learn more and he appeared to have more potential, but his wife seemed a little skeptical. One day A. (their member daughter) was talking to P. about her Patriarchal blessing and she was researching the tribe of Manasseh and reading it to her mom. Suddenly her mom just looked up and said she wanted to be baptized! Sadly, she's returning to the Dominican Republic soon for about 6 months. We're working on helping her get baptized before she leaves, but it's hard since she hasn't even come to church yet. But we are all super excited, especially they're daughter A.! It's great to see how much joy she feels because her parents are finally accepting the Gospel that she has come to know is true.

We had our Zone Conference on Wednesday and it was really good. We had some great trainings and at the end Pres. Cleveland had a little basketball clinic since he probably misses his coaching days. It was a lot of fun! One question Pres. Cleveland asked us at Conference was how we could explain why we chose Christ's plan instead of Satan's. He pointed out that as a person unacquainted with the plan of Salvation, it would be difficult to understand why we'd choose the "high-risk" plan with Agency over Satan's guaranteed plan. This had me thinking. If you look at it from a wordly or let's say "business" perspective it doesn't really make much sense. We could either choose the plan that guarantees 100% success for our company, or choose the one that could cause us to fail and lose a huge part of the company. The thing is, in an eternal perspective, there is no way we could achieve perfect joy without occasional failure and sorrow. If we reached exaltation without having to do any work for it, we would not be able to achieve the fullness of joy that our Father in Heaven wants for us. It may be hard for a lot of people to understand, but through the experience of sin and sadness, we can feel the immense joy behind the reasoning of Christ's Plan of Happiness.

Thank you for everything! Have a good week!

Love,

Elder Thayne