Sun City

January 18, 2016

Sun City is the name of a housing community that takes up about 1/4 of our ward and it is filled entirely with old people. You have to be at least 55 years old to buy a house there and you can't have kids living with you haha. So, needless to say in the time we've spent working in that part of our area, we have met a lot of very cranky old people, but that's alright because I'm sure I'll be old and cranky some day too:)

It was a good week and it flew by fast! We did a lot of finding and have been trying to get to know the members well in our ward. There's a ton of super cool families here that I've already hit it off well with. Especially our ward mission leader, who's name is Bro. King. He is hilarious! And his family has a sense of humor that totally matches the Alley Clan’s so I think I'm going to enjoy working with him.

We had a baptism yesterday for a guy named Alan. He was originally Jewish, but married an LDS gal and started investigating the church. He is a super solid guy and it was fun to be there. I only taught him about 2 times in this last week in preparation for the baptism, so I don't feel I played any role really in him making this decision, but I was still honored to get to participate in the ways I did.

Red Rock is awesome! It's in a nicer part of town called “Summerlin" and the members are great. Also, the zone has a great vibe to it. A lot of missionaries who want to work hard are here right now so we definitely want to take advantage of that this transfer. I know it’s early in my time here, but I have a good feeling about Red Rock:)

My spiritual thought for you guys is kind of an echo of a principle I've already shared, but it is still important. We need to make sure that just as the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion, that it is also the personal keystone we have to our testimonies. In talking with many people who don't believe in the church, not a single person has been able to explain to me how we got the Book of Mormon if it wasn't divinely inspired. I've been reading the Book of Mormon so in depth recently, and it just absolutely blows my mind the quality, and depth, and consistency of the message of the book. And Joseph Smith translated it in less than 3 months! Most of us can't even read it all the way through in that amount of time! I know the Book of Mormon is true, and it was given to us so that we can have an anchor in these perilous times to keep us from being "tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine." If you are not reading daily from that book, I exhort you (to use scriptural language) to begin to do so! It'll save your soul! And on top of all that, it's just a great read:)

Another thought, "the scales of heaven will always keep the amount of positive and negative evidence there is in the world in a balance, so that faith will always end up being the source of our decision." Our bishop shared that and I though it was very profound. There's always going to be new stuff that comes about Joseph Smith and a Church History that is negative, and there will continue to be ruins and other discoveries of some sort that match up with what the Book of Mormon describes. But, in the end, all that evidence that influences either way doesn't matter. We need to focus on receiving spiritual confirmation to learn spiritual truths. Mostly due to the principle of "hearsay." All the books and history we have are things that other people wrote based off of what they heard from other people. We don't have any 1st hand witnesses anymore of those times. Everything is hearsay. 2nd, 3rd, 8th generation hearsay. It's hard to trust anything we hear nowadays because of how corrupt the sources are. That's why faith is the answer, that's why God is the answer, because he is the only pure source of undefined truth.

I'll get off my soapbox now. Anyways, it was a good week and I’m looking forward to spending more time up here in Red Rock. I hope you all have a wonderful week and I'll talk to ya later!

-Elder Alley