Elder Murdock In The Texas Houston East Mission: Week 98-Jasper

Hey y'all, welcome to the latest week of my life in email form!

This week was rather uneventful, most of it was doing service for others, which I don't mind doing at all! Elder Chanel is a real handy man, like, he can literally fix anything, plumbing, electric, carpentry, mechanic, anything, so we get asked to come help fix things a whole lot, I'm trying to learn as much as I can from him! On Wednesday we helped some recent converts in the branch rearrange their stuff in their resale shop theyre opening up, and I say stuff, because they just have all kinds of stuff, nothing really specific they're selling, you know, just stuff . After that we went to help a Hispanic couple in the branch with work around the house, fixing their lawn mower, fixing their toilet, and fixing some of the lighting in their house. We also helped out Brother Rogers with his tractors again, we didn't get to ride them this time though, because we had to go get things ready for a dinner apointment with a part member less active family. Last Monday, Elder Chanel picked a big tero root that was growing in front of our branch mission leaders house. Our mission leader had never known what it was until Elder Chanel picked it, it's pretty much a big Polynesian potato, this thing

Anyway, the part member family wanted him to make it for them, and it took forever to boil that thing, but it tastes great, especially with coconut milk. while it was cooking, we prepared some songs to play and sing for them, something else they wanted us to do that night. Elder Chanel borrowed a members guitar and I played viola for them, and we all sang old hymns like amazing grace and all that with them. The non member of the family, Bertha, played the accordian with us, which was neat, sorry I didn't get any videos or anything of that, you'll just have to use you imaginations for that.

On a more spiritual note, Elder Chanel and I talked a lot this week on the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Heres some thoughts on it:

Knowledge is great, we get it through study, listening to others, just paying attention to life, and it's what we store in our minds to use latter. It's like in D&C 84:85, where we're asked to tresure up in our minds the words of life. Now this is all great and all, but unless we actually do something with that knowledge, unless we live according to the knowledge, it's pretty much useless to us. I think that's a good example of being ignorant, knowing something, or having a knowledge of something, and not wanting to act on it. I like to call this being spiritually fat. Just like in life, if we sit down and have a big feast everyday, but never go out and exercise, we become fat, if we sit down and have a big spiritual feast everyday, like studying scriptures or go to church each week, if we don't go out and exercise the truths that we received then our spirit becomes fat, prideful, and overall unhealthy. We know too much, and don't do anything with that knowledge. Now, a wise person is someone who uses that knowledge correctly. That's someone who understands how they need to live, and they live that way. Jesus Christ is the ultimate example of this, of course. He had a perfect knowledge of the gospel, and pretty much everything else, and He acted in perfect accordance with that knowledge. That's what makes you wise, when your knowledge and your actions become one with each other. A wise person is someone who has experienced things, and learned from those experiences, and acts according to what he's learned, trying to become a better person after each experience. OK, I'm kind of going off on a rant now, I'll stop