We were given this opportunity to write to people on Christmas so I decided to talk about what happened today.
We had a talk from David A. Bednar for Christmas this morning and he talked on becoming truly converted to Jesus Christ and not to anything else.
A couple thoughts I wanted to share with you were these:
The biggest convert in the mission should be the missionary himself. This is not done by any concious effort on the part of the missionary to become converted, but with a concious effort to help everyone he is around to do the same.
It is important that when adversity arises that you know whether you are converted to the Church and to Jesus Christ or to something else . The comment that the church is not true, is false. The church is always true, but it may be that you are not true to the church.
It was a really good talk and like several others I wish that you were able to look them up, but sadly they don't realease the MTC talks at all.
One thing that I really wanted to share in my last E-mail was the full story of the Birth of the Savior that we don't typically hear. It was first expressed by our Branch President and then I took a study period to pull out the scriptures and put them all together.
This is going to require a little bouncing around in the scriptures in order to sequence it but I thought it was cool when we did it in priesthood meeting.
Luke 1:5-56 About Elizabeth and Mary concieving children
Matt 1:18-25 Joseph told about Mary's child
Luke 1:57-80 John the Baptist born
Luke 2:1-7 Jesus born
Luke 2:8-20 Shepherds being told of the birth of the Savior
Luke 2:21-35 Simeon sees the child Jesus
Luke 2:36-38 Anna also sees the Child
Matt 2:7-12 Wise men come to see Jesus
Matt 2:13-23 Joseph moves around to save his son from death
Some interesting things to note about this story:
- John the Baptist was born at this time in order to allow some of the things concerning Jesus to come to pass
- Anna the widow lived to be around 120 years old before she saw the Savior
- The gifts given by the wise men were symbolic of how greatly esteemed Christ was, but the were also most likely very practical because Joseph was required to move his family around for almost 2 years and the amount of worth of those presents probably allowed him to continue to afford to live.
- By giving such great gifts through the wise men, King Harod allowed the family of Jesus to move around and avoid his attempts to kill the boy.
- In verse 23 in Matt 2, there is stated the fulfillment of a prophesy. This prophesy is not found in any of the scriptures (either Bible or BoM) and helps to show that there is additional knowledge that we don't have in any form at this time.
I hope that you find this as interesting as I did and that you are able to read it on Christmas.
Love Your Boy,
Elder McCaskill
