Labas Visiems!

On Elder Leishman. He's from Springville, UT. Went to BYU for a year, where his dad is a professor of Acoustics. He was born and lived the early years of his life in Pennsylvania while his dad went to school. He plays the drums and loves music, so we've talked a lot about music. That's a bit about him.

This weekend there was a International Festival in Kaunas, with 100 European cities represented. Included in this festival was a medieval tournament. Unfortunately the festival was from Thursday through Sunday, but Elder Leishman and I obtained a schedule and found out when things were happening and took our break hours at strategically chosen times to witness some of the excitement. Including........JOUSTING!! Like A knight's Tale, a little less intense, but still pretty sweet. There was also a little sword fighting between the knights as well. It was super epic and awesome to be able to see.

We met with Du Wei and had been unsure of what to teach, but decided on Charity. We taught the lesson and at the end he said that it was exactly what he had needed to hear. It was great to see God's guidance and to have Du Wei recognize that importance and application to his life and tell us.

Some sad news about Tadas, but there's still a silver lining to our cloud. We met with him, he dropped his baptismal date because he wants to be clean before God and knows to do that he needs to get married. He said that that was impossible for about a year. His desire to follow Christ is still strong and he wants to continue meeting with us and attending Church, which he did this Sunday. He also invited his girlfriend, Ieva to meet with us and she said that she would come to Church next week. Our hope is that if they can work together to desire baptism, they can push each other to make the necessary changes sooner rather than later to be baptised. It was rough having him make that decision, but we expressed our thoughts that we are concerned that his drive might falter some while waiting and the blessings that come from obedience now.

This week was good. Elder Leishman and I discussed goals and talked a lot about Lithuanian and how to improve. We have been SYL'ing a lot and discussing a lot about the language. I've found out things about the language that I never ever knew existed, it's just blowing my brain apart.

Mom, it's funny that you wanted to study light. That's one of my favorite topics. Especially the relationship between light and truth. A goofy, or perhaps not so goofy, study I did during our breaks this week involved the scriptural evidence for lightsabers. I was inspired by the cherubim and flaming sword. If you look through the old and new testament, light and fire are very intricately connected, since fire was the main source of light. Therefore perhaps the flaming sword was a lightsaber, they just had no words to describe something like that. Also, in Ephesians in mentions the Sword of the Spirit, or the word of God. In Doctrine and Convenants section 84, if I am not mistaken, it states that the word of God is truth, which is light, which is Spirit. THerefore the Sword of the Spirit is the Sword of Light, lightsaber. I then came to the conclusion that lightsabers must have been the weapons in the War in Heaven, where Satan was overcome by Michael's and his Follower's testimony, or statements of Truth, or Light. Lightsabers can cut through any material and since Spirit is matter just finer than our mortal eyes can see, a lightsaber would be the only physical weapon capable of harming a spirit. Just a few fun Gospel thoughts, haha. Wouldn't a painting of the war in Heaven with Lightsabers be super awesome? Alistair maybe you can work on that and give it to me when I get home, that would be sweet.

On a more serious not of study, I studied Charity quite a bit this week. I was interested in the connection between Charity and Fear, since in 1 Peter 4:8, I think that's the right reference, it ways that perfect love casts out fear and that in love there is no fear. I was trying to figure out why that was and came up with three reasons. First, that fear is based on misunderstanding. Charity focuses on understanding all people and seeing things from their perspective, eliminating misunderstanding and therefore fear. Second, Charity comes from a trust in God, which allows us to believe that all things will work out for our benefit, and because of that we wouldn't fear anything. Third, fear is selfish. Coming from thoughts of our own welfare and not caring about other people. Charity is the opposite, completely focused on others away from oneself, thereby eliminating fear. I realized that more and more everything depends on Charity and flows easily if there is that love or Charity in you for all mankind.

Well, there's this week, happenings, serious, and much less serious reflections on the Gospel. Alistair good luck in your speech writing. The rest of you good luck in school. I can't believe you're almost done, that's crazy. I love you and pray for you. I appreciate your prayers as well.

Love,

Vyresnysis Kanoris Hiltonas