The Spirit of the Sacrament

Hi Family,

Hope you are all well. I have been praying that you can have peace in
your hearts and have the Spirit with you. I hope that God is answering
my prayers for you because I know that He is answering your prayers
for me. We have had a wonderful week. We spent a day and "explored"
the nether parts of our area. It is just a 5 mile bike ride but for
some reason we never go out there. It was fun to just go an learn a
new part of the area and meet new people and members.

Yesterday for P-Day we played a game called scatterball for a few
hours (revised dodgeball) and I have never been so sore in my life.
Also, I got my haircut and it made me miss mom and my sisters and even
Craig. For some reason, the only people that cut hair in Houston are
Vietnamese and it was the worst haircut of my entire life (picture
included). Luckily I was able to fix it up a lot. It made me think of
the time that Craig buzzed my hair at Winnipasaukee but left it old
man style with a culdesac on top.

We have Zone Conference tomorrow and we all had to write talks in
preparation for it. I was writing mine this morning and had some
really neat insights into the scriptures as the Holy Ghost taught me
about faith, hope, and charity. A few weeks ago I had the thought of
"what type of missionary do I want to be?" My whole life I have wanted
to be like Ammon, Alma, Dan Jones, Wilford Woodruff, or Parley P.
Pratt. When I was pondering on this, the Spirit asked me, "Why don't
you want to be like Christ?" That was a humbling experience. I
realized that all these other missionaries were only great
missionaries because they strived to be and were Christ-like. There
number one goal wasn't to be known as a great missionary. Rather, it
was to bring to pass the Eternal Life of God's children. My focused
has changed. I now want to be a Christ-like missionary. So that is
what my talk is on. Christ-like attributes of faith, hope, and
charity. I have found that the scriptures are repleat with scriptures
referring to these and have learned a lot.

We received a phone call from the ward organist on Saturday saying she
wasn't going to be in the ward anymore because her husband received a
stake calling. She asked us to play in the Primary Program the next
day. Luckily Elder Evertsen plays the piano really well and can sight
read. I never got to good at that. He played for the program and it
was extremely powerful. Him and I will take turns playing the organ
for now on in Sacrament meeting and we will practice during the week.
We are both excited about that.

I thought a lot about the Sacrament this week during the week and
truly tried to repent and prepare to renew my covenants with God. As I
listened to the children sing in the program, the Holy Ghost came and
cleansed me. I can't explain it but I have come to recognize that the
Holy Ghost speaks to me in a number of ways. Sometimes it is comfort,
other times peaces, other times testifying of truth, and every so
often, he works as the Purifier and burns out my many imperfections.
It was an incredible feeling and I immediately felt like praying and
expressing gratitude to God. Funny how that is. When we are truly
clean and pure, we want to pray.

I love you all. I have seen miracles. Thank you for your prayers.

Love,

Elder Case