Happy New Year!

This week was crazy busy. I honestly cannot believe that it is already Monday again. We spent a lot of time preparing for a project that we ran during the third hour of church yesterday. We helped all of the members ages 12 and up create tabbed Books of Mormon. In doing so we also invited each of the members that were present during that 3rd hour activity to hand these Books of Mormon out to someone that they know. We are hoping that this will provide us with opportunities to teach some more people, specifically people that the members know. It is a lot easier for someone to come to church when they have friends there. We only had one of the friends that we are teaching attend sacrament this week, which was a pretty big bummer. But what made up for it was the fact that the one who did attend church went up and bore her testimony during Sacrament meeting!! That was really cool. It was only her second time at church, so it was awesome to see. She is on date to be baptized on January 22nd, so we are looking forward to helping her continue to live the gospel and see the change that it can have. 

This morning I was studying in Ether and reading about the Brother of Jared. I was in chapter 2 and reading about how the Lord had guided the Brother of Jared and the Jaredites to his valley where they camped. This guidance and direction was all because the Brother of Jared continued to pray and seek direction from the Lord. Unfortunately, when they got to this valley, they ended up staying there for four years! Four years of no progression. All of this was because he had stopped continually seeking guidance from the Lord! He had stopped praying and because of that, they were just hanging out there for four years. It made me think of how easy it is to get complacent. To miss days of scripture study, or prayers, or attending church, or living the commandments. It's easy to kind of just relax, get comfortable, and not progress. But that isn't the purpose of life! We are here to improve each day. To try and become more like Christ and our Heavenly Father. There's no time for being complacent or relaxing! I have come to firmly believe that you can only be going in one of two directions. You are either moving closer to Christ, closer to Heavenly Father, and closer to eternal happiness, or you are going in the wrong direction. The beauty is that it is up to us to choose which way we are going and to choose not to get complacent!