Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire 😱😱 Jan 23,2023

 Hello there! Hope this finds you all doing well and continuing to make the best of every circumstance you may be in. I love you all and am so very grateful for all the prayers! Here's some of the major highlights of the week, hope you enjoy 

MIRACLES/TMOTLS:

Unexpected Sacrement Attendance:

So yesterday we were at church not expecting anyone to come because everyone said they wouldn't be able to make it . Well we typically stand right out the Chapel doors to greet the ward members as they come in and were doing this and I'm talking to a member when Elder Johnston is kinda just like "Elder Roberts look..." and points at some people and I'm not messing around when I say I almost had a heart attack. What did I see? It was Nicole and Tray!!! They came to church!!!!! If you ever get the chance ask brother Parini how we reacted  we were essentially giddy little school girls. I was so happy to see her!! They both loved the service! And then afterwards we had a lesson with the whole family and a lot of them said they'd like to work towards baptism  so essentially hard work pays off big time!!

UPDATES:

Mike: he's doing awesome! Still trying to address some concerns about coming to church and such but we asked if he believes Joseph Smith to be a Prophet and if the Book of Mormon was true and he said "yes"  now we're helping him build his testimony about President Nelson. Please please please please please please please add Mike to your prayers! That's 7 pleases which is essentially a perfect amount of pleases

Nicole and Fam: all of them are doing awesome! See above TMOTL.

Jason: please add him to your prayers! He just lost his job so he can use all the extra prayers he can get! 

SPIRITUAL THOUHT:

So President Riding recently invited us to begin reading from the 4 Gospels in the NT and also 3 Nephi over the course of the next 5 months and I've been reading from Matthew recently. I found a verse that really stood out because it really helped me understand the character of Christ and its Matthew 14:14 and it says:

"And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick."

Now without any context this scripture is still pretty cool but here's the context for it. John the Baptist was beheaded earlier in the chapter and if you can remember that's Jesus's cousin. So in verse 12 Christ is told his cousin has just been killed, in verse 13 its says he goes to a desert place and when the multitude heard he had gone there they followed. Verse 14 is Christ's response to the multitude that followed him. So Christ, who has just been told his cousin is dead, instead of complaining and asking them to leave him alone he shows compassion on them and heals them. He then proceeds to preform the miracle of feeding the five thousand. In the MTC, from Elder Bednar, we learned that the character of Christ is to turn out and help when the natural man would turn in, and I think this scene in the bible demonstrates that so much it's amazing to me! 

I want to promise you all that Christ will show all of you this same compassion as you come and follow him! So that's my invitation this week, follow Him!

Anyways that's all for this week folks! Love you all! I would love to hear from some of you, although I can't promise I'll respond to everybody. Keep up the great work and remember to keep fighting that good fight! 

-Elder Roberts