email 3/14/11
Technology never ceases to amaze me. Yesterday, Elder Urrutia and I did a fireside for the youth of another ward that borders ours. They had a big group and we met in a member's home (their home was more like a mansion--it was huge!) We met in their 'theatre room' and hooked up a laptop to their projector and started teaching the youth how to use mormon.org and facebook to share the gospel. "Who has a facebook?" I asked them. All of them raised their hands. I looked one of them up on the spot and friend requested them. She pulled out her iphone and 2 seconds later accepted my friend request. It was a fun demonstration! I posted a mormon.org link on her page and she started commenting on it through her iphone. In about 20 seconds all the youth in the room had their phones out and commented on my link. Technology is so cool. The internet proselyting thing that we've been doing proves to be REALLY effective with the younger generation. Some of the 'old fogies' of the church are still very apprehensive about embracing it. The way I figure is that the youth of the church are going to be on facebook and youtube anyway, so you can either tell them 'don't do bad things' or you can be proactive and give them a solution or good things to utilize these new methods of communication. The internet is the 'town-square' of today's world. Hasn't that always kind of been our approach to missionary work? It's cool to see that as we develop new ways to share the gospel we embrace them and use them to fulfill the measure of their creation. Gospel principles and doctrine hasn't ever changed but the methods we employ to share them have evolved to this ever progressing world. God's work is progressive--it is never at a standstill--thus our need for continued revelation to move this progressive work along and thus our need to embrace these new methods of communication to share these eternal and unchanging principles in an advanced and progressing way.
The weather has opened up a lot of doors for us. It appears that the warmer the weather gets the warmer people are to our message. Most of the snow has melted here in Waterbury. I'm eagerly awaiting this next week as we welcome the arrival of spring! It's a wonderful time to be a missionary! I got to go on an exchange with the elders in Bridgeport, CT this weekend and go running on the beach in the morning. It was nice to breathe in the fresh, cool morning air and watch the waves crash against the rocks. God is a masterful creator. It was a tender mercy.
This week I did a lot of service. In Bridgeport, we helped a family move some furniture and 2 other families to move. I had another exchange with the elders in Meriden, CT, during which I got to go to the soup kitchen there to help prepare and serve the food. Working with people is so much fun. We helped another man unload his truck and taught him a lesson. After that we went to a members home to help her with her yard. She lives in beautiful Wallingford, CT. Wallingford is heavily wooded and the trees are huge. This woman lived in a cute little house surrounded by big, beautiful trees, some of which had large branches that had broken during the winter because of the weight of the snow. I was grateful to have had so much experience with hedging equipment with the hedges that we would regularly have to trim at our home because I put it to good use here. I love serving people. Connecticut really is a beautful place. I've fallen in love with the rural areas of Connecticut, covered in trees and nature.
Soak up the sun and live the dream!
with much love from your favorite elder,
-Elder Shepherd
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