As the new year and a new schedule at church begins, I want to share a thought that our high councilman shared with us in Sacrament meeting. He was speaking about the new emphasis on home centered gospel learning. He compared the change to food. In the past, the teacher would cook and bring what she made to class to share with her class. Now, we all cook and bring what we had prepared to share with everyone. It becomes a banquet for all. It doesn't matter what exactly we cook or if it is the same as someone else's, it matters that we cook and come and share. If someone doesn't cook, there is a shortage in our feast so we all need to do our part. I really liked this analogy. It helps me understand more about the change. We look forward to what the changes in church meetings mean to us in our home.
I would like to pretend I sent this when I started to write 2 weeks ago but I didn't. We've been pretty busy. We've spent the past 2 weekends training new assistants and I have been training a new sister to help in the Dental Clinic. We just found out that we will be having a conference for our AATS. It will be great to have them all together for our meetings. We look forward to having the conference but there are a lot of details we need to get started working on.
This week has been a spiritual feast for us. Elder Holland came to the Philippines for the groundbreaking for the Urdaneta temple - that's on Wednesday the 16th. He came on Saturday and a country wide stake conference was held. We love how Elder Holland always speaks with such insight and power.
Elder Holland also spoke at the MTC in a devotional for all the missionaries. At that meeting, he came in early and said he would like to shake hands with all the missionaries but we were to act like the meeting had started,be reverent, no laughing and talking. All the young and senior missionaries got to shake his hand and greet him. When he was speaking, he told us that he had interviewed each one of us. He said the interview happened when we spoke to him and he looked into our eyes. His talk and counsel was so powerful. He has such a great sense of humor too.
Today was another spiritual feast as Elder Holland spoke at an Area Office employee devotional. The first part of his talk was expressing gratitude for the employees. He even shared with us, so far away from Salt Lake City, the new domain name the church will use to replace lds.org. The end of his talk was about our Savior. We are grateful we could attend these meetings, feel the Spirit and receive a witness that Elder Jeffery R. Holland is truly an apostle of the Lord. I felt a little of what the Nephites must have felt when the Savior came and taught them, I just wanted him to stay and teach us more.
Rather than end this letter with a written scripture, I want to share with you a truth that we heard Elder Holland say in more than one address. He said,"Obedience is the first law of everything." I can't write all he said about that but if we will ponder the creation, the atonement, temple covenants, sealing covenants, etc., we will know he is right.
Thank you for your caring and love.
Love,
The Tuckers
Each place we go the tricycles are a little different. This is a tricycle Palawan style
Everywhere we go, there is a basketball court and usually a group playing basketball. Not everyone has shoes but they don't care.
Elder Holland shaking hands with the MTC missionaries
