More Updates Fall 2013

September 23, 2013

I was reading in Mosiah the other day and found something so great that I wanted to share with everyone! It’s in chapter 26, verses 1-4. It's talking about the youth of the church during the time of Alma and King Mosiah and how they were struggling. As I was reading I thought about you, mom and dad, and how you work with the youth in our church and I realized that this really applied to me also. Being part of the youth in the church can be very challenging at times to remain faithful and believe/understand what the church is teaching. It says in the beginning that the "there were many of the rising generation that could not understand the words of king Benjamin...and they did not believe the tradition of their fathers...neither did they believe concerning the coming of Christ." That is so important for us, especially as youth, to understand what the teachings of the church are. I thought I knew exactly what we believed in and knew all the doctrine of the church until I came out here and really studied it! I found out that I honestly knew maybe 5% of everything our wonderful church has to offer!! In verse 4 it says, "...for they would not call upon the Lord their God." They didn't know how to truly pray. They wouldn't pray and they wouldn't just ask God questions, or for help, or for guidance, or anything! No wonder why in verse 3 it says, "...Because of their unbelief they could not understand the world of God; and their hearts were hardened." I always felt weird praying back at home, unless it was during family prayer, at church, or before a meal. I thought it was silly, and maybe the Lord was getting annoyed with me talking to him too much. But now I pray all the time!! Over every little thing! And as a result, the spirit dwells with me more, then the spirits talks to me and teaches me so I can understand the doctrines of the church more. Then I gain a testimony, and then I am truly happy! It's the domino effect that brings joy!! When we "Call upon the Lord [our] God." mysteries, fears, anger, doubt, and other harmful feelings dissolve away. Please, Please, PLEASE pray! Pray always, God wants to hear from you more and wants to know how your day went, or how you're feeling! Pray with sincerity, with real intent (meaning you are willing to follow whatever answer you are given no matter what!), and with faith. I know this to be true. I know God, an almighty and all-knowing, and perfected being, wants to hear what we, his children, have to say. What a blessing and what a sign of love from Him!

I love you all, and can't express enough how grateful I am that the gospel is a part of all of our lives. It is why we are happy, and why we have such a strong family!! 

September 30, 2013

How excited is everyone for general conference??????  I bet you're all super pumped, cause I sure am!!!! Wow, a living prophet on the earth today! An actual prophet, one just like Jacob, Nephi, Abraham, Moses, Alma, is going to speak to us this week!!  I never realized how incredible of a blessing that was! I don't think I'll even sleep this time!  I know that if we all pay attention to conference and sacrifice our time to watch as much of it as we can, that we will be incredibly blessed! I have a firm belief that if you come up with a specific question, ANY QUESTION, that it will be answered this weekend. I know it! Even if no general authority gives a talk on that subject, if we listen intently and carefully and have a constant prayer in our hearts, the Spirit will answer it for us. I know it works! I do it every Sunday and it's a miracle every time! Even when Elder Jensen and I ran the entire church meeting yesterday (we both gave talks, he conducted the meeting, I did all the music, I taught the entire Sunday School, and he taught the combined Relief Society and Priesthood meetings) I learned, and was given revelation through the Holy Ghost, the answer to my question. God doesn't want us to live in confusion, he wants us to ask questions and be humble enough to receive an answer! He also has given us a loving and living Prophet to avoid confusion as well! We are taken care of so well!! 

October 7, 2013

Whoo! How inspiring was that? Seriously? 10 hours of conference? Why can't it be 100 hours? I had a blast and I hope ya'll did too!

     For the first time in my life, I believe, I did not fall asleep once during any session of conference! ha! I think I finally understood who was really talking to us. Inspired men of God! Apostles of the Lord were talking to us in the flesh! Apostles just like Paul, Peter, James, and John!! And even a living Prophet! A Prophet just like Nephi, Moroni, Noah, David, or Alma! This is just living proof that God does love us, and he wants us to return to Him! It would just make sense to me that He would continue to speak to us, doesn't it?

     Hmm...my favorite talk? I would have to say Russel M. Nelson's at the very last session on Sunday evening. He threw down hard. Such a special message was given. I absolutely loved how he emphasized on how we truly are sons and daughters of an Almighty Being. A perfect God. An unconditionally loving Heavenly Father. "None of us can ever stop being a literal child of God." Do we even comprehend what that really means? What kind of an opportunity that is? He is so ready to give us everything that He has. Think about EVERYTHING that he has!! He has it all! And all he needs us to do is endure well to the end. Hold on for just a little while longer, and in the eternal perspective of things, we will have our eternal reward. An eternal family. Eternal happiness. Never ending growth and progression. The mansions in His Kingdom (Mine is going to be blue). Abundance of true love. The list goes on for forever. How can you not love a father like that? Who gives us so much for so little work? I do love Him so much. I know that He lives and I know that He is watching me and is proud of my success, and is merciful towards my shortcomings.

     Remember when Russel M. Nelson looked right into our eyes and said softly "Your Heavenly Father has known you for a very long time." That touched my heart. He has known us for a very long time. I need to remember that He knows me so much better than I do, and that when we trust Him and what He does, it is only because it is what's best for us. Whether it'll will help us in this life, or the next.

     I have a firm testimony of living Prophets in these last days. I am so happy that we don't have to be confused about doctrine, or ordinances, or how things should be. Thomas S. Monson knows the way! I sure am grateful for ya'll. My family is the most important thing, and I am so glad that we have the gospel in our lives. I love you guys SO MUCH! IT HURTS HOW MUCH!  I am so excited to be with ya'll for eternity!!

Love Elder Trey Thayer

Catch up on Trey

Here are some bits and pieces of Trey's emails the last couple months! We can't believe he has been out there for almost 4 months. Sometimes it feels like 4 years...

August 19, 2013

I feel God's love and the spirit testifying to me that it's true. Everything that this church stands for, believes in, and participates in is true.

     When you feel like you may be doubting yourself, or the church, or any of the teachings that come from it,  just remember how you feel when you had that spiritual experience during sacrament meeting. Or when you were faced with a difficult time and you prayed so hard to Heavenly Father, & He flooded you with His love. Remember those times and remember when you thought to yourself "How could I ever deny this!?" And if you haven't had those experiences yet, GO HAVE THEM! They are wonderful! Read the scriptures, try not to sleep during sacrament, meet with the bishop and just ask what you can do better to gain a testimony! 

August 26, 2013

We also got to go to my very first zone conference. That was marvelous! I LOVE my mission president and his wife. They are so inspiring, and truly inspired by the Lord. The president's wife talked about adversity and truly, how much of a gift it really is! I had never thought of it that way before, and I'm so glad that I can look at it that way now because now I almost look forward to the hard times. Because we all know that without dark, there is no light. Without bad, there is no good! Without adversity, there is no way we can feel rewards, happiness, joy, excitement, or love! Our Heavenly Father truly thought of everything. That's why it was so necessary for Adam and Eve to partake of the fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It was so that we can all know what the other side feels like so we can truly appreciate the good times. I'm so thankful for adversity and what a blessing it really is in my life and how it can all make us stronger. She also said "You may not know how happy you are today, until you look back on it tomorrow." That blew my mind. How many times do we think "Oh back then is when i was my happiest." And then when we were "back then" we never realized how happy we were! I never realized how happy i really was when I was around my family and hugging my mama, and wrestling and joking around with brady, and having deep discussions with dad, and carrying micah around on my back, and throwing brynn's little body in the air onto her bed. I wish so bad I would have realized how happy i was, because now when i think of my happy moments back home...those are my happiest moments.

I love you all very much. And the Savior loves you too. He knows how to make us happy and realize how happy we are. Have a wonderful and exciting week everyone!

Love Elder Thayer

September 9, 2013

I had an experience this week that I would like to share with ya'll, so we have been teaching this less active member who hasn't been to church in like 20 years! She forgot everything about our church and has been going to another Baptist church. So we just decided to teach her as a regular investigator and give her all the missionary lessons again. And it has been awesome because she is so fun and so funny and responds to our lessons super well! She is reading the Book of Mormon and praying and everything! Well she told us that she really wants to come to church this Sunday so we were super excited. We got a text from her Sunday morning saying "I'm not going to be able to make it. I had a talk with my sister about coming to the service today and she told me that since I joined the Baptist church, I shouldn't fellowship at that church. I'm not gonna be able to join. sorry". I was so devastated. I love her so much and couldn't understand why that happened. We went over to her house after church cause I knew there was something more to it than that. We got talking and I eventually got out of her what the real concern was. She told us that she reviewed our "rules" and decided that it was too hard.  I thought to myself, "Our church is not easy! It's never been easy and it WILL never be easy! If Jesus Christ went through all he went through, the man that was perfect and without sin, why in the world would it be easy for us? It wasn't easy at all for him! It's supposed to be hard. The 'hard' is what makes it great. It's what makes US become great." I was so sad that she felt that way, and of course I didn't throw all of that on her, I didn't think it would help anything, I just told her "Yeah, it is hard to be a member of our church. But when we endure to the end...that's when Christ is pleased with us. Because of our efforts to follow him." I don't know if it helped at all, but we're still gonna try and meet with her and still be her friend.

Know this guys, it is hard to be a Latter Day Saint. God asks for us to give up the things of the world, and to put him first! Someone that we can't even see, we are supposed to put him first. In order to do that we have to "walk by faith, rather than by sight." and if we do that, we are gonna seriously fly.

I love you so much! Endure to the end!

Elder Thayer

August 12 Email

Here is part of Trey's email on August 12th:

      I wanted to share with ya'll a story today that really touched me. Obviously people know, wherever we go, that we're “The Jesus People”. It's pretty nice when we have to walk through pretty rough parts of town and people recognize us and don't bring us any trouble! But on Wednesday we were riding our bikes around for about 3 hours. I thought I was in shape until today, but everytime the biking got hard I just thought to myself "Bishop Evans can do this, and so can I!". Anyways we had stopped at McDonalds to get a drink of water when a man named Leon walked straight up to us holding a garbage bag full of mini wooden crosses on it that he had made himself. He asked us if we were “The Jesus People” and if we were “good Christians” as well. We told him “we were the Mormon Missionaries and yes we were doing our best to be 'good Christians'”. Just then he started to get teary eyed and told us that he was a faithful baptist and attended church every Sunday, but he was so happy that we loved Christ enough to spend two years preaching his gospel and helping people live “good Christian” lives. He pulled out two of his crosses and handed them to us as a gift. On it it was written “Jeus loves you” and a scripture John 3:36. You could tell he was very uneducated, given that he couldn't spell Jesus, and that he was extremely poor. But that didn't matter to him. Or me. Or the Savior. I was so thankful for his tenderness and faith in Christ and striving to be like him, and for his motivation to be a “good Christian”. You could obviously tell, even though he wasn't a member of our church, that he knew OF Christ, not just ABOUT Christ. He then gave us both hugs, grabbed us by the shoulders and said a prayer and prayed for our safety and well being. Right there in the middle of McDonalds. I have never felt so loved and been so touched.

      Sometimes I personally get caught up too much in trying to be a “good Christian” by obeying his The Lord's laws like his commandments, The Word of Wisdom, Law of Chastity, Law of Fast and Tithing, or Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy which are all really great things and bring us closer to the spirit and allow us to have it more abundantly in our lives, but I try to do it on my own. While being on my mission and what I've learned in the MTC is that in order to achieve those commandments successfully, first I have to take the first step and become closer to Christ. I need to know OF Him, not just ABOUT Him. Everything we try to accomplish will go in vain if we don't involve Jesus Christ. Remember “Jeus loves you”, that is the base of our religion. Our purpose here is to personally accept that Jesus Christ is our Savior and to follow his example. If we do that I know that He will take care of us. 

     Anyways I love ya'll, I hope this week will be a good one for everyone! Remember to include Christ in EVERYTHING that you do. It usually works out better that way.

He Made It

We are pleased to share that Elder Thayer is doing so great! He arrived to Alabama after learning as much as he could  in his 12 days at the MTC. He LOVED the MTC and is loving Alabama. He would love to hear from his family and friends. Here is his current address. I'll be sure to update as we get more from our missionary.

Elder Trey Bryan Thayer
2026 Hackberry Lane

Demopolis, Alabama 36732

Here are some pictures of that bitter-sweet day when he entered the MTC. Like so many others, we are one proud family!

See you in 2 or...

I'll see ya'll in 24 fast sundays, 104 wednesdays, or 730 mornings later! However you wanna think of it. PLEASE keep in touch through e-mail or letters!

treyt@myldsmail.net

Elder Trey Bryan Thayer
Alabama Birmingham Mission
3100 Lorna Rd Ste 102
Birmingham, AL 35216
United States