Happy Monday!

This second week has been the hardest, but it's looking up already. I had several days wherein it was incredibly difficult for me to comprehend the thought of doing this for two whole entire years. Talking with President Walker has helped me to take it one day at a time. I don't yet know exactly how I'll be feeling at the end of the two transfers in Vegas, but if it all goes as the last few days have gone, I think I'm going to be just fine.

We were allowed to watch the funeral of President Monson several days ago, which was a new experience. I remember learning of Gordon B. Hinckley's death nearly a decade ago, but not watching a Prophet's funeral. We're a church led by unmistakably remarkable men.

I went on an exchange with Elder Taylor two days ago. He currently serves in an area much nicer than mine, and drives a car where we ride bikes. Changing things up for a day was great, and I learned a lot from him.

First, about how the Las Vegas West mission has recently made a push to focus our lessons more on the Doctrine of Christ. Rather than teaching history lessons or focusing on peripheral doctrinal tidbits, we are instead to focus on teaching what the gospel of Jesus Christ is actually all about. What the church is here to help us do: grow and exercise faith, repent, be baptized, receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, and endure to the end.

In fact, this is why the Restoration was so important. It wasn't just so we could learn cool stuff about the Plan of Salvation or be given standards like the Word of Wisdom; it was so the pure doctrine of Christ--faith, repentance, baptism, Holy Ghost, endure to the end--could be restored to the Earth. And that's why the Book of Mormon is so incredibly valuable; it's stuffed with almost nothing BUT the Doctrine of Christ. Elder Taylor showed me this in his personal marking of the Book of Mormon--almost every page contains some part about the Doctrine of Christ--much more than the Bible ever does. As 1 Nephi 13:34 - 35 says, the Lord provided the Book of Mormon for the express purpose of restoring Christ's gospel in its fulness.

Beyond that and letting me take part in some awesome lessons, Elder Taylor also told me about how the Book of Mormon functions as a convincing second witness of Jesus Christ and his divinity.

Jesus was a man who lived in the Jerusalem area in the early first century. He taught sermons containing doctrine no one had ever said before, which were then recorded in the Bible. The Golden Plates contain the exact same Doctrines of Christ and details about Christ and his life written at the same time He lived an entire ocean away.

How did the writers of the Book of Mormon know about the exact same sermons Christ taught a world away at the same time?

If you accept records of Middle-eastern history, Jesus Christ really did live in the Old World. If you accept that the Golden Plates were a legitimate record from the ancient Americas, that means that He truly did minister to the Nephites after his death.

Which means He actually was divine.

The Book of Mormon could not have been written by Joseph Smith, an unlearned young man living in the late 1820s, himself unable to even "dictate a coherent letter" at the time according to his widow. A work of such intricacy and prophecy and power essentially written in a single draft in about two months could not have come from man. A book that's brought millions of people closer to God and helped them reject sin could not have come from the Devil. It came from God. Joseph Smith translated it, which means he was a prophet.

It's true.

Knowing that fact is all I need to keep going every day.

Love,
Elder Gallagher