Music, Beer, and Bones (6/24/2019)

Dear friends and family,

It's been another good week in Warren Ohio. Summer is finally upon us!

We went on double-in exchanges several days ago with the zone leaders in Youngstown, during which they did some training my companion how to be a District Leader as this is his first transfer doing so. That was cool.

We went by some folks one of whom was technically being taught and had asked for a Book of Mormon... I don't know all the details really but suffice to say that Elder Davis warned me that she was "always inebriated". We met them in their home--a very nice piece of property with a pool and everything--and boy was he right. The husband is a stern atheist and was also pretty wasted. He kept trying to get us to drink beer and told us we weren't gonna convince him that God exists, which we said was fine. They were both so out of it and kept repeating themselves over and over throughout the conversation. Some people literally live life perpetually drunk. It's nuts. It was a weird experience for sure. I don't know that we'll be returning.

I found out some interesting deep doctrine. I had previously heard that Adam and Eve, prior to their partaking of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, were in a strange not-mortal but not-immortal state of being wherein no blood flowed through their veins. When they ate the forbidden fruit, whatever that fruit was caused a change in their bodies that made blood flow within them. That alone is just mind-expanding. But there's something else.

You know in the scriptures it says how God and Jesus Christ have bodies of flesh and blood, right? Wrong! The scriptures do not say that the resurrected forms of the Gods have flesh and blood, but that they have "flesh and bones." It turns out that resurrected beings do not have blood in their bodies! There's a remarkable consistency to scriptural references to resurrected personages having "flesh and bones" rather than "flesh and blood" that really can't be an accident. So Jesus Christ, once of flesh and blood, now has blood no more. (Don't ask me how that works.) We will lose our blood eventually as well--in 1 Corinthians 15:50 it says that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." I believe I found that out from a President Nelson talk entitled "Constancy Amid Change".

Last evening we had a cool opportunity to go to a choir concert from the Heritage Youth Choir. We weren't going to go originally. But then a ward member who actually isn't a member (his wife is and he hasn't taken the plunge after so many years) called us and offered to be our ride. So we went and saw an amazing concert. Favorites were "Christ the Lord is Risen Today", "There Will I Be", and "The Morning Trumpet", among others. It was really great, and so spiritually reenergizing. God knew I needed that.

I also gave a talk in sacrament meeting. I was super nervous because I barely had any time to write the thing. It was pretty much a first draft talk. I went off script a lot. But evidently it turned out alright.

Keep the faith! Stay cool!

Love,

Elder Gallagher