Letter 5-5-08

Dearest Family,

God said, “Let there be light.” Chuck Norris said, “Say Please.”
He he. I thought some of you would get a kick out of that. I did.

Today is Cinco de Mayo. That is a big thing down here because there are a lot of Mexicans, but it is on P-Day, so I don’t really think I’ll run into any extra problems. Nice Timing ☺.

Bruce – I liked your letter. That was very entertaining to read. Keep it up. You, Mom, and Joe are the best writers so don’t stop. Even when American Idol is over, there will always be something to write about, even if it is just messing around and doing a funny letter. If you have nothing to write about, just do that. Oh and by the way, I haven’t heard anyone say peace out at all. So I guess they don’t say that down here.

Joe – You should keep sending those comics to me. I have used that first one on my planner this transfer and if you keep sending them, I can have a variety of comics to choose from to put on my planners in the future. ☺

The highlight of this week came yesterday. There are three missionaries going around to all the stakes here in the mission putting on an incredible musical program that is based around the first lesson, the message of the restoration. It was awesome. They were very talented missionaries. Then President Rose got up and bore his testimony. He talked about Hugh B Brown’s talk, “Profile of a Prophet.” It is an amazing talk. You should all look it up. I mentioned Cody Chambers a few weeks ago. He is the investigator that is absolutely loves the Church. He is going to be baptized on the 17th of this month. What’s even better is that he seems to be dragging his family along with him. He reactivated his excommunicated wife that didn’t really like the church and now he has his mom, Ginger Keyes, investigating the church. She went to church Sunday and to this fireside and loved it.

Not much else new here on my part and nothing else to respond to, so I will share with you the most ingenious analogy that I thought of this week while finding. The Plan of Salvation compared to the NFL Season.
Pre-Earth Life vs. Preseason – In the pre-earth life all of us were present. There was a battle where a third of the hosts of heaven were cast out and never made it to the next stage of the Plan. In the preseason, there are 32 teams with about 80 to 90 people on each team. Throughout the preseason there are many battles to determine who will make each team. At the end of the season, the teams have to be cut down to 53 players, making it so about a third of the NFL players that were there in the preseason don’t make it to the regular season.
Earth-Life vs. NFL Season – Our purpose here on life is to prepare to meet God. We do so by following all of God’s commandments. We all make mistakes. None of us are perfect. We have good times and bad times. The world is filled with people who don’t follow all of God’s commandments. Only the choice people, a handful of God’s children, work hard enough and perform well enough in this life to achieve eternal glory. The Last days are the hardest, where we are really tested in our faith to see if we can endure. In the NFL, the purpose is to win the super bowl. You do so but practicing your hardest, preparing yourself well enough, and performing to the best of your ability. No team is perfect. Every team has their hard times where they don’t perform well. Most teams don’t practice and perform hard enough. The NFL is filled with people who will never win a super bowl. Only the players who perform to the best of their ability will win the super bowl and achieve NFL immortality. The last days of the season, the playoffs, are the roughest times. Every good player is challenged their hardest and many good players fall.
After-life vs. Offseason – At the end of this life, as it says in the last verse of 3 Nephi 27, narrow is the path to eternal life and few be there that find it. A very small percentage of people make it to the Celestial Kingdom and achieve eternal happiness. Everyone is, however, separated into three main places, the Celestial Kingdom, Terrestrial Kingdom, and Telestial Kingdom, which are comparable in glory to the Sun, Moon, Stars. Moon and Stars do have some glory, but the Sun surpasses them by a long shot. When all is said and done in the NFL season, very few people actually achieve the goal of winning the super bowl and gaining that NFL immortality and celebrating throughout the offseason knowing that they made it and achieved their goal. There are 3 main categories of players, those who won the Super Bowl, those who made it to the playoffs, but lost when they got there, and those who never made the playoffs. The glory of each is comparable to the sun, moon, and stars. Even if you didn’t make it to the playoffs, you still get some glory, knowing that you actually got to play in the NFL, but not much. It is another big step to say that you made it to the playoffs, but still there is some emptiness knowing that you didn’t quite make it, then there is the ultimate glory that surpasses the other two, knowing that you did it. You won the super bowl. You get to celebrate all of the offseason, knowing what you have done.

Its genius isn’t it? That will be famous one day, so take notes now… ☺. So before I sign off this week, there is this rumor that I get to call home next Sunday, but I don’t know the details. All that I know that it will most likely be between 2 and 4 PM in the afternoon, YOUR TIME, so I would camp around the phone in the Droge home in Bountiful between those hours.

Peace Out All!

-Elder Adam R. Droge
The Alientator