Week 17 Letter

Monday, Oct 10, 2016

*megamind voice* Ollo!!!!

How have y'all been? This week FLEW by. For reals. So I will try my best to relate to you my week. So, first of all, my favorite things to eat here: Saltines with strawberry jam, cereal in strawberry yogurt, and bananas. Yup. I am literally like a 5 year old. I get excited over all of these things.

Anyways, this week, MIRACLE: Eternal Investigator/Amigo of the bishop, Alan Quiespe Centurion came to church. Wow. He has been an investigator since before I got here and only went to church one other time with some other Elder. But he has been way more serious about the gospel and is on date for the 22nd. So pray for him like crazy. He also is now reading the Book of Mormon every day and is super excited about the church, super excited. His wife is a new member but they are separated and live in difference wards. They are working to try to fix things. They have a 2 year old son. Last week, we felt really strongly that Alan needed an interview with the bishop. And before we pitched the idea, Alan asked us for an interview. It was so good because in the lesson, sometimes he has shame because the bishop comes with us and they are friends and he doesn’t want to open up a whole bunch. But he had an interview and things are so much better and he is more and more excited and the bishop has more faith and confidence in us so that is super good. But Alan, yes, a lot of progress with him as we have taught so much about the atonement, eternal families, and about the spirit.

We are also working with a new family, Mireai and Yerson. They have super real intentions and really want a real answer. But they aren't married like everybody else so we are working on that. All of our other people are great, but progression is hard, so we are re-evaluating some things so that we can make use of the Lords time better.

I have studied a lot about agency this week, because with one of our investigators, agency has been brought up a bunch and not gonna lie, sometimes I wish she didn't have agency. But that is a horrible thought and I am working on patience. Anyways, Today I read a talk by Elder Christofferson from Oct 2014 "Free Forever to Act for Themselves." So good. He started off by talking about King Henry V from a story by William Shakespeare. Henry said "Every subject's duty is the king's; but every subject’s soul is his own." While Shakespeare didn't resolve this phrase, Elder Christofferson talked more about it. He said "It is God's will that we be free men and women enabled to rise to our full potential both temporally and spiritually...We can choose to become the kind of person that we will, and with God's help, that can be even as He is." Pretty deep, no? He talked a lot about how God is a God of justice. I think that as humans, we really like the idea of justice (I am not talking politically because I am a missionary right now). We want God to be just, and for bad people to receive their consequences. But then, when it comes down to us and our personal lives and sins, we want mercy. We blame other people, we rationalize, we want exceptions, and we want mercy. But God has to be a God of Justice, or else there would cease to be a God. We cannot change reality. We can think and believe what we want to believe, but like there is still gravity, there are laws and principles of truth. So while we want justice for others, and mercy for us, what is to be done? Well, God doesn't walk crooked paths. When does mercy step in? Elder Christofferson said "Christ died not to save indiscriminately, but to offer repentance." Boom. just like that there can be both justice and mercy. Repentance. Repentance is a self-willed change, in other words a choice of agency. We can receive the blessings of the atonement when we fully repent with a sincere heart, which till entails the consequences. We are saved by grace after ALL that we can do. But we don't have to reach a certain point or minimum capacity before God will step in. Divine help is ALWAYS available, every hour of every day. So long story short, repent and choose mercy.

Try explaining that in Spanish in Comp Study...haha.

Anyways, I LOVE YOU ALL!

THINK OF ME WHEN you drink cold milk. Or milk other than evaporated milk...

p.s. this is my uper epic filtered water bottle that turns my nasty brown or green water to nasty clear water.