Week #60: Dios nunca deja de prepararnos para el futuro

Yoo everyone! ¿Como estamos? This week was awesome! Full of trips going up to an area on the border of Brazil and then, the day after, going down to Montevideo for a mission conference. They were both awesome, and even though we didn't get to work a lot in our own area, we saw miracles and God blessed us with success amongst the people! 

Yesterday a few people we are teaching, actually showed up at church! We were so excited to see them and they all seemed to love it! God seems to always bless us when we just help other people and do His will. Someone else who came to church was Rodrigo! He is getting baptized this week!!! We are honestly so excited for this baptism. We found Rodrigo a few weeks ago, when we were visiting his aunt and uncle, who are members, but weren't going to church. After a few weeks of teaching him, we will now have his baptism! He is already super excited to serve a mission in the following year and the thought of being able to go to a foreign place to simply teach the gospel to other people who are like him and are searching for the true gospel in their lives.

 Rodrigo was so perfectly prepared to recieve the gospel it's crazy honestly. He came from a little pueblo just a few months ago to study in the city and live with his aunt and uncle. In his pueblo, the church still doesn't exist, so he wouldn't have ever heard the gospel if he was still living there. Maybe the thing Ive learned more than anything while being a missionary is that God is constantly preparing us for things in the future.

 Sometimes our preparation is a trial we have to pass through, or an obstacle we have to overcome, but there isn't a second of the day that God isn't constantly guiding us so that eventually, we return to Him. We truly have a Heavenly Father who loves us, and wants only the best for us. 

Sometimes we think we know better than Him. We think that we know what is going to help us in our lives better than what He knows, or we forget that He has His own personal plan for us, and He knows what will help us have success in our mortal lives. God loves us, and sent His own Son just so that we can return to live with Him. Quisiera declarar estas cosas a todas las personas del mundo, por que no hay otra manera ni otro camino para regresar a su presencia

Week #59: Dios lo permite, por el amor que tiene para nosotros

Hola gente! Hope everyone is doing good and enjoying the start of a new football season! I'd be lying if I didn't say I miss it a ton haha...but either way, I'm loving my life here just fine. This week was really good. The wheather is starting to get a little hot and super humid again already. Getting to that time of year again where we just suffer outside and get burned to death hahaha. 

This week my house mate, Elder Ross, and I, sang the national anthem for our two latino companions on September 11. They had heard the jist of what happened on 9/11, but didn't know too much, so we got to explain everything that happened. I think remembering  9/11 this year was a little more impactful for me than normal. While thinking about how close to 3 thousand people died that day, we contacted a woman outside of her house and began to chat with her. She quickly got very angry and was shouting about how God didn't exist and then calmed down and explained to us that as a 4 year old, she was sexually abused by her father and had a horrible up-bringing. She said she had never once been happy in her life for all the trials shes faced. She asked us many times, "Where was God in that moment?" We tried to explain to her why God doesn't interfere in those moments, and why bad things happen to good people, even children, at times, but she didn't want to accept our answers. 

She simply was angry and confused with God, rather than not actually believing in Him. After a nice conversation of 15 minutes or so, we realized there was no way of giving her an answer that would suffice. She left us with the comment, "Until God comes down and stands before me and tells me that He exists, and is all powerful, I will not believe in Him" We left her with the wise invitation to begin believing in Him before she stands before Him. But after this experience with this woman, and also the remembrance of 9/11, I thought of a scripture that has had a big impact on me.

      

"For the Lord suffereth the righteous to be slain that His justice and judgement may come upon the wicked; Therefore ye need not suppose that the righteous are lost, but behold, they do enter into the rest of the Lord their God." Alma 60:13.

What happened to this woman as a child, and what happened to the people in the Twin Towers was injust, and the people had no control over what happened to them. God loves us so much that He will never interfere with our agency. Even if it means a horrible outcome for an innocent person, He knows that this life is temporary, and that we will all return to live with Him. We will all stand before Him at the last judgement to give count of what we've accomplished with the free agency that He has given us, and He will give unto us a perfect judgement. I know these things to be true, and I would invite everyone to know for themselves, that God really is all-powerful, but also all-loving in every way possible. 

Week #58: ¡¡Los cambios son inspirados!!

Hola hola todos!! Como estamos?! Man this week was awesome! Lots of awesome things happened. I want to mention two of them. First off, Rodrigo Benitez is a beast. He is 18 years old and recently moved in with his aunt and uncle who are members, but inactive, in the church. We found them contacting houses a while ago and the aunt and uncle were super receptive and wanted to come back to church. 

Their nephew, Rodrigo, wanted to hear our message as well. He has been to every church you can imagine and has studied tons of different religions and none of them ever stuck with him. He said he was always just searching for a church that just seemed to call to him. He came to church one time last week and now he has received his answer from God, multiple times, that this church is the true church and it is this church that he needs to join. 

His aunt and uncle are coming to church again now, and Rodrigo is coming with them and is preparing for baptism the 28th of this month. He got so excited when we invited him to be baptized. He understands the gospel so well already and knows the Book of Mormon to be true. I know without a doubt, that God prepared him so well to recieve the gospel right in this moment of his life and to be baptized this month. There isn't one person in this world that God isn't constantly worrying about. Every second of every day, he is trying to bring us closer to Him, to help us taste of this happiness that He has in store for us.  Even when He's miles away from our thoughts and hearts, He never leaves us and never abandons us. 

Second thing I want to mention....All the leaders in this church are inspired and called of God. For so many reasons we could never understand, they are in the position to lead and direct Christs church. He knows who he wants to guide His people. We had a conference this past week with Pres. Dunford, and he introduced some big changes and focuses of our mission. It is very different than what we focused on with Pres. Olsen...but I know it is what God wants for the people of this country now. 

Every leader is inspired in his own unique way, but it all comes from God, if the leader is seeking the guidance of the Spirit. Its really something so special for me and a testimony builder that God calls the weak of us to be His leaders. He has a plan to gather Israel again and Hes gonna do it by working through imperfect people. Si ponemos toda la confiaza en los lideres de esta iglesia, llegaremos mucho mas lejos. ¡El profeta es llamado por Dios, y nos guiará para el bien en todas las cosas! 

Week #57: ¡¡¡Bautismo!!!

Como anda buena gente!! How is everyone doing? This week was fantastic, to say the least. Im gonna get right to it...we had Paulinas baptism!!! It was a very special day for sure. Paulina is a 9 year old girl and her mom is a member of the church already. Her mom had been inactive for a long time, but just started participating again in the ward and her daughter, Paulina, immediately wanted to get baptized when she came for the first time to church! 

We started teaching Paulina a month or so ago, and this past weekend we had her baptism and confirmation. Her baptismal day was crazy, but ended great. We ran into some problems (including not having hot water) but everything turned out perfectly. She couldn't have been happier. I was just so happy to see her and her mom with the biggest smiles on their faces that day. It is a day I wont forget for a long time. 

I began thinking a little more about baptism in general. I was thinking, 'how is it that we are saved through baptism?'  We all know that through baptism we can enter the kingdom of God, but how is it possible? No unpure thing can enter the presence of our Heavenly Father...but somehow getting into the water and then coming out makes it possible that we can become clean from our sins...? I quickly came to the conclusion and the reminder, that it is only through the Atonement of Jesus Christ that baptism makes it possible to be forgiven of our sins. 

The Atonement is easily the most important doctrine that we have in the Restored Gospel, but also probably the least understood doctrine as well. Because Christ felt our sins, our weakness, our sickness and our afflictions, He can forgive us of what we have done. He understands us and our trials. He cries for us, when we cry and he rejoices with us, when we rejoice. He knows that only by and through His Atonement for us, can we be saved and live with Him and God again. 

If it weren't for His sacrifice for us, there would be no hope for a better world. There would be no meaning to this life and it would be filled with a temporary happiness bound to end when we die. But thanks to Him, there is hope. We can live with our familes again, and we can be forgiven of our mistakes through baptism and repentence. The whole gospel of Jesus Christ is centered on the atoning sacrifice of our Savior. 

I promise as we increase our understanding and testimony of the Atonement, everything will become clearer, and the complicated subjects will become easy. Se que mi Salvador vive, y que El expio todos de nuestros pecados. Gracias a La Expiacion, disfrutaremos las bendiciones de Salvacion para la eternidad con nuestras familias y nuestro Padre Celestial en un estado de gozo y paz. No hay otro camino ni nombre dado para recibir todas de estas cosas.