Week 76: ¡Cambios y Causalidades!

Hola hola buena gente! How is everyone? This week was real hot, but great! My first week in a long time that we didn't have to travel, or lose time in our area, because of random stuff! We honestly saw a few miracles this week that motivated us to just keep working and not slow down, even if we are not received by many people. 

This week we received our transfer news. My companion, Elder Chalmers, will leave to Montevideo and I'll receive Elder Holder! Im super excited to be with him. He's a great guy from Gunnison Utah. This week we had two incidentes of someone that just walked up to us in the street and started asking us about the church! They both want to go to church this Sunday...and as a missionary that's equivalent to Christmas!!;) They both are awesome! We had originally planned to go a certain direction, and then we changed the plan and thats where we ran into these people. Both of them asked us about the church and if it'd be alright if they went this Sunday! We set times to meet with them this week to get to know them a little better. It will be so awesome if they made it to church this week, but I do know that it's very possible that we never see them again and lose contact with them...and that's okay honestly. I've gained a strong testimony that every person has their own path to follow. God usually guides us on this path and puts people and events in our way that prepare us all to return to His presence someday. 

We really have a Father in Heaven that loves us so much because He blesses us and gives us experiences when we don't even realize it. He's kind of sneaky like that haha!!..but we really begin to see all the blessings in our lives when we just look for them, rather than look for all the bad things. ¡Por cada causalidad, hay una CAUSA! ¡Nuestro Padre nos cuida para que podamos tomar las decisiones necesarias para regresar a su presencia! 

Week #75: Hay que aferrarse a la barra de hierro

¡Hola hola buena gente! Twas another great week here in the mission. Had to travel all the way to the capital again for a checkup on my two toes that I've had some problems with, but the doctor says I'm all good to go!  Im jthankful I don't have to deal with any of that anymore! 

This year in Come Follow Me, we are studying the Book of Mormon. This week we studied Lehi's dream about the Tree of Life. I hope everyone can make some time out of their week to study along with Come Follow Me, because it can honestly help us so much with understanding the scriptures! I won't explain the entire dream of Lehi, but I'd invite everyone to go refresh themselves and read 1st Nephi chapter 8(: 

A member in our branch here made a comment about the dream that I really liked. We all know that there's an Iron Rod in the dream, and those that cling to this rod end up at the Tree of Life. The rod can mean the Gospel of Jesus Christs and Gods commandments. As we cling to these things, we reach the blessings that God has instore for those who stay faithful until the end. A member mentioned how the material iron, is known as "Fe" on the scientific chart (I hope thats what it is called, but you know what Im talking about;) But anyway, Fe, is the spanish word for Faith. We can say that this Iron Rod that Lehi saw, is made out of faith. It requires a great deal of faith to stay true and faithful to this gospel and to not get distracted by all the people who mock and laugh at us for living the way we do, and having the beliefs we have. Faith is the first step in the Gospel and all blessings we receive are dependent on the faith we have in God the Father and His son Jesus Christ. 

Lacking faith means we risk straying away from this iron rod and falling short of the blessings of God. Faith is developed by obedience to the commandments and a pure desire to do God's will above our own. I like to share with the Uruguayos and Argentinos that faith is a belief in action, because simply believing in God is not enough (Look up Matthew 7:21). To actually believe in God, we have to do the work necessary to get to know Him. We slowly become familiar with His spirit, His promptings, and His personality and after a long while, we finally start to figure out who God really is, and our capacity to have faith increases! It is why the first thing we teach everyone as missionaries is the character of God! As we draw near unto God, He comes to us and we feel Him...but it has always been contingent on us acting first!

     "And now, behold, I say unto you, and I would that ye should remember, that God is merciful unto all who believe on His name; therefore he desireth, in the first place, that ye should believe, yea, even on his word." -Alma 32:22

The door is open for all to believe in God through our Savior Jesus Christ. I promise blessings and miracles to anyone who believes and strives to live aligned with Christ's Gospel!

Braxton's new foot fashion, while recovering from ingrown toenails! 

New Diggs for the Missionaries last week! 

Week #74: está brava la cosa

Yo everybody! Hope it was a good week for everyone. My week went well as I finally had surgery on two of my toes to take out the in grown toe nails hahaha! Surgery went fine and was quick and easy and now Im fine and working like normal again! 

I went down to the capital on Thursday to get the surgery done with another missionary (elder Parry) from my zone who was having the same thing done as well. After the surgery, we weren't able to walk much until Sunday. Elder Parry and I had a lot of time to just sit around and talk and not do much for a few days. No missionary really likes that haha...we just about went insane from boredom! But, after talking with Elder Parry for a while, I feel like I came to understand something a lot better. 

We both were getting a little frustrated with the past few weeks in the mission because we've been traveling so much and doing so many miscellaneous things, that weve lost tons of time in our areas. For those who don't know, Im serving in Argentina right now, and while thats awesome, we have to travel a lot and it takes lots of time, just because buses only go so often. So the past 2-3 weeks, we haven't had a full day to work in our own area. We got frustrated and we felt as if we were being restricted from doing Gods will because we weren't able to just focus on the people we are teaching and going out and serving people. After some complaining, I realized that it was pretty dumb of us to be saying those things because it was all completely out of our control...and in fact we still were doing Gods will. 

Sometimes we beat ourselves up over our circumstances and outside forces that mess things up, but we forget that God just wants us to do the best we can and He will take care of the rest! I think we often times complicate things that are out of our control, and it ends up just messing up things even more. We dont need to worry so much about the results of all of our actions. Instead, we should worry more about the effort and drive we are putting into becoming a better, more Christ-like person. God will give us what He sees fit, and we're not in the place to complain about it! If we do our part, we will be blessed. Whether it be in this life, or the one to come! 

Week #73: New Year, New Me

Yoooo everybody! I cannot believe that tomorrow we start the year 2020. I feel like it was yesterday and I was like 12 and I swore that when I was 20 years old I was gonna be a grown man. Well time just keeps on going, it never stops! We are here in Argentina celebrating and getting ready for the New Year. 

This past week was an eventful one. Christmas was going good...until I randomly got super sick and ended up sleeping for about 36 hours straight hahaha. Still not sure what happened, but after I got out of bed and got moving around, I was good as new. It's been extremely hot here this past week as well. Working was tough honestly, as we were literally just dripping with sweat and marching along in the streets. Lots of people yell at us from the streets telling us to drink tons of water or else we will literally just pass out and die hahah!! 

I don't have a specific experience to share with you guys from this week, but Id like to just share something Ive been learning about. I was reading in Matthew I believe it was, and I read a verse that said something like "Christ could not perform miracles unto the people for their unbelief". I felt like it was a normal basic concept that this couldn't happen because of their unbelief, but I thought about it for a minute and I started to think it was actually very interesting that the Savior of the world, the Son of God, literally was not able to perform miracles unto the people because of their lack of belief. It wasn't dependent on Him at all, rather only the people around him. Likewise, modern day priesthood holders wouldn't be able to preform a miracle among people who had no faith in the power of God. It's not dependent on the person performing the miracle/blessing, it is those who are present and watching. God will not just give the faithless an "easy way out" by seeing something as great as a miracle. He will only allow it to happen among the most faithful. It is why when Christ raised Jarius daughter from the dead, He pushed out the crowds and all the people, and only brought with Him Peter, James and John. His 3 most faithful apostles. When Christ had blocked out all the unbelief and the doubt, He raised the girl from the dead and she lived again. 

The conclusion that I came to with all of this, is that we will see blessings and miracles as Latter Day Saints if we are faithful, and those around us are faithful. Obviously we must serve and help and love those who are of little faith, but our tightest, most inner circle, must be of people who are strong in the gospel and will increase our own faith. We find people who build us up, and we build them up. We will block ourselves from potential miracles in our lives, if we are too caught up with those that don't care for the gospel or God's commandments. 

Lets all start this year by evaluating who are closest friends are, who we spend the most time with, and who has the biggest influence on our lives. We are the average of the 5 people we spend the most time with. ¡Que tengamos buenos amigos para que veamos los milagros de Dios!