Week #40: El amor puro de Cristo
What is up everyone! Hope everyones week was good and you are all enjoying the weather getting warmer! I'm out here happy that the weather is finally getting cold here in Uruguay!!!
This past week was awesome honestly though. We had some awesome things this week happen. First, we had a fireside as a zone with President Olsen and all the people were are teaching, including recent converts to the church. We just talked about some basic stuff at our Stake Center, but it was so awesome to hear President Olsen speak to the people we are teaching here in TBO. It was super fun to see the people get to know our President and take pictures with them and everything!
Later that night, and the next morning, we got to do splits with one of the APs, Elder Pupunu. Hes an awesome guy from Draper, Utah. Also, later that day we got to have interviews with Pres. Olsen! Always so awesome to talk to him. We only get one more interview with our Mission President here before he gets released in July. We are all extremely sad to have to say goodbye to him, but wer'e also excited to have another President and get to know him, and learn from him.
Elder Cruz and I are doing awesome together. He's learning super fast and is learning to love the mission. He hass reminded me a lot about my first weeks in the mission field, and it's been a good reminder for me, of just how far I've come now as a missionary. Pretty crazy I'll be coming up on one year in the mission soon.
Lots of good things happening right now that Id love to tell you all, but there just isn't enough time. But, I wanted to share a thought I had this week. I think I finally figured out the real reason why we missionaries are constantly hearing the phrase, "Love the people".
We learn in Moroni 7 that charity is the most important, crucial thing we can develop in this life. We learn in that chapter that if we can develop love in our hearts, we will learn charity. If we learn charity, we will learn to be meek and humble. If we can become meek and humble in our lives, we can gain hope in Christ. If we can gain hope in Christ, we will develop faith. And...if we, as missionaries, have sufficient faith, we will have the power in our words to convince the people that our message is true. So, if we do not first love the people we serve with our entire hearts, we can never develop the faith necessary to convince them of the truthfulness of this Gospel.
Maybe it seems simple to you, but I spent quite a while one morning thinking about all this and finally realizing, and understanding, why it is so dang important that we LOVE the people. I know these things are for more then just missionaries. If we learn to love our neighbors, we can gain these Christ-like attributes of Christ. So the great and 2nd commandment is, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." I know if we achieve this, we can achieve anything in this life.
