Good week, good week. Haha when you hit the 18 month mark nothing really is a surprise and everything just kinda mixes together. We talk, we teach, we walk, its hot, we contact, we take buses, we get made fun of for being white, hahaha and all that stuff.
We had some really good lessons this week one with H. and his wife, she wants to be baptized but feels a lot of pressure from her family to not join our church and blah blah blah. We talked about what it means to be a true disciple of Christ and shared John 15.18 If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.
When the mission is hard, when there is no one that wants to listen, when family and friends of our investigators don't want them to progress this little scripture is the reason why. The world hated and rejected Christ long before it hated and rejected us. H. and his wife are progressing but yeah its hard, hard for them hard for us, and it was hard for Christ to pay the price so they could come back into their Fathers presence.
It was a good week but to be honest we are seeing a lot of opposition right now, ni modo.
you know that part on cloudy with a chance of meatballs when the lil kid eats so much candy that he goes into a food coma.... yeah that happened this week to me, haha the package I got from home was great but I got so excited with all the candy and the ideas of winter chubbining that me and the other 4 elders ate all of it in 2 days, and trust me food coma is a real thing. Haha naw but thank you mom for sending me the package it was great.
This week was alright, we had a really good lesson with I. and his wife, and with i.´s brother H. (yes that is really his name, he was born into the church but hasn't gone in like 6 years) and his wife P. The 4 of them wandered into church on Sunday haha you could tell they were pretty lost but it was actually a good Sunday this week so I think they felt the spirit.
haha my new companion is probably the best companion I have had the whole freakin mission, he is by far the most obedient and the most humble. He doesnt speak very good spanish yet (but still speaks a lot better than I did when I only had 6 months) so he is very humble and willing to do what he needs to without a lot of whining. que bueno.
We taught the restoration a lot this week and in one of the lessons I was teaching about Joseph Smith and the first vision and the Spirit was so stong, nothing brings in the Spirit like talking about the first vision. Matt if you can memorize the first vision in sign language before you start your mission.
We also had a flood this week, no joke. The whole week it was super dry but Saturday night and Sunday morning rolled around and it rained harder than I have ever seen in my life, when it stopped there was like 2 feet of water in the streets, it was a chore to get to church, hahah so nobody came..... ni modo.
A good week. To be honest not a lot happened haha we taught, we walked in the sun, its hot... haha what more can be said.
Naw actually I did relearn a good lesson this week and it's actually a lesson I have learned a lot on my mission. To start here in mexico there is a certain religion that I'm not gonna name but they teach with their understanding of the bible and are actually really aggressive in their teaching style, they make those crazy Mormon kids look tame. We come across one of these people in the street one day and start to talk to him. Before we say anything he asks us for our bible, like a couple of idiots we hand over our bible and he starts telling us a bunch of "in Joshua it says blah blah blah, in Matthew it says blah blah blah, in this, in that, blah blah blah." So instead of doing the smart thing, bear our testimonies, ask if he would like to hear our message and if no say goodbye, we start to argue about what the bible says and we start off with the blah blah blah as well. And guess what happened? The Spirit was no where to be found, and the "lesson" was anything but edifying...
The teaching of the gospel is by the power of the Spirit and not by the interpretation or knowledge that we have of the scriptures. The scribes in the times of Christ were "experts of the law" and yet Christ called them hypocrites and said they were just "the blind leading the blind". In the time of Joseph Smith the people causing the most confusion were the leaders and the priests of the different churches that supposedly used the scriptures as means to prove their point, but only left their followers with more confusion. One of Satan's favorite methods of confusing is to teach "the philosophies of men mixed with scripture". Obviously the scriptures are the word of God and I love to study the scriptures on my mission, but if we do not first have the Spirit, if we are going to teach by our own interpretation of the scriptures and not with the guide of the Spirit and of living prophets to help us truly understand the word of God, than man and Satan turn them into weapons to confuse and cause contention.
Matt as you leave on your mission, study and restudy the scriptures, they are the word of God, but more than anything, develop the ability to share your testimony, to feel, understand, and share the impressions of the Spirit.
1 Cor 2: 14 But the natural manreceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he knowthem, because they are spirituallydiscerned.
Joseph Smith said, “Salvation cannot come without revelation; it is in vain for anyone to minister without it”
