Well to be
honest Tlahualilo is a very special area. It's a very small town in the
middle of nowhere (rancho in spanish) and in total there are.... 20
active members and none of them show up on time, and like 200 inactive
members. The missionaries, and the branch president are the only
priesthood in the area so we are in charge of the branch, tithing,
activites, reactivation, everything. I also got here and in total we
have 4 investigators...so I don't really know what was going on here
before but we aren't teaching alot...
"The Book of Mormon, combined with the Spirit, is your most powerful resource in conversion. It is the most correct of any book on the earth (see introduction to the Book of Mormon). It teaches the doctrine of Christ plainly, especially in the lessons you teach investigators. Use it as your main source for teaching the restored gospel."
So
we gotta change all that. One thing that we are going to change is how
we present the Book of Mormon. The majority of the people in Mexico
(that have heard anything about the Book of Mormon, which isn't a lot)
believe that the Book of Mormon is the mormon bible and we don't believe
in the Bible. They also don't realize that we believe in Jesus Christ. In
preach my Gospel it says
This
is something that we honestly haven't done a lot in my other areas. We
use the Book of Mormon as homework for the investigator, as a back up to
the lesson, if we don't use it as the main source of our teaching the
Spirit can not testify of what we are teaching. The Book of Mormon and
the Spirit are everything and if people only view the Book of Mormon as
homework than clearly they will not gain a testimony of it and we are
not using it nearly to it's full potential to bring people to Christ. So
the other night I was praying and thinking about how we can reopen the
area and the next day I had a the idea, we would contact with the Book of Mormon (We have never contacted with the Book of Mormon before
because when people hear Book of Mormon they all of a sudden have no
time to talk) and in the first lesson explain who Christ is, Who God is,
and what the Book of Mormon is. We are basically gonna just explain
articles of faith 1 and 8 in the first lesson and clearly explain what
is the Book of Mormon in the first visit. The Book of Momon is in L1 of
preach my gospel but at the end and in this mission we divide the
lessons into 2 visits so we don't get around to the Book of Mormon until
the second visit and by the end of the second visit almost nobody cares
enough to find out whether the book is true. This week we are going to try
and change it up here to see how the testimony of the Book of Mormon
can help people realize the truth immediately. If we just dedicate a
whole lesson to helping people understand who is God the father, Jesus
Christ and how the Book of Mormon and the Bible work together to bring
us to them I am confident that people will be more receptive to when we
get around to things like apostasy and pre-mortal life. So to be honest
we are going out of order of the lessons but luckily we have the freedom
to do so according to what the Spirit says.
Also
got to see the first presidency's Christmas devotional yesterday and it
was pretty awesome. This week was hard because to be honest we have no
support from members, we don't have the comforts of the city, life in a
rancho is tough and I was in a bad mood because we don't have all of the
comforts of civilization. One of the messages in the devotional was
that Christ descended from heaven to be born in a barn, to live life
without any modern comforts and to work day in day out without concern
for personal needs. Why did He do that? in His own words ´´to do the
will of His Father´´.
Did I come on the mission to work or to be comfortable? To do the will
of my Heavenly Father or my own. It's hard to walk around all day, take
cold showers, eat gross food haha, wah wah wah but at the end of the day I
and every other missionary have to realize we aren't here to be
comfortable, we are here to sacrifice. I have lived in the lap of luxury
for 20 years before the mission and its probable that I will do so the
rest of my very privileged life, Why should I have to complain that I
have to give it all up for a very small time. I learn or relearn
something every day.
2 Challenges 1. Pray that people will be receptive to the Book of Mormon por favor. 2. And read the Book of Mormon and send me your testimony.
Elder Roberts
No comments:
Post a Comment