Being a Consecrated Missionary

The most important thing in the mission is the Spirit. I know everyone always says it but it really is 100% of the mission, the Spirit. We aren't here to speak for ourselves, we are here to be the mouthpieces of the Spirit. When I got on the mission I immediately went into focusing 100% on spanish, spanish, spanish, because it was my most obvious weakness, I looked at other missionaries and thought, if I could just speak spanish like that guy I would be such a better missionary. 

Unfortunately I didn't focus too much on learning to teach by the Spirit, and that was a huge mistake that I have paid for many times on the mission. I don't care if your native, I don't care if you are charismatic and funny and bold and everything else that is useful as a missionary, If you don't have the Spirit - YOU ARE NOTHING.

Charisma, a sense of humor, all that makes for good friends of investigators that are just coming to church because they like their missionaries, and when the missionaries leave, so do the investigators, nothing makes a convert but the Spirit.

LEARN TO TEACH BY THE SPIRIT. When you feel slow and not smart at the start of the mission because you can't understand and can't be understood, no amount of language study will save the lesson, The Spirit saves the lesson. When you have more experience in the mission and are more comfortable speaking, no amount of confidence will save the lesson, The Spirit saves the lesson. 

So with this talk (Becoming a consecrated missionary) and with my mission I have learned the two hardest by far to put on the altar of sacrifice are fear, and pride, and trust me both of these kill your ability to teach by the Spirit. Don't be afraid the worst they can do is say no, don't be afraid because that is is a lack of faith.

On the other hand don't be over the top and arrogant because that just makes people angry or makes them feel afraid. Pride and fear are two emotions that literally have nothing to do with the Spirit. God feels a lot of emotions like us, love, hate(of sin), anger, sorrow, all of these God feels, but I am convinced that two emotions that are completely of the devil are fear, and pride. 

Don't be afraid but don't be arrogant either, humility isn't being afraid, its recognizing your complete dependence on God and then showing your confidence in Him by doing what He says and being obedient - faith. Humility and Faith are the opposites of fear and pride. 

Read over and over again Alma 17 and 1 Corinthians Chapters 1 and 2 and Chap. 4 of PMG

Trying harder and miracles

At the start of this week I wasn't having the best time. Maybe you haven't noticed but I haven't had a baptism in 10 months....I know I'm not here to baptize, I'm here to serve haha but after 10 months of working my hardest and still not having a baptism I couldn't take it anymore. We were gonna baptize in Durango haha but the week before my 2 converts were baptized I got transfered (they still got baptized so its all good). Hmo Fransisco in Tlahualilo will be baptized in 2 weeks (I'm so happy for him he's gonna be a great leader in the church one day) and I won't get to be there. I look around and I see elderes that don't work at all, that are super disobedient, that hate and can't speak spanish that will baptize every transfer. I get to my area here in Chavez and the elders before me didn't really do a whole lot, so we had no one. Our mission president is focusing a lot on baptism, in trainings, in interviews, the focus is baptism...and I haven't baptized. He recieves revelation for the mission, he knows our potential in the mission, and our potential is to be baptizing every week. So I said a prayer, I promised God I would hold nothing back, I would do better, there are days when I don't really try my hardest, I'm always pretty obedient to the letter of the law but so often I lack the spirit of it. So often I'm negative, sarcastic, whiney, haha I'm not here to have a good time, I'm here because the field is white and ready for the harvest. I promised God I would be nicer to my companion (haha he's a hard companion)

And I did, I gave it my all this week, I talked to everybody, Everybody, I tried extra hard with my companion, from the time the sun comes up til the minute it's time to call it a day I talked to everyone. and God really did give us miracles. In one week we found 4 families that are pure gold. I begged God to give us the Spirit more in lessons and boom we had every lesson with a really strong Spirit and for the first time since I got here 4 weeks ago we had an investigator with a baptimal date show up to church.

But last week was nothing. This week I will do better than I did, I have finally really unlocked the secret to losing myself here, I really did lose myself last week, this week I'm going to do it again, but more.

With all I did this week I also have learned a very important lesson lately that I'd like to share especially with Matt. Very few things will drive the Spirit away in the mission like number 1 focusing on numbers and number 2 criticizing your companion, even in your mind.

They both are signs of pride and if you are prideful God will leave you to yourself. There have been weeks when I have tried to have lessons just to put a stupid number on the charts, I've rushed through lessons just so we could squeeze 2 bad lessons into the time when we could have had 1 good one.

Matt, the number is the result, not the purpose nor the focus. Do not focus on the numbers, because when we focus on numbers then we don't have converts, when we focus on the numbers we might have a ton of lessons, but in the end it still ends with no conversion, neither for you nor for your investigators. Also don't criticize your companion even in your mind, you won't have the spirit, so you won't have a purpose.

How to be a missionary- Big brother advice

As Matt got his call this week, and as he will be leaving soon to serve his mission and because I have been thinking about it a lot lately, about happiness, and The Atonement. 

I love what I have learned about happiness in the mission. I have learned how happy God is and how anxious He is that we can be happy as well. In Abraham 1:2 Abraham explains perfectly what the gospel, righteous living, and the blessings of the priesthood offer to us. Happiness, peace, and rest. Alma is one of my favorite teachers of happiness. He himself having tasted misery and then the true happiness of the gospel is a powerful teacher of what Christ and the gospel offer us. Alma 41. The laws that we have to understand to lead us to happiness are just as real as the laws that we have to understand to make a plane fly. A lie that Satan has put in the world is that there are lots of ways to be happy. There are a lot of ways to find pleasure, a lot of which actually kill our happiness, but there is no other way to be happy other than to be like our Father. In this chapter it says that the nature of God is the Nature of happiness, that God knows how to be happy. I am only starting to understand happiness but I have learned enough to realize that it is true, happiness is found in our Father. Christ offers to bring us to our Father so that our happiness can be complete.  

I have been trying to study about the atonement to try and understand what Jesus Christ did for us. And I just wanna share a couple scriptures that helped me and hope they'll help Matt. First in DC 19:16-19. I love these verses so much. In this Jesus Christ Himself explains and testifies of His atoning sacrifice. First He tells us about His divinity, testifying of what was really sacrificed, "I, God." the atonement was the physical and spiritual sacrifice of a God, a perfect being that descended from Godhood with His Father, to save his helpless brothers and sisters. Next He tells us in a few words what that sacrifice included, a payment so great it caused a God to sweat blood, to cry to His Father and ask if there was some other way. His anguish was something eternal. Next He tells us what we must to do receive the grace of such a sacrifice, if Christ was willing to descend to the deepest pits of hell to drag us out, there would have to be something required of us, repentance, it would be painful, would require everything of us, just like the atonement required everything of Him, but because God is good, it would be a price far less than that that He paid. 

And to end He told us that He suffered these things, not so that He could be glorified, but so that His Father would be, and so that we can be saved from ourselves. CHRIST SUFFERED SO WE DON'T HAVE TO. That is something that is so essential in the atonement, the hell that Satan and we put ourselves through is not necessary, Christ suffered so that we don't have to. God, the Son of God, gave everything, so that we don't have to lose everything. That is something that every missionary needs to learn and then to teach. Christ suffered so that we don't have to. There are so many miserable people that just choose to be that way because they won't come unto Christ, misery is the bitter cup that we insist on filling after Christ drunk it and gulp her down ourselves. Why do we do that? 

Don't be miserable on the mission Matt. Be obedient, don't waste a minute of your time, in the MTC, in your training, in the field, not a minute. and hey don't worry about a new language, haha your gonna look stupid....every freaking day. Get over it. If you pick it up fast, que bueno, if not your humility more than your ability to speak is the purpose of your mission.  

Matt look up the talk Becoming a Consecrated Missionary By Tad R Callister