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

Keep Praying

You will never guess what happened. On Monday we got told that a senior couple were coming to Talhualilo to help us out and that the Elder has been a branch president 3 times before so he was coming to be branch president. That's right people I am now serving with the mexican version of Grandma and Grandpa Roberts. Haha they are named Elder and Sister P, and to be honest I could not be more happy, the extra responsabilities we had were taking a lot of our time so President Ramos decided to help us out because we are actually having a lot of success with the investigators here. 

 

They will be focusing right now 100% on reactivation and retention. HAha so we spent a lot of the week introducing them to all of the members here in Tlahualilo. HAha I never realized how freaking fast we walk until we had to show the misionary couple around and I would start walking normally and after like 2 minutes I realized they weren't right next to me so I would look back to see where they had wandered off to and I would see two little dots on the horizon trying to keep up....oops...hahah.   

President R. (Mission President), his wife, the district president and like 6 other leaders all came to lil Tlahualilo to sustain and set apart President P., more priesthood than Tlahualilo has seen in....ever...haha. 

We have had really good lessons this week with our investigators and they are all progressing really well. April is looking to be a months of baptisms every week, gotta just keep praying hard and helping out our investigators. God has done so much to help us, when we got here we had nothing, NOTHING. All the other elders told us that being sent to Tlahualilo is like going to outdarkness in the final judgement...hahah yikes, needless to say I was less than thrilled when I showed up. 

 

But after three months of working our hardest, literally there are days when we are running from appointment to appointment, we have 0 time and right now we have 7 investigators with a baptismal date and a lot of others that are listening and changing their lives. We started  lessons with these people hearing how they would never come to our church, how they didn't know how to read so how could they read the Book of Mormon, how the Virgin Maria is more important than Jesus Christ.... and I'm not kidding at this point we can't get to appointments fast enough. 

The Lord really is giving and has given us soo much here in Tlahualilo. Keep Praying

Elder Roberts 

 

 

Changes required to be happy

I don't know how we lucked out to find R. but this man is one of a kind as far as investigators go. I have never had an investigator as easy as him, he does and accepts everything we tell him.

One perfect example, he has been studying with the Jehovah's witnesses for a long time and so he believed, naturally, that Jehovah is our Heavenly Father and prays to Jehovah in the name of Christ. We knew for him to be converted obviously he needed to understand better the Godhead. So we spent a whole lesson on God, Christ, and The Holy Ghost. He was a little confused after the lesson and told us the he believed us but it was hard for him to accept that Christ is Jehovah, so we gave him some homework in the Book of Mormon and the Bible and told him to pray about what we talked about....

In the next lesson he told us he insisted on saying the prayer, and prayed very fervently to our Heavenly Father in the name of Christ. It was so powerful to hear him say a prayer so fervently to his Heavenly Father and the change that he has felt in his life because of it. We also taught him about President Monson this week and the importance of a living prophet, he took one look at the picture of President Monson and asked us if we could print him another copy so he could hang it in his house and told us he can't wait until general conference to hear the words of the prophet of God. He showed up to church this week and told me he can't wait to be baptized and started to cry and told me that he has been waiting to be baptized in the true church for a long time he will do whatever it takes to get baptized.

He dumped his girlfriend after the lesson about Chastity, chucked his coffee after the lesson of the word of wisdom, prays with all his heart to understand and progress, and to top it off invites his friends to listen to us to, but they aren't as interested...haha.

It honestly humbles me to be this mans missionary, there hasn't been a baptism in Tlahualilo in a long time and there have been hundreds of Elders sweeping this area and it just happened to be me and my companion who found this man.

We had four of our investigators show up to church and all 4 will be baptized within a month. Also we had several less active members show up making our attendance more than it has been since I got here. The Lord is blessing us so much as we just work and pray and don't take crap from Satan. Its not to say that he doesn't give us a lot of hard times, but one of the key things in the mission is to learn damage control and trust me when our investigators are progressing if we don't put in the extra effort Satan goes to town, but if we do everything we can Heavenly Father blesses us with the words, and service necessary to save his children.

I have learned so much about God on the mission and about His very real desire to do everything to save His children. We are also teaching a less active member that is an angry, lost 19 year old kid....who does that remind me of.... He tells us all he wants is to be happy and he doesn't understand why God doesn't help him out. He tells us that he doesn't even know what he wants to be happy just he wants to be happy. He doesn't read his scriptures, or pray, and in church he just sits around and plays on his phone, and he asks us where is God.... haha it really is exactly like me.

Where is God? If we don't do anything how can we expect God to solve it all for us? In the mission I have really learned what it means by the faith is action, what it means to be saved by grace after all we can do. God will not do something for us that we can do for ourselves. If all we do is ask God to make it all better and then sit around and wait what can we expect from a God that has given us everything we need to make it back. I really have learned what the gospel can give us, how to progress grace by grace until we reach our potential as children of God, the gospel really is for our happiness, Christ offers us happiness, the trick is for us to learn how to live his gospel.

It's the hardest thing in the world, some days it requires everything I have to just say okay Father, I'll do it, but in the end it really was what I needed.

Cleaning the Font

Preparing the Font-Acting in Faith

This week was crazy. We had the district conference this week so we had to get to try and figure out how to rent a bus to get all the members and investigators from Tlahualilo to Chavez, about an hour away in car. So we called the District President and had to do a DAP, that is take out tithing to use it for purposes of the church, and after an hour and a half got everything ready for the conference. It was actually really cool to get everything together and load up the bus. In total 35 members showed up and our investigator F. We loaded up and headed for Chavez haha.

We also cleaned out the baptismal font this week to show the Lord we are ready for baptisms, and let me tell you it was a sacrifice haha. The baptismal font sits outside the house of prayer without any kind of covering, so it was full of water, mud, garbage, bricks, rocks, bugs, a body (haha, naw but close), and what did we have to clean that sucker out? two buckets and a mop....hahaha I forgot to bring my camera but it was a chore.

F. showed up to the conference before anyone else, showed up right on time and had to sit around and wait until the members decided to get there. He will be such a great disciple of Christ when he is baptized, just gotta get him married haha. 

We also had a lesson with R. to teach him the word of wisdom and when he found out he can't drink coffee, he didn't complain, on the contrary, he thanked us for telling him what the Lord wants him to do and told us the coffee will be chucked out. He couldn't come this Sunday to church because he had to go to another town to fix some stuff with his retirement plan but this Sunday he promised us no matter what he would be at church.  

 

before

 

after

Whom the Lord calls He qualifies.

In a town of 9000 inhabitants called Tlahualilo in the middle of nowhere you will find one dumb, scrawny, white kid wandering around sharing the gospel. And that is who the Lord has put as His branch Presidente until we find a replacement. That's right...I'm not gonna lie, I'm a lil nervous...haha....

Yesterday I got to lead all the meetings, collect tithing, and keep moral high...All in spanish obviously. Haha it is incredible to me how much the Lord has changed me on the mission, and how much more He will continue to mold me until I become what He wants me to be. As I look back it is amazing to see how everything has worked together to put me in this position of service so that I might become a better instrument in my Heavenly Fathers hands. Right now me and my companion are hyperfocusing on the members, because to be honest our job here is to get out of the leadership position and find the local priesthood that are ready and willing to replace us. We have one member that is actually working really hard to become branch president (its his dream I guess...) and he is helping us a lot to gather the Priesthood of Tlahualilo and...well rally the troops...

The member put together a a Priesthood meeting this Saturday to talk about our blessings and responsibilities. He started the meeting and then it was my companion and I's turn. He told us about this meeting the day before so we had very little time to prepare and didn't really know what we were gonna say. As we got up, it was amazing what happened, the Holy Ghost took over as we testified of our blessing and responsibilities as priesthood holders. As we invited all of the local priesthood that have all gone inactive to come back to Christ and do what is necessary to strengthen the branch in Tlahualilo I was filled with strength and with the words I needed, en serio the words just flowed, it was incredible. I felt like one of the men from the book of Mormon as they 'exhorted' their brothers to come back to Christ. Huge lesson this week whom the Lord calls He qualifies. He will give you what you need, just get to work. 

As far as our investigators we had miracles as well. R. is an amazing investigator, he accepts everything we tell him about the gospel without hesitation at this point, after he got over his doubts about Joseph Smith he just accepts and does what the Lord asks. As he told us he has visited a lot of churches but finally is understanding what God really wants from him. For all his life he hasn't been able to get straight answers and after every lesson with us he tells us I AM FINALLY LEARNING. For example he has recited the same prayer every night for the last 60 years of his life. He told us that he has literally not skipped a day in 60 years. As we taught about prayer and the appropriate way to pray and how he can express himself to our Father he dropped his routine prayer then and there and now he prays as though the Lord is in the room and he expresses very heart felt feelings about his deceased wife and his concern for his family. We also taught him about the law of chastity because he thought that only adultery was a sin, so he has some problems with the law of chastity but after the lesson promised us he will stop all of it so he can be baptized. He will be baptized in March. And he showed up to the Priesthood meeting....before any of the priesthood holders.... when this guy is baptized he is gonna show these members how its done....

We also have a story about M. and G., maybe you don't remember them, they are the couple that told us that religion is crap and that there can't be any real religion because all church leaders are corrupt and that it doesn't matter what we say they will never come to our church. M. came to church yesterday BY HER SELF with her new born baby (G. would have come but had to work, but he is going to ask his boss this week if he can switch his day off) and stayed the full three hours. Last night after church they both accepted a baptismal date. Another huge lesson I learned this week PEOPLE CAN CHANGE, THE GOSPEL DOES CHANGE PEOPLE! How can it be that two 20 year old kids with nothing that I would call real experiences in life can help people make huge changes, its because it isn't us, IT'S CHRIST. Jesus Christ called us here to serve in Tlahualilo and although we are facing a lot of trials, the good Lord has put everything in place so we could find the elect and that the elect would hear His gospel. 

Also just to add onto it when people call me on the phone they can't believe I'm not Mexican. I've finally shed the accent! Gift of Tongues! Whom the Lord calls He qualifies. 

Put in the work and don't just accept your circumstances

 

This week was really good until Sunday came around. Haha it's always like that in the mission though, work hard all week and Sunday rolls around and it's time for the investigators to show if they really have the desire to progress, so naturally it's the day Satan goes to town. We didn't have anyone show up to church this week which was really hard because we had A TON of lessons, many of which were really powerful, and we had 5 people on date for baptism and 9 that committed to come, haha so we gotta do more to help them get to church. 

 

F. came after sacrament all dressed up and told us that the members of his old church came looking for him at his house, told him our church wasn't true and practically forced him to come to their church (F. knows our church is true but hates to argue with people so he went along... we gotta be better at supporting our investigators when trials roll around.) He is trying so freaking hard and Satan has to throw trials at him at every turn. Gotta step up our game too then.

 

 

We also found a really cool investigator this week his name is R. He has lived a really good life, grew up with 0 money and so 0 education. When he got married he promised himself and his kids that they weren't gonna grow up the way he did, so he worked his butt off so he could put each of his kids through school and as a result every one of his kids is a successful self sufficient human being. It really is amazing to hear him talk about how he grew up with nothing and how he didn't just accept his circumstances but put in the work and sacrifice necessary to become a better person but more than anything to make his family better people. He lives now in one of the biggest houses in Tlahualilo and the only thing he lacks in life he tells us is God. He doesn't know how to get closer to God and when we knocked on his door he immediately invited us in and asked us how he can bring himself closer to God. It was so cool. 

 

As we talked to him about the restored gospel and the apostasy he cried when we told him that people rejected and killed Christs apostles (haha it was a little uncomfortable but really cool to see that he really was hurt to hear that people killed God´s chosen servants.) He can barely see but insisted that we give him a pamphlet and a Book of Mormon so he could read it.  He has to put them like an inch away from his face so he can see. When we taught him about Joseph Smith it was probably the strongest I have ever felt the Spirit while reciting the first vision, it was really cool. He had doubts at first about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon but little by little he is accepting all of it. By the end of the second lesson we asked him to say the prayer and he started thanking God for sending angels to teaching him the truth and that he felt that he really had finally found the truth, and fervently asking God to help him understand more. It was pretty intense and I might have almost cried when he started talking about angels...haha. He can't show up to church because he cant see and we couldn't go by his house to help him because we had to be in the church early because the District President came again this week to try and figure out what they are gonna do with the branch but this week we will definitely be going by to help him get to church.

As far as the branch, haha we still dont know anything. The District president taught us how to deposit tithing and then told us they would be showing up next week with a mission representative to figure out what they are gonna do. Pray hard!

God makes us strong

This week we killed it! We had tons of lessons, but better than that we had tons of POWERFUL lessons.

Here in Tlahualilo I have really gained a confidence in and an ability to teach by the Spirit that I lacked so much before, and it really does make all the diference. How is it that we can invite the Spirit into lessons as missionaries?

There is nothing I have found that brings the Spirit into the mission lessons like
1 The first vision 
2 The Book of Mormon
3 Testimony of Jesus Christ.

We had a lesson with G. and His wife (yes, they are actually married) who are a couple that ´believe' in God, but in a God that requires nothing and that should just bless them - A god that isn't a God.

When we first started teaching them his wife had all kinds of weird questions but little by little we helped them to understand that the more abstract things of the gospel can only be understood if we first understand basics. After we explained a little about what is a prophet and who they are as children of God they told us...´Ok but we will still never go to your church.´....okay I'm not here to try and drag you to church....oh wait....haha naw.  but they weren't accepting a whole lot of the message until we got around the Book of Mormon and especially the First Vision. The atmosphere really does change, I don't know how to explain it, you just feel good, you just don't have tension or stress you just tell the story and the Spirit comes in to help us out. By the end of that lesson they told us they would come to church.

The Book of Mormon as well is such a powerful tool God has given us. I love it and I love what it makes us into, we grow so much spiritually and intellectually when we read the book of Mormon. President Benson said that “… The Book of Mormon has not been, nor is it yet, the center of our personal study, family teaching, preaching, and missionary work. Of this we must repent.” I really havent used the Book of Mormon to its full potential here in the mission and I am now trying to repent and I have seen miracles because I am using it more. 

We also have had really good lessons with F., but his girlfriend is a very difficult person, she will not get married for free because it would require that the marriage be performed in public and she feels embarrassed by that, but she will not pay a dime (or peso) to be married because its ´the mans responsibility´.... Haha and we can't exactly say it would be better for them to split up after 25 years, 5 kids, and grandkids.

So we gotta try and help Fransisco find a way to get married in private for free. It'll take a miracle. Not only is he very converted to the message of the gospel but he is helping his children understand how the gospel can bless them too. He gave us the reference for his kid that lives here in Tlahualilo and we are now teaching them both and F. went by their house on Sunday and brought them to church. IT WAS AWESOME. All three of them stayed for the full 3 hours! more than the majority of the members here (and some of  the members of my family....haha).

Let's just say F.  really is a golden investigator we just gotta help his girlfriend. The weird thing is that when it comes down to it she is a really big support for F., she helps him read his Book of Mormon and gets mad when he doesn't read it, she cleans his clothes and helps him leave on time so he can get to church, she gets mad at him if some days he doesn't have time for us to visit him, she makes sure that nothing gets in the way of our visits if she can help it, so she gets that this message really is helping him and she wants to get married but just doesn't want to sacrifice her pride nor her dinero. I respect her and am grateful for the effort she does put in to help us though,

We had a bomb dropped on us yesterday though. President S. (The Branch President) moved back to his home in DF with his family and left the branch president less. So other church leaders came to Tlahualilo and evaluated the situation and the sad truth is there is not a replacement to be found in Tlahualilo...so who will be called as branch president....one of us...the missionaries. Yes. And what heppens next? President R. closed one of the areas in Tlahualilo so the other companionship that was here with us left this morning. So to sum up we now have all of Tlahualilo under our wing, and one of us - me or my companion - will be set apart next week as the branch president. Overnight my stress level went way up. God doesn't look for the strong but for the weak to make them strong.