The Spirit helps us endure hard things

Nobody came to church again this week, woooh... hahah naw it's alright, after 19 months if they don't show up it's not gonna ruin my life. 19 months, so old...so old....

It was actually a really good week, we taught some good lessons and we also gave a priesthood blessing to a little girl that is very sick. She has epilepsy or something, she has seizures and is always twitching and her body is so exhausted by the attacks that she can't walk by herself. It was hard, it is hard, to see little kids that have to suffer like this, I can only imagine how hard it is for their Heavenly Father to have to see them suffer in a life of trials and probation.

 We taught a lesson to her mom (inactive member) and aunt (investigator) and she just sat there in the lesson, her face very sad, and tired, and serious. Shes is 6 and has had to mature fast to be able to deal with her problems. We had a very spiritual lesson about the plan of salvation and then gave the little girl a blessing. It was probably the most spiritual and special priesthood blessing I have given on my mission. The spirit was super strong afterward, the mom was crying and everybody else was very solemn and reverent.

Nothing compares with the Spirit. I love the Spirit. It doesn't matter where you are, or what trials you have in life, if you have the Spirit you will be at peace and will be happy. One of my heroes Elder Packer died this week and if there was one thing that he always spoke about it was the power, the importance, and the mercy of the Spirit.

 We also met a really cool family this week. We taught them about the importance of the family and they both started to tell us how much they want and need God in their lives because they are going through a lot of problems as a family. The husband is a policeman, and policemen in Mexico have to deal with the worst of the worst, so it's hard for him to have a family life and the professional life that he has to deal with every day. It was a really good lesson and afterward they fed us, first lesson and BOOM food, golden investigators.

If the world hate you

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.

Elder Roberts

Sugar comas and investigators at church

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. 

All in all good week.  

Humble and Willing

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. 

Good week. 

Elder Roberts

Teach by the spirit or it is not edifying

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. 

STUDY 1 Cor. 2 and Chapter 4 of Preach My Gospel a lot. 

1 Cor 2: 14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Joseph Smith said, “Salvation cannot come without revelation; it is in vain for anyone to minister without it” 

Changes, Death and a wedding- the circle of life in a week

It was an alright week. We have been teaching a guy named E. a lot and he is actually changing more and more every day. When we found him he was a punk without a purpose, alcohol, girls, parties, "believed in God"... but not really... We have had several really good lessons with him about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. In several of the lessons with him the Holy Ghost has helped me so much to teach, I leave our lessons learning new things - nothing is cooler on the mission than when you learn something new from your own lessons, when it happens it's a sure sign that it wasn't really you that was teaching, but the Real Teacher. After about a month of teaching him he came to a church activity with his little brother and they loved it, we learned about temples and eternal families and they told us they were for sure coming to church on sunday. We go by his house on sunday and he is standing outside his house, half and hour early, showered, shaved, in a polo shirt, and waiting for us. There is nothing better on the mission then moments like that, physical evidence that the gospel really does change people. He will be baptized in June and in the MTC by June 2016. Awe yeah.

One thing I have learned from this area is that the punks and cholos in the streets that call us names and make fun of us are actually some of the most receptive when we talk to them. This area is full of little thugs so we have to contact them or we are left without a whole lot of other options. At the start I just did it for the numbers, figuring that that was about all we would get out of it. Nope. These teenage kids between 14 to 20 have never really known a happy family nor really who is Jesus Christ and when we talk to them the Spirit really does help them to understand and to start to think about making some changes in their life. There is a neighborhood here that what I would call the ghetto of the ghetto and when we first showed up all we got were a bunch of stupid jokes or they would all just run into their houses and hide because they know that two white kids wandering around in the middle of Mexico aren't here to party....But little by little in this transfer we have actually talked to a lot of them and it is not just changing them but the attitude of the whole area. One kid said that he liked talking to us because afterward he "tiene ganas" he feels like doing something as opposed to just sitting around. We'll be seeing big changes soon.

On a sad note one of the great members of the ward Hno T. died this week. He went with us or with the other missionaries EVERY DAY, he showed up to the chapel on Sundays to clean it at 5 in the freaking morning ALONE, every week he would call the branch president to ask if there were specific assignments he needed to do that week and he always came through. He stopped going with us last week, so we called him and he told us he didn't feel good, he had a cold, so the other elders went by to give him a blessing on Saturday. He was always assigned to bring the bread of the sacrament and on his last Sunday on earth he shows up to church, he can barely walk, stumbles into the chapel and gives the bread to the priests so they can bless it. This poor man had walked like 2 miles, sicker than crap just so he could bring the bread instead of calling and asking someone else to do it. He was too sick to return home so some of the members took him to the hospital and after to his brothers house. And there he died. He didn't get the care he needed in time. He was only 54. God needed more people like him on the other side. He didn't have a wife, nor kids, nor parents, just his brother. For some people life really is hard, I thank God that He hasn't seen it necessary to put me through some of the trials that I have seen on my mission. 

Baptism Last week

But just so we don't end on a sad note a really funny thing happened this week as well. We went to a little podunk town in our area in the middle of nowhere to visit J. and his family (The drunk guy that came to church a long time ago and his family). When we get to the town it started to rain really hard so we hauled it to their house and knocked and got in quick....the house was FULL of people, packed, what the heck is going on.... turns out that I. (the return missionary that has gone AWOL, that miraculously showed up to church) was getting married.... I crashed a wedding on my mission. Haha it was uncomfortable for us for sure but I can't even imagine how I. felt. A super stressful day, raining super hard so all needed to be in the house, all of his family (mormon that don't approve of the lifestyle the he has chosen) was in the house giving his wife dirty looks, and all of his wife's family (die hard Catholics that can't understand why there is no alcohol at the wedding, "freaking mormons man..") were all jammed together, and to top it off, two soaking wet gringos show up just as a reminder of what he once was. I'm sure he thought he had died and gone to hell.... hahahaha The first, and yes my friends, the last wedding I will ever crash... 

Working hard and overcoming trials

The nearer a person approaches the Lord, a greater power will be manifested by the adversary to prevent the accomplishment of His purposes. Joseph Smith

We had a baptism. yay haha it actually went really well. Haha poor P. she's like 3 feet tall and weighs like 10 pounds and she had to wear an adult jumpsuit hahahah but she took it well. I didn't get to see the confirmation because we had an incident Sunday morning that I can't talk about over email but lets just say Satan is going after our investigators.

Actually we have had several incidents this week that are proof that Satan has to do his work too. When I got here we had nothing, nothing. So we started working really hard to try and find people and we found 5 really good families, we had really good lessons, they were reading the Book of Mormon, we had a lot of member support, and things were looking promising.

This week 2 of them moved to a different state and the other three have told us that they can't be baptized because they were born in their religion and they will die in it.... daaaaangit. Everything fell through this week EXCEPT THE BAPTISM THANK YOU LORD. So guess where we are again? 0`s man...

John 14:30 Hereafter I will not talk much with you: for the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me.

The Lord Himself told of the power that Satan CAN BUT DOESN'T HAVE to have in this world. Satan has the power that we give him, and there is the trick -And has nothing in Me. Christ beat Satan because He never gave Satan even a little power to drag Him down. Satan can only hurt us if we let him.

We had almost 140 street contacts this week and lots of lessons and whatnot but as we closed the week, we realized that we gotta do more. If we don't put in more effort, if we don't try harder, then Satan is gonna beat us. God is more powerful than Satan, Jesus Christ is more powerful than Satan, representatives of Jesus Christ are more powerful than Satan, there is no reason that we are gonna lose unless we give up and call it a day until we get transferred. I will leave this area better than I found it.


John 15:18 If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.

I can't imagine how hard those last hours must have been for Christ. He knew what was coming, and instead of being afraid, or doubting, or complaining, or preparing Himself, He turns to His Apostles and quiets THEIR fears, strengthens THEIR confidence, prepares THEM for what will come. The world hated Him first. This week will be a week of turning to God, working hard to start over again, and praying for miracles.