¡FELIZ NAVIDAD!

 

This week WAS AMAZZING! Well most of this week was amazing. Every day but Christmas Eve was amazing jajaja. So here is the recap:

Last P-Day was the best. People could not stop giving us free food! In the morning our whole Zone was invited to a members taco shop and we ate Tacos De Carnitas which are SOOO GOOD! I have no idea how to describe them but they are definitely up there with some of my favorite food I have had on my mission. After that at lunch some members bought us Pizzas when they saw us on the street. Then at night we went to one of the best taco shops of my life! On Mondays the tacos are 2 for 1 and so a single taco de pastor is 6 pesos! My comp and I and 3 other missionaries each ate 18 tacos and were getting ready to pay the bill. When out of the blue came one of our investigators and said she paid for ALL of our food! We were shocked because it was 500 pesos worth of tacos. So Monday was a day of free food for sure. As my companion would say in his Latino accent “Blessings from the Lord”.

We had a huge mission wide Devotional for Navidad. It was so spiritual and SOOO MUCH FUN! We talked a lot about the light of Christ which happens to be probably my favorite thing to study. If you also are interested in the light of Christ please reach out to me. I would love to hear your thoughts and share some ideas. We did so many fun things at the devotional like play sports, do skits, huge gift exchange, and a massive Christmas dinner. Definitely do not know where the budget went for this party! After all this fun our mission president surprised us and took us to the Mexico Church Camp Site (For all you Medford foke it is like Camp Ester Applegate) and we did a HUGE bonfire and another devotional. The sad part of this Devotional was it was the last devotional of a lot of my best friends on the mission because their generation is going home on the 28th. This meant it was my last time seeing them. They are called the “Golden Generation” because literally they are all studs! The mission will definitely miss them! They all got to give their last testimonies and I was shedding tears the whole time. Bye Bye Elder Bretey and company :(. Pictures below of me with the Golden Generations.

Christmas Eve was tough because we found out our investigator could not be baptized this week. He had passed his baptismal interview and gotten approved. But our Bishop is a little nuts right now (I will just say cultural differences). And he kind of blindsided us. It was a super sad moment because we had the font filled up and Fermin was there and already in his baptismal clothes. We were all ready and then some tough stuff went down. He left the chapel crying and I just hugged him and it was super hard. If you want the whole grand story just ask jajaja. 

Christmas Day was amazing! Besides that only 15 people came to church… But after that it was amazing! We went and had two different Christmas dinners and both had amazing food. We shared so many testimonies of Jesus Christ and it was so beautiful and emotional. Each meal had the best food and I was so grateful! The second house we went to was the 1st counselor of our mission president and we were with 3 other missionaries. We just laughed and told stories the whole time and to end the night we sang songs together. It made me feel like I was at home around the piano with my dad. It was exactly what I needed. God is in the details! After getting home I got to call the family and we sang songs together as my dad and sister played the piano. I am so blessed to be able to use technology on my mission to stay close with my family! I hope everyone had a MERRY CHRISTMAS!

____________________________________

Skipping the story for this week because this email is already long enough…

____________________________________

Spiritual Thought:

I have really dived into the idea of the power of silence. I have found that I am somebody who really likes to talk. I have tried to rain on this desire of mine through trying to be more silent through conversations and actively listen more, not just trying to think of the next thing I will say. I recommend this practice to everyone. It is one of the hardest things I have ever done but the blessing of feeling the spirit is overwhelming. The Spirit resides in silence and I have realized that as I have been more silent the knocks of the Spirit on my door have felt like slams on the door. It is hard having good thoughts come and go without me saying them, but the spirit has refined everything into small questions. These questions have helped more people than I have ever done in the past. I take no credit because I know they come from the Spirit! I gained this insight through reading about King Lamoni in Alma 18. It says in verse 14 “And the king answered him not for the space of an hour”. During this time Ammon sat in silence. Can you imagine not talking for an hour. After this time where Ammon allowed King Lamoni to ponder his thoughts, Ammon simply asked a question that changed King Lamoni's life. It was in silence and questions that the Lamanites were converted. My goal is to apply this into my lessons. A few weeks back I found my lessons were constantly taking 45 minutes and the investigators were not keeping any of the commandments that we had invited them to do. This week I have decided to take the advice of my Brother in Law Michael and teach by bullet points. I will become a stronger Preach My Gospel Missionary. I have found it interesting that the Preach My Gospel does not once mention the need to share by analogies, object lessons, and rarely talks about sharing spiritual experiences. I think all of these are good in small amounts. But my goal is to let the Spirit prevail in the lessons. Leave them enough that they will desire more. My answers to their questions should never be enough. They should have to get on their knees and pray and then read scriptures to receive the true answer. I am only here to help guide them. I tried this method in a lesson this week. I talked in small phrases and through scriptures. She wanted the lesson to continue but instead I told her to turn to scriptures and prayer for her answers. I left her with a talk and a chapter in the Book of Mormon. This woman had not read any of our recommendations in the past. But after this lesson she listened to the conference talk, read the chapter in the Book of Mormon, and wrote down all her notes. That night she sent a thank you text and how so many of her questions were answered. I was shocked! She desired more answers so she searched for them through the resources we gave her. I promise to all missionaries that through simplicity you can teach through the Spirit. It was hard not sharing the stories I wanted to or the analogies I thought would help, but she progressed more than she had ever in the past through a simple 15 minute lesson. Let the spirit prevail and be the focus. We are only the messengers who help them open the door to revelation. I know as we will follow the example of Ammon we will receive so many blessings and form closer relationships!