First Transfers

 Week Update:

•Went on Divisions with the APs and Elder Skinner is one of my favorite people on Earth. He truly is such an amazing missionary and it was so cool to learn more from him.

•Listened to a ton of BYU devotionals this week. Two of my favorite were Wrestling with Comparisons and Flashes of Light. Definitely some of the most motivating and inspiring talks. I definitely needed to hear them and I bet you do to haha.

•Katherine (the girl from last week who said she thought God was dead) asked to be baptized! She said she prayed a lot and started reading the scriptures and then she felt her dad who passed away 5 years ago for the first time. It was a super emotional and spiritual experience listening to her telling the story! Her and her mom are so excited to be baptized!

•Had some interesting money problems as a companionship. If you are a missionary and are frustrated when your comp runs out of money with 10 days left I highly recommend reading Mosiah 4 haha definitely got me through the situation.

•Spanish is coming a long more and more everyday! I gave a 8 minute testimony in church without any prep and I think it actually sounded okay.

•Went on my last divisions with my really good friend Elder Humphry's. We made a party of it and bought a cake, tacos, and this delicious peach drink. We also definitely did not stay up way late talking.

•Sad but also super exciting news WE HAD TRANSFERS THIS WEEK! This is sad because I am leaving my dear friend and companion Elder Gamez and also because I am leaving this área of the mission that I have grown to love. Saying goodbye to the people we have baptized and the investigators we are teaching right now was heart breaking. Crazy how you can form such a strong relationship within 6 weeks and bad Spanish. Some of the hardest goodbyes were Cesar (my first baptism and he called me his God Father haha), Nancy, Santiago(an eight year old had asked me to baptize him next week and started crying when he heard I was leaving), and Alfonso(our ward missionary leader). For the happy news of transfers, my New comp is a STUD! One of if not the best missionaries in the mission and his name is Elder Bretey. But I will brag more about him in the next email.

Story:

•So while on divisions with the Assistant to President Elder Skinner, we had the opportunity to teach a lady. She had her baptism this Sunday so we were going through the questions to see if she was ready for baptism. We got really stuck on the second question which is Do you think Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God and restored the church. The thing that made this story funny and just confusing is when we asked this question she said: "I watched all of conference last week (showed us her diligent notes she had taken of every talk) and I believe that President Nelson is a prophet of God. I also believe that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. ...everything else that gives you a testimony that Joseph Smith was a prophet... and then she said but I am having a hard time believing in Joseph Smith.". We tried explaining to her that the only way the Book of Mormon is true or that President Nelson is a prophet is if Joseph Smith received revelation of the restored Gospel. She sat their and asked some weird questions. The stranger thing is before everyone question she would say "I want and know I need tl be baptized". But you kind of need to believe in Joseph Smith before you do that. After talking and trying to help for an hour, I told her she was asking really amazing question, but as much as we are trying to give spiritual answers there is only one way to truly receive the answers she wanted. That is through prayer and reading scriptures. This answer actually satisfied her at the moment and we left the lesson a little sad. It was just really hard. The next morning she called us and said that she had prayed truly for the first time last night and diligently read the scriptures. She then said "After doing these things I received a testimony that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and that he restored the Gospel of Jesus Christ". She said those last words with so much power! After that Elder Skinner and I were doing backflips in excitement! It was just such a hype moment! 

(Sorry I did not have any crazy story this week but hopefully you enjoyed that)

Spiritual Thought

•I was reading Mosiah 13:28 which says "And moreover, I say unto you, that salvation doth not come by the law alone; and were it not for the atonement, which God himself shall make for the sins and iniquities of his people, that they must unavoidably perish, notwithstanding the law of Moses.". As I was pondering this verse it just hit me that really all rules are insignificant unless we follow them through Christs atonement and through the perspective of Christ. The people in Mosiah 13 were being chastised because they were merely following the Law of Moses thinking it alone would be enough to bring them to salvation. Which to most would seem like enough! They were trying there best, they were striving to follow the rules. If I was following a rule perfectly such as the Law of Moses I would be feeling pretty good about myself. But because they were only following for the sake of following, God chastised them. We need to follow rules through the perspective of Christs atonement. We follow rules in order to bring us closer to Christ. As soon as Christ is no longer the center of following the rules, the rules mean nothing in the sight of God. God expects perfection when we follow rules, the only way we can do this is through repentance and the atonement of Jesus Christ. We do not just follow rules to reach Heaven, we follow rules and use the atonement to reach Heaven.