Sorry this letter was never sent last Monday!

Hello everyone!

Another great week to be a missionary!

Highlights:

-Going to the temple with Clara and seeing the gospel bring her so much joy! She also excepted a baptismal date for the 23rd of December so keep her in your prayers!

-Learning more about my companion Elder Lopez! He is really fun and such a nice caring guy!

-Playing soccer with a bunch of kids who were shocked that a greengo could juggle the soccer ball.

-We ran out of data today on Pday and we were not allowed to leave our house for the whole day because of a catholic holiday called All-Saints. So we were locked in our house without the capability to call our families on Pday. So that wasn’t the highlight part of the story haha. Afterwards we prayed about what to do. I came up with the idea to knock on our neighbors door and ask them for their WIFI (Which was a nerve racking thought). I decided to follow through and asked this young couple that lives next to us if we could use their WIFI today. They said yes and we had a great Pday filled with calling families haha. It really showed me that sometimes the Lord is willing to give solutions to your problems, bt you just have to take action.

-We put two of our friends in teaching on baptismal dates this week! Clara and Marco. So pray for them!

Spiritual thought:

This week I have felt discouraged by my lack of ability to explain my grand thoughts in Spanish. It seemed as if I did not have the capability to give them a thought that would make them ponder enough to change their life. But then I read and pondered Alma 37:36 which says “”. This verse changed my perspective of my lacking abilities and I would like to share some of my thoughts! The word confound means to make one ponder. I have started to compare this verse to the thought of a trailer for a movie. A good trailer serves the purpose of giving enough intrigue (while not revealing the whole plot) to make someone think about the movie enough to build a desire to watch the whole movie when it comes out. A good trailer really is beautiful. It gives you so much intrigue and excitement but keeps an effective level of suspense and mystery. It uses small and simple scenes in order to make one ponder about the upcoming movie. A bad trailer gives all the details, and by the end of it you feel as if you watched the whole movie. It has caused you to completely lose interest. Likewise I believe we can do the same thing with spiritual thought and I call it “stretching the mind” and “Overstretching”. A recent general conference talk that I listened to talked about how it is only when our mind is being stretched that we can really change. It was at this point that I realized how false my original thought of my incapability's was! Of course my thoughts will not change someone's mind! No matter how grand and amazing they are! Thinking that I can fully convert someone is quite frankly sacrilegious. A true convert is converted through the Holy Ghost and the Holy Ghost is invited into their lives through pondering. I realized that I can not convert someone, but I can say small and simple things that will give them enough intrigue to make them ponder and therefore feel the converting power of the Holy Ghost. I not only realized that my grand thought (That i desired to be able to share) are not the best, but also that they can possibly be negative in  “Overstretching” someone and make them feel inadequate and not enough which leads to instead of inviting pondering into their life, they invite self doubt and fear which are both emotions of the devil. When we share these grand ideas without the power of the Spirit we may cause negative reactions to the spirit. Even Jesus Christ taught simply through worldly parables. Likewise we also can simplify our thoughts and help others feel the power of the Holy Ghost!