July 18, 2011

July 18, 2011

Well, another week down. It’s crazy how fast it’s all going. This week especially I don’t know why but it seemed like we would just do a little bit of work and it was time to move on to the next thing. We both are confused about how fast the time goes and where it goes.
This week has been a lot different. Well not different, but having a new companion is always an adjusting thing. We think a lot alike so it’s crazy how many jokes there are. Not that Elder Hutchison and I didn’t have our laughs, but it’s someone from the same world more or less. He played football and basketball too. Today in the morning we played and we played 4 on 3. We were the three and we won. It is nice to be with someone from the same area/culture kind of an idea.
As far as investigators go it’s pretty much still I the battle. We have four people that we are really working on. The coolest one is Yuri. She is so excited for the gospel. It doesn’t matter if we show up late or anything like that, she is still beaming. She is always excited to see us. We verified how she felt at church and she said that she liked it a lot and that her favorite part was that she felt close to God. Well, that’s about as good of an answer that you can find. She is so easy to teach too. She read 1 Nephi chapter 3 and she picked out verse seven. That’s the, “I will go and do the things …” verse. She really liked it and marked it. She is super exited for her baptism too.
Also there is Leonor. She got to the point where she has always felt good about the Book of Mormon but I think that she’s expecting a lightening bolt to come down. She told us on Saturday, “I think I just need to believe, and not try to deny. I just need to go forward with this.” She came to church all by herself too and she is super excited. We had a lesson in the gospel principles class that talked about the Holy Ghost and with our lesson on Saturday I’m pretty sure that she is on the right road. (In case anyone forgot she is the one that read the whole Book of Mormon).
We had another lesson with a lady named Maria de Carmen. We had had lessons with her before, but she never seemed very enthusiastic, but maybe it’s a change of companions or something but she was a lot happier. She also came to church by herself. It was really nice to have her there because earlier we were worried if she was ever going to progress. Now she is on the road. She isn’t super super excited… yet. We are working on her. She doesn’t like commitments so even trying to get an appointment to come back is hard. But she went to church all by herself so it was a big step.
The Last one is a guy named Eduardo. I don’t think that I’ve talked about him a whole lot but it’s a sad situation kind of. This is one of the most loveable guys you can find. He doesn’t have a mean bone in his body it seems like. He has a bunch of animals that he has taken in or things like that. He always makes sure that we have something to drink and has given us food before. The problem is he can’t get baptized right now because he was married to someone else, separated, then later found another wife and is now living with her. So he has to divorce himself with his legal wife, and marry his current wife. Both of his sons are members so he should be a shoe in after he gets his papers figured out. He loves having the missionaries over. One of our first weeks, we didn’t go to his house for a week and he got after us at church. We usually go with him in the night time.
We had a few more good rainstorms. One was Sunday and it filled up a couple streets. Oh yeah, there was a Shakira concert here that was a few kilometers away that we could hear at our house. It was suppose to have 150,000 people go to it and it was free. Oh yeah, I had another interview with president this week. It was short and I feel like it’s a lot of the same thing. I wanted to ask more questions but it got cut off so that’s more of me being made to do some more thinking. I can’t believe that I will be turning 20 this weekend. I feel like I’m still 18 just with a few more years of experience.
When I was thinking about what I should write as a spiritual thought this week, I had a couple of ideas bouncing around inside and the lottery ball that came out is vision. Our vision is one of the most miraculous things that we have. And I’m not only talking about the vision that we have with our eyes. Our imagination is one of the necessary tools that were given to us in this world to learn and to grow. It’s what gives us passion to live our lives, set and later reach goals. If there were no imagination, there would be no reason to read fiction books because a person couldn’t imagine. If there was no imagination, the history books would be far less instructive and the scriptures would wane in power. An unimaginative person can’t imagine the red sea being parted. The understanding of the plan of salvation would be limited to what we could only see and feel. The Atonement and the agonizing pain would not be fully comprehended to its fullest degree because we couldn’t go through that. We can only visualize what it would be like. So since the visualization is so necessary in life, we should use it more I would imagine; its one of the things necessary in the goal making process, its one of the things that helps us to keep our decisions in line, its one of the things that helps us keep on the strait and narrow road, that leads us to the Celestial Kingdom. I have never seen the Celestial kingdom, but I want to go there because I can imagine it in my mind.
Well, kind of an off the wall one this week. Love you all, eat a chunk of cake or something for me, just not strawberry cheesecake.
Con Amor
Elder Mackay