Another week down! This is definitely the first week that I can say has gone by somewhat quickly. I'm going to try and keep this as short yet insightful as possible.
We thought (yet again) that we had figured out the sound of shots in the air, but it turns out we were wrong. Someone said there is a prison nearby here, and we thought that the gunshot sounds were the police firing shotguns into the air to calm the prisoners down. Then we'd make jokes when lots of shots would go off like "someone stole the last ice cream!" and stuff. But it turns out our teacher said that they are just homemade fireworks celebrating the days of Saints and stuff. A little anticlimactic, but still cool since they're homemade with gunpowder and stuff.
My terrible Spanish story of the week is when I was telling our investigator that we were going to share a scripture in the book of the drunk ones. Ebrios is the adjective drunk, Hebreos is Hebrews...So don't make that mistake.
Not only is my Spanish bad, my English is now getting worse too. It took me probably 3 minutes to remember "the word that starts with I and means something is going to happen no matter what". It's inevitable, by the way. Hopefully my mind will start thinking in Spanish soon.
For some reason, there is a rule here that suit jackets are supposed to be worn in all meetings and for the duration of the meeting, even if, say, we have 600 missionaries packed into an auditorium with terrible A/C and lots of people crying and being emotional, which makes our bodies warm up a lot. We are told that the prophets couldn't even fit 1/100th part of the record into the Book of Mormon, so I think it's safe to assume a similar ratio applies to the Bible. You'd think they'd have paid more attention to that part about Eutychus falling asleep while some boring speaker was going off late into the night in a warm room and then he fell off the roof and died...but that's just me. I just think if you're going to have a rather monotonous speaker, let us take off our jackets so we can be able to actually stay awake.
Speaking of staying awake, General Conference is this weekend. I'm totally kidding, I'm so excited. I can't wait to hear exactly what I need from prophets of the Lord. I'd love it if you could all send me the GC memes when they start coming out!
At the devotional on Sunday, we heard an unreal rendition of If You Could Hie To Kolob, my favorite hymn, followed by an awesome talk by Elder Bednar. I can't really put it all into this email, but I'll try to another time. Long story short, he has a Book of Mormon for the major questions he's had in life just devoted to answering that question, and he has around 400 copies now marked up with revelation. Also, the characteristics of Christ summed up is that when we would turn in and follow the natural man, Christ would turn out and serve. Look for examples all throughout the scriptures.
I saw a picture in our building that I've somehow never noticed before. At first I just thought it was another pictures of some Nephites/Lamanites (because what good is a Nephite/Lamanite picture without a weapon!?), but then I realized what I was looking at. I was seeing 2 very young, teenage boys being embraced by their loving mother right before they went off to kill their fellow men in defense of their families. They were the stripling warriors. I've always imagined that they were like massive, Samoan men that were "18 years old", but this put it in perspective for me. We're told that some of them were very (exceedingly?) young. Consider 14 as a possibility. We're also told they ALL were wounded, and not just cuts or scrapes, in my opinion, but possibly lost limbs. All were wounded, but none were killed. Like them, what are we willing to sacrifice to defend and protect our eternal family against the enemy, Satan? Are we willing to give up something dear to us to show our devotion to God? Are we willing to put our trust in God, even though we may be young and the odds may be against us? Only the true and living God would trust the work of gathering lost souls to a bunch of 18 and 19 year old men and women. Who else would have the confidence to send teenagers out in twos? It really strengthened my testimony.
OK, this is actually really long. I'm, sorry. I try to make it entertaining but also spiritual. Stay true to what you know, and I'll talk to you all next week! Here are some more pics for you all!
This picture is just too funny not to send.
Let's just say the reason they make plungers like that is because they
need to.
No comments:
Post a Comment