Thursday, September 8, 2011

August 17, 2011

My beloved parents and siblings,

I am writing you once again with another week under my belt in this great guatastic adventure of mine, and I am happy to say that I´m happily chugging along, admiring the occasional think latin mustache as I go about my daily duties. This week was a good week as Elder Cruz and I have gotten used to the big changes in the office and in the area. Elder Cruz is a fantastic teacher and that makes all the difference in the missionary work. I have found that he likes to talk about video games A LOT which can be slightly distracting but I have learned to just deftly dodge the comment and mention something else. Life is good.
In this last week before Sunday I had actually been slightly disappointed with the work in the area. It had been a struggle to find progressing investigators and I was worried about if we were neglecting the work because of office work. I had been thinking about that a lot and had been really trying to work harder in the time that we were in the area to make a difference. Sunday we had an incredible experience that made me think I just need to be a little patient. We are teaching someone named José , someone that we just contacted because he was playing cards with some of the teenagers from the ward near their house. This was 2 weeks ago. He invited us in and we started to talk to him. Over the course of the last 2 weeks we have found that he really has been lacking a relationship with God in his life. He told us that he just feels empty sometimes and that he feels distanced from God. He said he has tried going to churches but he has just seeing hypocrites and power hungry people (these are his words not what I think every other church is made up of mind you). After the first lesson he read from 1st Nephi 1 to 13. This last Sunday we came in and he started telling us how much sense the vision of Lehi made sense. He said that he needed this iron rod so that he could have the truth. He said that he feels the book is true but that he wants to go to church to really see how it is, a request that as missionaries, turned us into 10 year olds waking up to a snow day. 10 year olds? I still had that reaction when I was 18 I don´t know what I´m talking about. ANYWAY, he said that he really does feel as if he needs something more and that he will get baptized if he starts to feel that this is true, which he said he has felt, but not a certain confirmation yet. I´m very excited about him, and we are hoping he comes to church this Sunday.
Also I just got out of my interviews with President. He is a really impressive person. He gave me some interesting insights into how we as human beings can only do our best and we need to look to God to forgive our weaknesses. He also told me that we need to analyze every criticism were given and decide if it something we want to change. He said in his professional life he has often been criticized for being to trusting, something he feels is a part of him and he has conciously decided not to change that, because he feels it is a part of him to trust and give others the benefit of the doubt. He said this has hurt him, but also blessed him in his life. He said we need to figure out who we are and be careful with which criticism we accept and apply. He said we obviously need to to change things that are disobediance or inconsistent with gospel teachings, but that God has made us how we are for a reason and we need to recognize that and try to be the best person we can be, not looking to be somebody else. It was very uplifting and it really struck home with me.
Anyway I´m happy and I´m learning a lot. I love you all and hope you have a great day. I love you!
-Ben

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