There she was just a'walkin down the street singing "Elders can you come visit my house and teach my family??"
Oh wait...thats not how the song goes? :) Hmm...well that happened this week, minus the music and singing part, haha. I'll talk about that later, awesome experience that just randomly fell into our hands.
Hello everyone! How's everyone doing?? I hope by now that you've all gotten my letters, seems that my mom already got hers so I imagine they got there around the same time. This was a good week, a lot of things that people said really impacted me, and I'll be paraphrasing quotes from a few people today.
This week we had a zone conference in Chorrera, which is like an hour or so from Penonomé, headed towards Panama City. We got together with all our zone and the Chorrera zone, so like 36 missionaries, quite a few. It was fun, I like zone conferences, and since being off in Blas and missing the conference when Elder Amado from the presidency of the area 70 came, Ive felt a bit out of the loop with the changes that have been taking place here in the mission.
In Chorrera there's a little food place called the Chichemito, where they sell all kids of delicious fried foods and make a specialty drink from chorrera called chicheme. I've had it before, and didn't really like it much, but that was back in my first area. Chicheme, para que sepan, is a drink made with like milk, cinnamon, and ground up kernels of corn. Sounds gross right? It's actually pretty good, both hot and cold, but I like cold better. Panama has introduced me to so many different weird drinks that I wouldn't have thought of liking before, like oat drinks, both hot and cold, called avena, rice drinks like they make back home, similar to an horchata. Also they had there my obsession called hojaldras, which is basically just fried bread, but soooo good. In Blas the kids that walked around sold them for a nickel a piece, here they're more expensive, but those were fresh and huge for a quarter. Good snack before zone conference.
At the conference, President Ward talked all about how we need to help investigators get from point A, being the inital contact, to point Z, being baptism. All that we should and need to do to help the person progress towards making that covenant with God. One thing that I really took from the whole lesson was that a lot of mission work depends on our attitude, be it good or bad. Like I said in a quote a while back, "Whether you believe you can do it or you can't, you're right." It all depends on your attitude. "If you don't like how something is, change it. If you can't change it, change yourself." I really like that. Obviously there are lots of mission rules that the missionaries don't like, same as for members of the Church thinking there are tons of rules. Obviously you can't change the rules, because they're commandments from Heavely Father, so if you can't change those, you need to change your attitude. Think of things as blessings rather than restrictions, guidance rather than impedance. Our attitude is crucial in life, because we're going to have trials, but it is our attitude that comes from those trials that determines how we leave, triumphant or defeated.
Another quote I heard recently is "A man never stands taller than when he is on his knees." That one is awesome. We show who we really are when we humble ourselves and pray daily. If you think you're hot stuff and grand in the worlds eyes, thinking that you're standing tall, that is your ego, and you need to bring yourself down to your knees.
I know that people are ready and waiting for the missionaries to teach them. How I started this blog entry was a lady who contacted us, the opposite of what it would normally be. On Saturday it was really hot, didn't rain for the first day in like 2 weeks, and I said that I wanted to go buy a drink at the chino. We walk in and a lady starts talking to us at the door, asking who we were and if we would be willing to go to her house sometime to teach her and her family. Of course we said yes and followed her close in her husband's taxi. She said that she had always meant to talk to us and ask who we were, but just never got around to doing it. Well, long story short, it was an amazing lesson, and that woman expressed so much love and willingness to change her life. We told her that now was the time, and the Lord had prepared the way for us to meet her, and put us in each other's paths. What would've happened if we hadn't walked into that store, hadn't met her, hadn't stopped to talk to her and answer her questions? She would be just as she was before, hungry, searching, longing for the truth of the restored Gospel. I never did end up getting a drink though haha :P She told us that what she heard of Mormons was this: "That they are the WORST religion that exists. They don't believe in God or Jesus Christ. They are liars and worship idols, and are basically Satanists" wow! When I heard that I was just smiling and laughing, and we told her that people will do all they can to spread lies and slander about the church, and we assured her that what we would teach her would be the literal opposite of her previous expectations of Mormons.
Investigators in church need to feel comfortable. I can't tell you all how many people I've met that say that they went to the church one time, and stopped going because they didn't like it, no one talked to them, they sat alone, and have thusly decided that they will never go back again. Ok, when you are all at church each Sunday, and you see someone you don't recognize, just go up and talk to them. Shake their hand, welcome them to church, make them feel welcome and loved. It's so easy. It's also so easy to do nothing, sit with your family, and say nothing to that person you don't know. But the small act of ignoring them and not offering your hand, or a seat on the pew, could make the difference of that son or daughter of God becoming baptized, sealed in the temple, future bishop or Relief Society president, or someone that holds a grudge against the Church their whole life and hates Mormons. All because they didn't feel welcome in church. Going to church is SO easy, and we have to do all that we can to make investigators, new members and less-actives feel at home, with their family of members.
We have a girl who's 21 that we're preparing to get baptized, and we knew as soon as she came to church the first time, took that first step, she would love it. Like Max has said before, just get the person to come to the church one little time, and they will realize that it's what they've been looking for all their life, the love that exists there. She's set to be baptized this Saturday, and that's because everyone made her feel loved and accepted, came and shook her hand, said "Hi", and that's why she stayed for all 3 hours.
One thing that our branch president said, (who's Italian by the way Roy, mix of Venezuelan and Italian), named Arcireale, was that "Without the temple, the branches of the family tree can't grow. Family is like a cut tree trunk that serves for nothing more but making paper." Haha, I liked that. With the blessings of the temple, we nurish our family trees rather than leave them out in the snow to die. The branches can grow, increase and extend to generations. I'm excited to get into family history more when I'm home, so I can learn more about my ancestors and work with my grandma who does that a bit.
Great week, excited for how this area is going, just got to get people to take that first step and to come to church. The two scriptures for this week are from Jacob 4:8, which talks about the mysteries of God that man is unable to comprehend. And Mosiah 4:9-10 which I really like, which tells us to believe in God and that He exists and understands things that really are incomprehensible to us humans, but we must believe in Him and know that things will be revealed to us in His time, not ours.
Love you all, have a wonderful week. Happy Birthday Grant this week and Happy Halloween, enjoy lots of candy for me!
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