August 20, 2013 week 5

Week five I am a new man. I have been looking back on my progress that I have made and it is crazy. I am not the same person. I have come to love the Lord more than ever. I glory in my God always. I would recommend a mission to everyone it is fantastic! When you look how much you have been blessed. Me and Elder Henderson have been getting better and better at working together we are now the dynamic teaching duo. Yesterday was one of our high points, Hermana Rivera was having us practice teaching she came over and watched for a little then went to the other groups she came over and had us demo the teaching fundamental that we were working on which was resolving a concern after a commitment falls through. WE GOT A BAPTISMAL DATE! Mateo who was a non-religious person to start has made amazing progress and is now preparing for baptism. I ran in to the room and told the class, the story that came to my mind was Alma 26 when Ammon’s brothers are talking about how they think he is boasting this is his response. "yea, I know that I am nothing as to my strength I am weak therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things yea behold, many mighty miracles.....Now if this is boasting even so will I boast for this is my life and my light my joy and my salvation" the power of God is In this work and I am learning that more and more every day. This is part of my spiritual journal entry on august 17th "We just had a lesson with Frances. It started with the plan of salvation and we moved to life on earth. The spirit moved us to the love of God, She asked us how she could get her family to follow Christ, Elder Henderson followed with the story of his uncle who fell away yet his daughter was converted and whose example got the rest of the family Baptized and the uncle back to activity. That is when he gave the baptism commitment. she paused... we waited... she said she was not sure because people had said bad things about us. I felt I needed to invite her to find out for herself so I told her she needed to read the book of Mormon after she had just previously said no, and that she needed to ask God herself. She paused for a good 5 minutes the spirit was powerful it was so thick you could not help but feel it. She will now read the BofM and pray I found out later that when I said that commitment Elder Henderson was about also, but the spirit told him to wait and then he saw that it was my job to do so. The quote of Kevin of that day was "say what you can and let the spirit say the rest". God has really blessed me the last few weeks and even more so the last few days. Last week we had a devotional from Provo, one Elder Scott gave that talked about prayer... he basically stated all of my feelings that I had been having the past few weeks. At one point he stopped and by his authority gave all the missionaries that are learning a language power if they have the faith. Also his wife was there.... that is one that is harder to explain if you get the chance I think you can find the talk on Lds.org I would watch it, it was powerful. On more temporal notes. My roommates are leaving this week some left this morning and the others are leaving tomorrow. There was an Elder who came from Orem he had some hot sauce that is 1.5 million sculville units so I had to try some (the ghost chili is 1 million) yah, that was not the smartest thing that I have ever done but It was something I can say I have done. Everyone has asked me if I felt the earthquake... here are my words on that... Disappointment the alarm went off and no one could really feel it here. I did not even know it was an earthquake. The people that have sent me pictures thank you a ton I love getting to see what is going on back in Utah. I miss you all and hope that everything is going well. I am happy to say one week and I will be in the same country again, my challenge this week is to search for a way you can grow to be more like Jesus Christ. I promise if you try you will gain more light than you can ever imagine, and you will benefit all that you come in contact with.