tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41926580616737628972024-03-12T16:02:54.526-07:00Josh in EcuadorUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger102125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-83009574540966765172014-06-16T11:18:00.000-07:002014-06-16T11:18:03.816-07:00"Crying: acceptable at funerals and the Grand Canyon." Ron SwansonHey all,<br />
<br />
I can't believe that this is the last letter that I'll be writing. It's the weirdest thought in the world, going home. At the beginning, the focus was, "What will I do once I get home?" Lots of Elders would ask that, and lots of Elders would focus on that. Now, ending up, my thoughts are "Why do I have to go home?" It's really hard and a very strange feeling. I'll be excited one minute to see everyone, and then in two minutes I'll be sad and almost crying. This mission has been so awesome for me and so needed by me, and thinking about not doing it anymore is the hardest thing in the world. Like I said last week, I feel like I am betraying the Lord by being excited about going home and that I am betraying my family by wanting to keep working. I would make a very good Two Face if they were ever going to remake Batman.<br />
<br />
Well, a lot of time has been spent reflecting on my mission, and much more time will be spent in the coming days. I have done my best to pick out 10 of the best memories that I have and the lessons I have learned from each one. I will try to be brief so as to not bore anyone, and I also want to point out that I have a lot more than 10 awesome memories from my mission. These are just some of the bigger ones. I think that it'll be a good way for me to end my writings, seeing as everything else I can tell you in person. But, these are memories that are very special for Elder Thomas, so Elder Thomas should write them down before he is released.<br />
<br />
1. Sector: Guamaní. Companion: Elder Richimondg. Moment: Finding the Escobar family.<br />
<br />
When I got to my first sector, everything was a mess. The house was a mess and the work was a mess. There was a lot to do. We spent a lot of time contacting, which wasn't the most fun thing in the world, but we did it. One afternoon, every appointment fell and we faced yet another afternoon of knocking on doors. Just as we started, it started pouring rain. Pouring. And in Quito, when it rains, it's cold. Plus, there was thunder and lightning. It was terrible and we could barely see in front of us. We talked about what we should do. We had a few options, such as studying in the house while the rain stopped or visiting a nearby member to wait the rain out. We praying as the rain poured, and I remember looking up and seeing a lady entering her house and feeling something special. Instead of doing the easier thing and waiting out the rain, we decided to be diligent and contact. It wasn't fun. I felt again that we should go to that lady's house and contact her. We did so, and we left the appointment with a new family with desires to be baptized, and that happened. The lesson that I learned there was that good things can happen on rainy days.<br />
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2. Sector: Guamaní. Companion: Elder Sanchez. Moment: The Morales family.<br />
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Part of this happened while I was still with Elder Richimondg, but basically we were working as hard as we could in our sector and seeing few, if any, fruits of our labors. It was getting hard to keep going, working without any success. One Sunday, after a hard week of work with no investigators in church, the bishop called us over to him and presented us to Veronica Morales. She told us that she had listened to the missionaries about a year ago, that they got married to get baptized, but they never got baptized. Right there she told us that she wanted to get baptized, and she did two weeks later. Later, her husband, who could only come to sacrament meeting for his work, called us Sunday around 9 and asked to be baptized that day before sacrament meeting, which started at one. We filled the font as we could and he was baptized that day, completing the family in the Church. Those were unexpected blessings, total surprises to us. The lesson that I learned there was that when we do all that we can, the Lord will bless us with what we need.<br />
<br />
3. Sector: La Gasca. Companion: Elder Paz. Moment: Esteban LeGrand.<br />
<br />
Esteban LeGrand is probably the strongest convert that I have been able to teach. He is awesome, and has already gone to the temple for his endowments and all of that jazz. He has his calling, he is at church every week, he is awesome. And, he contacted us. Elder Paz and I were at the bus stop, and he contacted us thinking that we were high school students, and he wanted to ask us if there was work available in our school. The inital conversation was brief, but we presented ourselves and set up an appointment for the next day. We had little to do with his conversion. We visited him every day, for he lived right by our house, and he did everything on his own. He read almost the whole Book of Mormon in three days, prayed always, and did everything he invited us to do. I get to see him frequently in the offices, and I have grown to love him greatly. I learned there that we don't always have to find them, sometimes they need to find us.<br />
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4. Sector: La Gasca. Companion: Elder Paz. Moment: Santos Ganán.<br />
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Santos was a father of a family where everyone but him was a member, and he had listened to the missionaries off and on for 16 years, never getting baptized. When we first got the the sector, the bishop introduced us to him and asked us to visit him. The first appointment was to mostly get to know him, but the second appointment was game time. Elder Paz was very new, and I taught a lot of the lesson, but it was basically an hour battle with him giving excuses to not get baptized, we'd read a scripture to tell him that that excuse wasn't valid, and we'd keep going like that. Finally, he ran out of excuses, and he accepted a baptismal date right there after the hour battle, and he got baptized. He was sealed to his family about a month ago. I learned there that good things are worth fighting for.<br />
<br />
5. Sector: Various. Companions: Various (esp. Elder Paz and Elder Burr). Moment: Being with them.<br />
<br />
All of my companions were great. Not one of them was disobedient, not one of them had any major problems. I was very blessed by my many companions. I don't remember how many I had, it was around 13 or 14, but two very special ones were Elder Paz and Elder Burr. Elder Paz was so much fun to be around, and we worked so hard together. We had to open a sector where missionaries had done dumb things, and we worked so hard to build up confidence again and to find people to teach. We worked so hard, and we had to much fun. We saw lots of fruits from our labors, and fruits that have remained strong in the Church. I am glad that I have gotten to see him again in the offices so often, and he'll be at BYU studying, too. Elder Burr was such a great companion for me. We got along right away, and we never had fights, yelling, or any ill feelings one towards another. We worked so hard and were so dedicated to the work. Together, we saw many miracles and were blessed in many ways. That was probably the time in my mission where I thought least about not mission stuff. It was 100% working, and we made a great team. I've kept in touch with him ever since he finished last year, and his friendship and brotherhood and very important to me. He was a wonderful companion.<br />
<br />
6. Sector: Lago Agrio. Companion: Elder Burr. Moment: The Fast.<br />
<br />
Things were a disaster in Lago when I got there. Bad leadership, bad membership, bad progress. We worked so very hard with everything, but something would always happen between the members and the investigators and it would impede the progress of the work. My first change, we didn't really see too many fruits. When changes were made and Elder Burr was put in as the branch president, we started it off with a fast. As we finished the fast, I went into a room alone to pray, alone and out loud, something that I hadn't done before. I was going to ask the Lord if what I was doing was what He had wanted from me, for I felt that it wasn't. As soon as I started praying, it felt like someone came up behind me and was giving me a hug. I started crying, and I knew that I was doing all of the right things. I just had to keep going. That was the day that missionary work changed in Lago. We found many families after that fast and saw many fruits from out labors. But, more importantly, I changed a lot that day and became a much more dedicated missionary. What I learned there is that when we are weak, the Lord can make us stronger.<br />
<br />
7. Sector: Lago Agrio. Companion: Various (Burr, Tumpay, Murphy). Moment: The people.<br />
<br />
We helped a lot of people in Lago receive the restored Gospel, and it was amazing to see their lives change. Membership more than triple in the time from April 2013 when I got there to October of 2013 when I left. Families like the Cedeño Gordón family, the Lopez family, the Lema family, the Moreno family, and many, many more were all changed by the Gospel. Those friendships I formed there are very important to me. Saying goodbye to them last week was so hard for me, because I had grown to love them so much. They feel like part of the family, and it is great to visit a year after their conversion and to see that they are still strong. What I learned from the people, those very important people, in Lago Agrio is that changing others changes you.<br />
<br />
8. Sector: Lago Agrio. Companion: Various (Coram, Tuckett, Burr, Tumpay, Murphy). Moment: My conversion.<br />
<br />
Before going to Lago Agrio, I was a good, obedient, hard working missionary. I worked as hard as I could every day, and was able to meet and to help many people receive the Gospel. But, I would say that Lago Agrio was the land of my conversion. I look back in my journal now and recognize my growth there so easily. Especially after the fast mentioned above, I became a different missionary. I didn't work hard because it was expected of me or to gain recognition, I began to work because I loved the Lord and wanted to show whatever thanks I could for His Atonement. I walked in the rain because I loved the Lord. I rarely, if ever, thought about home during the week. I thought only in the investigators, the members, the less actives, the people there. They became my family, they became so important to me. I learned so much serving as the branch president there, and learned how to be a loving leader. I studied hard and grew much in those wonderful six months in Lago. Part of me will always be in Lago Agrio, for that is where I became the man that the Lord needed me to be. I became converted. I became dedicated. I became His. I could talk about Lago Agrio for hours. I began working for love, not for anything else. And that is when I really lost myself, which is the lesson learned here: losing yourself really is finding yourself.<br />
<br />
9. Sector: La Colón. Companion: Elder Ospina. Moment: Operación Matacuy.<br />
<br />
The month of March was a hard month. We had some bad missionaries doing bad things. I have no need to go into the details of what happened, but it was a very real battle of bad vs. good. We worked hard, planned everything out super well, and started taking out the bad missionaries, and we did so successfully, every missionary involved. We took out the bad root in the mission, which allowed us to start growing to be better and more obedient. In my exit interview yesterday with President Richardson, he said that that operation helped the mission so much as we were able to get rid of the bad to replace it with good. I felt bad for the missionaries sent home, but bad things always bring bad consequences. Details can be shared once I am home, but it was a hard month with little sleep and lots of trickery and lies from the missionaries, but in the end, we took them out. There I learned that good beats bad, every time. It may take more time than we would like, but that is always the outcome.<br />
<br />
10. Sector: La Colón. Companion: Various (Dearden, Ospina, Miranda, Burleson). Moment: The Richardsons.<br />
<br />
Probably the biggest blessing of working so long in the offices is how well I got to know the Richardsons. They really do feel like second parents, offering such great advice and guidance throughout my time with them. What I learned most from them, of all of the many lessons, is the importance of loving everyone, no matter how stupid they are. Both President and Sister Richardson are so good at loving people, especially the stupid ones. I have learned a lot about the importance of love in leadership. Before, I would easily get upset with missionaries when they didn't do what they were supposed to be doing. I have learned that there are two ways to get people to follow you: they can fear you or they can love you. Instilling fear may bring you obedience, but not loyalty. Instilling love will bring you everything you want: obedience, loyalty, diligence, honesty, etc. The Richardsons understand the effectiveness of love, and show it so masterfully, which is the best lesson that I've learned from them. From them, I learned that true love and admiration are deserved by everyone.<br />
<br />
Honorable mentions: Peeing blood for a week, loving to study Elder Maxwell's talks, shaking hands with a little monkey.<br />
<br />
Like I said, there are a million more things that I could write, but those are some of the standouts. I tried to be brief, as with details I could talk about each memory for a long time.<br />
<br />
I've had a good week this week, but I am almost out of time to write. Plus, I may as well just fill you in when I get home.<br />
<br />
My mission has been so important to me. I have become my greatest converted, as promised in the MTC two years ago. I have become a servant of the Lord, a defender of the faith, a testifier of Christ. I know that the Gospel that I have preached for two years is true, and that it is worth defending. The truth will be attacked and hated by others, but it will never be abandoned by me. I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior, that He suffered for us, and that by living His Gospel, we can become perfect like Him. He loves everyone, a love that we must try to show as well. I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, and I know that because I know that the Book of Mormon is true through the power of the Holy Ghost. That Book is amazing and will be studied by me every day for the rest of my life. There is nothing more important than the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. I testify that all of these things are true. My mission in Ecuador may be ending, but my mission on earth is far from over. Through my experiences on my mission, I come home ready to keep defending the faith and serving the Lord, and will do so happily until He calls me home. Nothing is more important than this work, the work of salvation.<br />
<br />
I love you all and thank you for your love and support over the last two years. I have felt your prayers, your love, and you kindness from very far away. I have tried to serve in a way so that whatever you think a missionary should be, I have been. I have been obedient and faithful, and any success that I have had has come from that. I thank you all infinitely for all that you have done for me and the numerous sacrifices that you have made for me.<br />
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With all of my love,<br />
<br />
Elder Joshua Jay Thomas<br />
<br />
P.S. I may hop on quickly on Monday to see any last messages or information I may need.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-11450364966120385602014-06-16T11:16:00.001-07:002014-06-16T11:16:25.066-07:00"I know these vents like the back of my chang." Señor Chang, CommunityHey all,<br />
<br />
<br />
I am so sorry to hear about the passing of Grandpa Thomas. I've been praying all week for everyone involved. I hope that you're all doing okay and that your testimonies of the Plan of Salvation and of the Savior have been strengthened.<br />
<br />
I'm writing in Lago right now. President is going to be in Lima all week, so he has a lot to get done today (like changes for next week), so while he's doing that I'm writing on the hotel computer. I won't have the full 2 hours probably, but I'll have enough.<br />
<br />
President was so good to have "planned" this trip conveniently at the end of my mission. We did need to come out here to do interviews and trainings, which we did yesterday, but I know that the date has to do with my leaving. Just I came with him, the other two are in Quito. Yesterday, we spent about 6 hours training. It was tiring, but fun. I had to do it all alone, which was very weird for me as usually I train with at least one other missionary. It's hard to keep their attention when just one missionary is talking, so I had to put up a bunch of videos to keep their attention. We even had nap time. Not really, but it would have been a good idea. Whenever we come to Lago, we do the trainings that we would normally do in three meetings over three months in 6 hours. It is a lot and we go fast, but they seem to do okay with it. There are only 8 Elders in the jungle, so it's easier to move faster. At night, we had dinner with a great family, recent converts that got baptized in April. They love President Richardson and really brought out the big guns.<br />
<br />
This morning, we attended the meetings in the branch for my last time. I was asked to speak by Elder Coram (my old companion and the branch president right now), and I spoke on missionary work. The branch is continuing to grow a at a great rate, but it could be even better. There are 4 or 5 solid families that attend and that keep the heart of the branch pumping, and they have anywhere from 6 to 10 baptisms a month. If they can keep pushing, they'll have a chapel soon, which is the goal of everyone there. There is a wonderful, wonderful spirit there, it is contagious. At the end of the classes, it was time for me to say my goodbyes, but I told them that hopefully I'll be back in July with Dad. It was still very hard to say goodbye, because I'll never be back as a missionary. There are a lot of important people there from my mission. It was hard, but it's part of the process. Missions end.<br />
<br />
Earlier in the week, on Tuesday, was my last leadership council. That was hard, too, because at the end, the missionaries who are "dying" gave their last testimony. I thought I would be okay, but I cried like a little baby, diga. I started out talking about how sad I was when I started my mission because I wouldn't be able to see Batman before I started. I spoke how that was my prize at the end--after serving an honorable mission, I would get to see Batman. I then said that the best prize that I received is the person that I now am. That's when the waterworks started. I don't remember a lot about what I said specifically, but it was a sincere testimony. After, I took pictures with all of my good friends in teh mission, and that was really hard, as well. A lot of them, especially the latinos, I'll probably never see again in this life. But, that, too, is part of the process.<br />
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We were also in the coast for two days this week, which was a good visit. I've grown to love the heat, and the missionaries there are great, as well. We had a leaders meeting and a zone conference there, it went well. Sister Richardson didn't come this time, so I got to be in the hotel with President. It is right on the beach. I wasn't complaining. He's been so great to me, I'll miss being around him so much. <br />
<br />
I read a couple of great talks this week, one by President (then Elder) Benson and one by Elder Maxwell. President Benson talked about 14 principles of following the prophet. It was a great talk, I won't talk too much about it, but at the end he makes the statement that if we want to measure our faith and our obedience to the Lord, we should analyze how well we are following the prophet. Great talk. Elder Maxwell's talk was called "Our Creator's Cosmos," and it as a killer sweet talk that he gave at BYU in 2002, if I remember right. He uses pictures from telescopes to explain scriputres about the creation. It is a great talk, you should read it.<br />
<br />
I'm getting to a really weird point where I'm not sure what I should write you and what I should just wait to tell you. It still hasn't truly hit me that the end is so near. Obviously I know that the 17th is my return date, that in a week I complete my last change, but I think that I don't want to accept quite yet that I need to end. It is a very strange feeling. Part of me is excited to be home and to move on to the needed stages of life that follow, but the more dominant part of me doesn't want the mission to end. It really is the greatest, best thing that I have done or ever could have done with my life. And I feel like I've finally got it down how to be a good missionary and it's time to end. Elder Waddell talked about that, saying that our way to work is 100% contrary to what a business would do. To bring someone new in, train them, and then right when they get good, release them makes no sense in a business, but that is why we know that it is the work of the Lord. He makes it work. But, it's a very weird time for me. I feel like I'm cheating the Lord when I think about going home and finally watching Batman, but then I feel like I'm cheating my family when I think about not going home. It's hard to explain well, but all in all, I feel weird. I'm not letting myself cry, but I feel like I'm constantly on the brink of tears.<br />
<br />
I always thought that serving a mission was a brave thing to do, but really the brave thing is to go home and keep doing what was expected of me for two years. I don't have a companion at my side the whole time nor such a spiritual environment 24/7. Keeping up what I've been doing will be harder and harder as the world gets worse and worse. I realize now that ending a mission takes a lot more bravery than starting one. One phrase that I said in my last testimony was that a mission was ending, but my mission still has a long ways to go.<br />
<br />
There is one thing that I would like to ask of anyone who reads my letters that I liked that Elder Burr did when he left. His last preparation day, his parents send him letters to print off to read on the plane. I don't know what they said, but I liked that idea. If you would like to, I would like to ask you to do something similar, send me a letter to read while flying home. I got my flight schedule this week, and it is going to be a long day. It'll be a sad day, too, I'm sure, and I feel like it would be nice to have some good letters to read. Jack and Eliza should know how to write by now, so I expect letters from them at the very least. If you don't have time, no worries, I can read the scriptures eternally now, diga.<br />
<br />
Next week will be my last letter to you guys as a missionary, I think that I will make it my "Top 10," letter, the bests of my mission. It would be cool if you could send me a similar list of your top 10's over the last two years. A lot has happened, and I need something to talk to you about when I get home so I don't bore you with mission stories. I know that #1 on Nikki`s list will be "Walking into a wall and consussing myself."<br />
<br />
I am so grateful for the Gospel that we have. That video that the Church made for Easter, "Because of Him," is so great because it helps us to remember the simple truths that we have again from the Restoration. One of the phrases is that "because of Him, death has no sting." I know that it's been tough with Grandpa's passing, but I know that it's not the end and that we'll all see him again. Temples are great for that. I will be praying for you all, as always.<br />
<br />
I am ready to work. I'll give it my all this last week that I have. There is nothing greater than the work of salvation. Sorry that the letter is a bit shorter, but for question of time and for knowing that it will be easier to say in person, we'll keep it shorter. I love you all tons!<br />
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Love,<br />
<br />
Elder Thomas<br />
<br />
That is a picture of me eating a worm.<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-88205788975739699552014-06-02T06:16:00.001-07:002014-06-02T06:16:40.481-07:00"What's living if you don't pull your shorts down and slide on the ice, Ren?" Louis StevensHey all,<br />
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I am so sorry to hear about the state of Grandpa Thomas right now. He's been in all of my prayers, and I hope that everything goes well with the situation. I send my love to everyone and hope that we can all feel the peace that the Gospel gives us in tough times.<br />
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This week, we finally had a day without any travels. Just one day though, Tuesday. We took the day to plan and to do a lot of good stuff that we had neglected for a long time. It was a very weird experience for me. We planned a lot of stuff and I won't even be here for most of it. This coming week we have meetings every day, but the next week, President is in Lima for a mission president seminar, so we don't have meetings there. The majority of the stuff happens after I leave, which is very weird to think about. I'm planning stuff that I'll never even do. Weird stuff.<br />
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We're going to be focusing in June about how to retain better and how to find better. In the mission council on Tuesday, the focus will be retaining, and in the zone conferences in June will be training and practicing on finding new people to teach. We're seeing a problem in the mission that too many missionaries think that when we say that they need to find people, the only way to do that is to knock on doors. But, there are tons of awesome ways to find people. Chapter 9 is full of awesome ways to find people, and few of them talk about knocking on doors. And, as the chapter teaches, the best way to find people is through the members.<br />
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A lot of times the members don't even realize that they have references until they are asked the right question. For example, a lot of times if the missionaries ask, "Who do you know that could benefit from the message of the Gospel?" a mental block is put into play because the question they hear is, "who do you know that could be baptized?" And no one thinks that their friends would be baptized. Better questions to ask are, "Who do you know that has recently had a birth/death/accident in the family" "Who do you know that seems to be lost in life?" "Who do you know that is struggling with a sin/addiction?" Questions like that don't shut the mind off, they actually open them up. When we ask like that, the members don't think of the word "baptism," they just think of people that need help. And the people that need help are 90% of the time ready for the Gospel. So, that's one thing that we'll be training on, well, that the other missionaries will be training on, in June.<br />
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There are other great ideas for finding, many that get invented as you go. A great way that I have found that works for me is to just offer to sing someone a hymn. We knock on their door, and mention that we are missionaries, and we offer right away to sing them a hymn. That has gotten us into a lot of different houses, and some of the people that let us in have gotten baptized. The trick is to find a good balance between finding through the members and finding on our own. If we try to do just one, it's not very effective.<br />
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Another good way for all of us to find people to teach is to talk about the family. No one gets mad talking about their family, unless you are the Kardashians. We contact a lot of taxi drivers in our travels around Quito, and the fastest way to get to a Gospel discussion is to talk about the family. Always, always, always, something comes up that you can tie to the Gospel. A common line here is, "My son is a chump. He drinks all day and is a bum." Well, we've got good news, we can fix that. But, they all live in the other mission so we never get to teach them. There are just so many excellent ways to find people, we just really have to have the desires to do so. Chapter 9 is a bomb chapter, you should read it.<br />
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Wednesday through Friday, we were in beautiful Otavalo for my last time as a missionary, I think. It was a great trip, there are tons of missionaries there, around 80. Poor President, that's a lot of interviews. But, they were good meetings. Like I've explained, we talk about the Book of Mormon the whole time. We've done the training around 20 times in the month, so we had it down pretty good for these last meetings. We just keep talking about the Book of Mormon and we watch various videos until President finishes all of the interviews. Depending on how the interviews go, that can be a long time or not too long, and we had a good mix of both in Otavalo.<br />
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The last one, I changed it up a bit to not get too bored and busted out a fun analysis of Mormon 7. I think that it is one of the best chapters for missionary work, and we hardly ever use it. It's the last chapter that Mormon actually writes himself, what he would consider to be the end of the book. He busts it out big time, and it is in that chapter that Mormon himself explains what he would consider to be the purpose of the book he put together. He explains a few key things in just a few short verses:<br />
The Lamanites (and many others reading the book) are part of the house of Israel.<br />
We have to repent if we want to be saved.<br />
We have to abandon our weapons of war, or submit ourselves to the will of the Father.<br />
We have to both learn of and follow Jesus Christ.<br />
Through Jesus Christ and His Atonement, we can return to live with God again.<br />
The Book of Mormon was written to support the Bible, and the Bible was written to support the Book of Mormon.<br />
We must live the doctrine of Christ, or His Gospel (Faith, Repentence, Baptism, Holy Ghost, Endure to the End)<br />
It's pretty much everything that we need people to know to follow Christ, all in 10 verses. Pretty dope, it's like he's a prophet or something. We talked about the chapter for various minutes with the missionaries in the last group, and hopefully they will use it more in their teachings, because it is a power chapter, much like Mosiah 4 or Moroni 10.<br />
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Going along with that, it is interesting to note the most important chapters in the Book of Mormon, as most of them are the final words of the prophet teaching. We can consider 2 Nephi 1-3 are the final words of Lehi, 2 Nephi 31-33 are the final words of Nephi, Mosiah 4 the final words of King Benjamin, Samuel the Lamanite, Mormon, Moroni, many of them were the authors of the power chapters, and those chapters were their final words. I feel like the prophets are at their strongest when they are physically weakest and know that the end is near. That may be one of the reasons why Mormon 7 is so powerful. Mormon knew what he wanted his last words to be, and he made them good. I love the Book of Mormon.<br />
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I set the goal to read all of Preach My Gospel one more time in my last change, and this coming week I should be finishing it up. I don't know how many times I've studied it but now, but even after two years of doing so, I am still learning from it. It's interesting going through it again. There are parts that I never remember having read, but things that I recognize that I do while I teach, kind of a natural development of a skill that Preach My Gospel says that I should have. But, there are also tons of things that I feel like they weren't there before that would have been so nice to have known during my mission. There is so much to learn in the book, and reading it again and again helps me to recognize how much more I need to improve to become a better missionary. There is always so much to get better at in life, always something to work on.<br />
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For example, in chapter 12 there is a section about filling out the baptismal record. I testify that I have never done anything that it suggests there, and they would have been great things to have done if I had known about it. Woops. Did you know that you're supposed to fill out the record in the baptismal interview? I sure didn't until two days ago. Also, did you know that it's a commandment to live the Word of Wisdom? Just kidding, I'm not that lost.<br />
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Preach My Gospel really is such a blessing to have today. We can be much better sharers of the Gospel with the things that it teaches us. It is so packed of so much good stuff, that everyone needs to study it as often as they can. I loved the invitation in Conference for everyone to have a copy and to study it. It's true--we're all missionaries and for that we all need to be studying how to be a better one. I'll keep up my study of it as well as I can so that I don't lose my missionary habits, diga.<br />
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I read a great talk this week by President Benson. He talked a lot about the Book of Mormon. His talks caught my attention after having used Chapter 5 of Preach My Gospel so much in the interview trainings this month. The talk I read was called "Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon." It is a great talk, and be summed up in a few words: "You losers, use the Book of Mormon more." The talk is not very long, but that really is what he wants to say. It is such an important key in everything we believe, and we have to rely on it more. There are a few quotes that I would like to attach:<br />
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“Few men on earth,” said Elder Bruce R. McConkie, “either in or out of the Church, have caught the vision of what the Book of Mormon is all about. Few are they among men who know the part it has played and will yet play in preparing the way for the coming of Him of whom it is a new witness. … The Book of Mormon shall so affect men that the whole earth and all its peoples will have been influenced and governed by it. … There is no greater issue ever to confront mankind in modern times than this: Is the Book of Mormon the mind and will and voice of God to all men?”<br />
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And<br />
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I do not know fully why God has preserved my life to this age, but I do know this: That for the present hour He has revealed to me the absolute need for us to move the Book of Mormon forward now in a marvelous manner. You must help with this burden and with this blessing which He has placed on the whole Church, even all the children of Zion.<br />
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It is a great talk that really inspired me to find more ways to use the Book of Mormon in everything that I do. We really do need to focus a lot more on our reading of and sharing of the Book of Mormon. He says a lot more about it, but we can get the picture with the two quotes I pasted on. So, you losers, use the Book of Mormon more.<br />
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You may ask, "Elder Thomas, you are always traveling and in meetings, how did you study so much this week?" Well, my friends, the answer is simple. We had about 20 meetings for interviews, saying the same things in each one. President and Sister Richardson each train for about an hour and a half in total, and after 5 times, we have what they say memorized. So, we discovered that we can sneak in to the back and take that time to study. Brilliant, we just jumped up 300% in study hours. Boo yah.<br />
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Well, that's about all that I studied this week and about all that went on. Tonight and tomorrow and Monday we'll be in the offices planning all of our trainings, it's a lot to do. We need to plan the leadership council on Tuesday, the zone conference trainings, and the leadership meeting training. Lots to do, but it's good to be busy. I'm excited to fast, although I am already hungry. Here we fast lunch to lunch instead of dinner to dinner. Dinner to dinner is better. Plus, hardly anybody actually fasts here. Yay, South America!<br />
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Anyways, I love you guys! I hope that all is good, and I hope that everyone can feel the peace of the Gospel as some tough things are probably going to be happening this week. I'll keep you all, especially Grandpa, in my prayers.<br />
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Con amor,<br />
<br />
Elder Thomas<br />
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Also, I may not be able to write next Saturday. If all goes according to plan, I'll be going out to Lago next week with President to do interviews. If you don't hear from me, don't worry, I haven't died.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-7310373226677416742014-05-26T10:14:00.002-07:002014-05-26T10:14:30.009-07:00"I am making a quality cucumber shake here, Ren!" Even StevensHey all,<br />
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<br />
Well, we had a pretty fun week this week that totally flew by. Elder Miranda didn't even know today was Saturday, he thought it was Friday. The visit from Elder Waddell kept us very busy, but it was awesome.<br />
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On Tuesday, we went a day early to Otavalo to do divisions with some zone leaders there and to make sure that everything was set for the training from Elder Waddell. The divisions went well, but I was exhausted afterwards. We visited a family that lived halfway up the mountain and it took us around 45 minutes to arrive at the house. But, it felt good to work outside all day and to see how the zone leaders are doing. It was a fun time to work that day. I took more pretty pictures.<br />
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On Wednesday, we got the chapel set up nice, and the Waddells and the Richardsons arrived around 10:00. We said quick a quick hello to them, and then Elder Waddell did some interviews. The acutal training was from 11 until 4:30, and the time flew by super fast, super fast. After the meeting, we had a leadership meeting, then at night he met with all of the ward and stake councils in the area to train/correct them. He corrected a lot. I'll put details about the training a little further along.<br />
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Wednesday night, we went back early while Elder Waddell trained the ward and stake councils to be able to prepare the chapel before they got there in Quito. They stayed the night in Otavalo, and got to the chapel around 10 again. Wednesday and Thursday were pretty much the exact same. The ward/stake council meeting was bomb. He corrected a lot of stuff.<br />
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Friday we had the last meeting in Quito again, but in the north part. Same speal, they left at 4 to go to the airport. The time went by so quickly, it was amazing. I can't believe that the week has already ended.<br />
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I learned a lot in the training. Elder Waddell visited the mission in November of 2012, and taught a lot of the same stuff, but he did change some stuff up to keep it interesting.<br />
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The first thing that he talked about was how missionary work changed on June 23rd, 2013, the day of the broadcast of Hastening the Work of Salvation. He said that before that day, we were all Missionary 1.0, our only job being to baptize. But, after that day, we got upgraded to Missionary 2.0. We still have the job to baptize, but now it is way more than just that. More than baptize, we need to convert, retain, and activate. We now have three jobs, not just one. Working with new members, less actives, and investigators are our main focuses now. Speaking of this, he said it is too big of a problem that missionaries baptize, leave them for the ward, then move on to the next baptism, never thinking of the progress of the new convert. We need to get rid of that culture and really get people converted. That was his theme for his training. Converts, not baptisms. We have a lot more work to do now. One example of this problem is that we are the Area that baptizes the most in the world. Last year, we had 39,000 baptisms in the Area. But, the problem is that there was an increase of only 10,000 people attending sacrament meeting. That's not a great statistic.<br />
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After speaking of our upgrade, he went on to the doctrine of what we were doing. He is a great teaching and taught eloquently. We are here serving now because we were brave before coming here, and the Lord needed us in this exact time to be missionaries. We read in DyC 88:72-72 where the Lord says He will hasten His work in His time, and when that time comes, He will provide Elders. Well, that time is now because President Monson said so. He also spoke that we are here in this mission, not only to help the people, but because we need to learn from the Richardsons. They have what we need to shape ourselves to serve the Lord for the rest of our lives. Pretty dope, right?<br />
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After that, we followed a scripture chain of DyC 2, 1 Nephi 22:9,12, DyC 101:64-65, and DyC 110. This part was sweet, and I'm not sure if I'll be able to summarize it well over email, but it's worth a shot. Plus, I studied it in Spanish, so I may not remember the exact words in English.<br />
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But, in DyC 2, Joseph has the "second" vision, where Moroni visits him and tells him that Elías el profeta will reveal the priesthood to him. Elder Waddell taught that there he is talking about the purpose of the priesthood, which is to seal families together. Through Elías el profeta, Jospeh would get those keys again, seeing as Elías was the last Old Testament prophet to have them, and it was him that gave them to Peter, James and John on the Mount of Transfiguration. It talks later in the section about remembering the promises made to the fathers, which means Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or the Abrahamic covenant. When the promise talks about having offspring like the sand of the sea, that means to say exhaltation. Elder Waddell said that a blessing like that can only be received in the Celestial Kingdom, seeing as now wife could bear that many children in this life. So, the Lord was going to reveal the priesthood, or the sealing keys, to fulfill the Abrahamic covenant, to seal the families together.<br />
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Then, in 1 Nephi 22:9,12, we read about the gathering of Isreal, and that all can receive the Gospel and the promised blessings in the Abrahamic convenant. We read one verse in Doctrine and Covenants 29:7 that explains that it is our job to gather Israel as missionaries.<br />
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In DyC 101:64-65, we reach of two things, the harvest and the garners. The harvest is the gathering of Israel, which we have to work to help accomplish. The garners are temples, because the scripture explains that by going there, they will receive eternal life. So, we need to gather Isreal and get them all to the temple, not just to baptism.<br />
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In DyC 110, the prophecies are all fulfilled. Joseph receives the keys of the gathering of Isreal, was reminded of the Abrahamic covenant, and finally the sealing keys, all happening in the temple. As of that day, the prophecies were fulfilled and we could begin the work to gather Isreal and to bring them to the temple, which is what we continue doing today. But, no one can receive the blessings promised in the convenant unless they are sealed.<br />
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That was a sweet part, he took awhile on it and explained a lot more. I can bust out my notes when we're together. But, after explaining that, he really emphazied the point that it is not baptism, it is the sealing, It's not the font; it's the altar. He told us that baptism is a necessary step to entering the temple, and that is why our work in baptizing is so important. But, it really is only the door at the beginning of the path of discipleship--there is so much more after. He quoted Elder Nelson, and, paraphrasing, he said, baptism without temple ordinances has no worth. Baptism followed by temple ordinances is the most valuable thing that we have. He also said that the best missionaries are those who understand the Abrahamic convenant.<br />
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After that, Sister Richardson taught about how to develop Christlike Attributes. It was great. She said that to imitate our heroes, we need to be like them, and to develop Christlike attributes, we need to have a cape like any superhero would have. In Spanish, cape is capa.<br />
C-Creer<br />
A-Aprender<br />
P-Pedir ayuda<br />
A-Actuar<br />
Believe, learn, ask for help, and act. It was a good training.<br />
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President then spoke about how to follow the Spirit better in the work. He gave many great suggestions, and helped remind us of the importance of the Spirit in the work.Three key things that we need to do to have the Spirit are: the study of the scriptures, being worthy, and praying often. He said that missionaries can convince, but only the Spirit can convert. We need to do all that we can to invite Him in every lesson. I really like that phrase that missionaries can convince, but only the Spirit can convert.<br />
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Sister Waddell then spoke about setting a good foundation. She doesn't speak Spanish, but her husband translated for us. It was a good talk about how we should leave the mission with a stong foundation in Christ, ready to face any challenge that we have with faith.<br />
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After them, Elder Waddell took the rest of the time. He killed it hard on a talk about obedience. That's one that I'll have to say in person. He ripped it apart. He started by saying, "I didn't want to talk about this, but we all know what happened a few months ago here." And delivered a quite needed machete. Any wicked missionary there would have wet their pants, an easy way to know which ones aren't obedient. It was awesome, seeing it from the view of someone who is obedient. In Spanish, we would say, "La mamá de los machetes."<br />
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He then spoke about how important the Spirit is, giving examples in the scriptures. Without the Spirit, we don't have success. He used Alma 17, 18, and 26 to talk about Ammon and how his power came from the Spirit, and a great quote from Preach My Gospel that says basically that if we don't teach with the Spirit, we won't have success, no matter how much talent we have. Super true, diga. We need to bring the message to the hearts of the investigators, and only with the Spirit we can do that. He repeated the phrase that missionaries can convince, but only the Spirit can convert. We've gotta have the Spirit.<br />
<br />
He finished talking about the steps of the Gospel, and that it is too easy to skip repentence, especially here in South America, and go right to baptism. But, the scriptures Alma 34:15-16 and Helaman 15:7-8 teach us that everyone needs to have "faith unto repentance," if they are to be converted, not convinced. Three things that we do to help them to have faith unto repentence is to help them to pray, to read the Book of Mormon, and to go to Church. If they do those things, they are converted. To do these things, we have to be strong with our compromisos, which will offend many people and make them not want to listen, but we still need to be bold. Each person needs to do those things before baptism to be converted. There are baptisms without those things, but there are not conversions without those things.<br />
<br />
There are a lot more things that I would like to write that I learned, but that'll do for now. In the future I can explain more. It was a much needed training for the mission. We really do need to focus on much more than baptism, although that is an important part of our work still. We need to convert, retain, and activate. Lots to do. We received the promise that if we active less actives, we will find many new people to convert. We need to be Missionary 2.0 now.<br />
<br />
I got to listen to the training three times, which was a big blessing, and allowed me to really listen to promptings that I received from the Spirit. The two biggest things that I felt that I need to do personally are,<br />
<br />
1. I need to become a true Gospel scholar, a master of the scriptures.<br />
2. I have built myself a good foundation, now the question is: how do I want my house to turn out?<br />
<br />
And those are the things I will be pondering about over the next several days and weeks. There is just so much to learn.<br />
<br />
It was such a privilege to have the Waddells here and it inspired me to be a better missionary and to work even harder. Elder Waddell really is called of God to serve as a Seventy, and he has a great ability to help us understand our destiny and our identity. It was one of those meetings that you wish could keep going and going.<br />
<br />
Well, that was my week. There is so much more that I would like to say, especially about the sweet machete that he gave (it was awesome), about the visit in greater detail and in ways that email makes difficult to do, but I hope that you could learn something from what I learned. It is conversion, not baptism, It is the altar, not the font. This is a great work to be involved in.<br />
<br />
I love you guys tons! Happy birthday to Nat and Dad. I hope you all have a wonderful week and that you can go to the temple.<br />
<br />
Con amor,<br />
<br />
Elder Thomas<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-87368248836164306202014-05-19T15:11:00.001-07:002014-05-19T15:11:25.828-07:00"It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me." Batman, digaHey all,<br />
<br />
<br />
Well, if there is one lesson to be learned, it is that dead dogs smell really bad.<br />
<br />
<br />
This week flew by for me. These next few weeks are going to fly by because we don't have any down time whatsoever. Especially with the visit from Elder Waddell, we're going to busy every single day to help make sure that everything runs smoothly. We've gotta have lunch, get everyone there a half hour early, have the meeting, finish on time, we have meeting with the ward councils at night, it is a lot to do. And, probably not a good idea to mess up. If we do, we'll just blame it on the new guy. Problem solved.<br />
<br />
We went to the coast for my last time this week to do the interviews. I ate my last encebollado there, and President let us go to my favorite lookout point before going back. We have some good missionaries out there, and the work is finally starting to pick up in the coast. Before, it was known for being a very successful zone, but the work and the excitement started dying down. There were some problems with disobedience, not just with the missionaries but with the members, too, and now the stake is suffering quite a bit. But, the work will go on, we made some changes, and we're seeing improvements in the stake. We are focusing a lot there on using the ward council to work together to build the stake back up, and it is working. It is a pretty area, killer hot, which can lead some people to fall into temptations. We send the obedient missionaries there, and we're seeing a good change.<br />
<br />
That is probably one of my favorite things about being able to travel around so much with President is that we get to see each missionary at least once a month. That allows us to really see the progress of each missionary, which is a real blessing. Some missionaries don't really progress because they don't want to be obedient and they are problems their whole missions. Some missionaries make slow, but constant progress which can only be seen with patience and with several months. And some missionaries come so ready and skyrocket in their progress. It is also interesting to see how our initial feelings of the new missionaries are, and how accurate they usually are. But it really is a blessing to go to a zone, teach them how to do something, and come back in a month and see how it has helped them to serve better. I love that. Everyone can progress, and the blessing of being here for 7 months now is that truly every missionary has the potential to be great, we just need to be patient and guide them along the way.<br />
<br />
On Thursday and Friday, we had interviews here in Quito. They went well. Interview month is crazy. Of the three things we do, interviews, zone conferences and specialized trainings, my least favorite month is interview month. It is just so much to do. The other meetings are one, maybe two meetings a week, but with interviews, President needs 10-15 minutes with each of the 185 missionaries here, which creates the need to have a lot of meetings. Plus, with Elder Waddell's visit for the next week, which is a great blessing, we have to squeeze in even more meetings in less days than usual. It is a lot of stuff, and a lot of saying the same thing many times. I don't get bored of talking about the Book of Mormon, but the other stuff, yep. But, interviews are highlights for the missionaries and helps out President a lot to better know how to help the missionaries out. So, while it may not be the most exciting month, it is probably one of the most important that we have.<br />
<br />
I've wanted to get better organized with all of the things I've been studying for a long time but, shocker, I haven't had any time. Today I finally had time to go and buy stuff to get all of the talks I have well organized. I'm gonna make a few folders and have the talks by speakers. What has happened is that I have read a ton of talks, and I just throw them where and can't remember where they are or accidentally throw them away. Now, with the Folder300, I'll know where everything is and be able to lug it around with me while we travel to be able to study them more and more. I love studying so much, not just Gospel stuff, but everything. I've told you guys a lot that that is one thing that I don't like about being in the offices--in the past two weeks we've only had 3 days to study. But, it's what the Lord needs from us now I guess! I'm excited to be organized. I figured that those things should be bought with personal money since it isn't really a proselyting need, so I took out $20 dollars to buy a few organizational things. I hope that's okay.<br />
<br />
I was reading a great talk by my man Neal. Kid nails it every time. It is called, "The Pathway of Discipleship." He gave it, I think, shortly after finding out that he had cancer. After events like that, I think people get more spiritual, and he even admits that it's true in his talk. He talks about how if we realize that we are truly immortal in our destiny, we would do better to take eternally important decisions in our lives. His whole talk is about how that mentality will help us to become better disciples, better servants, better friends, better everything. I really loved his talk. He gives such wonderful talks. There is a lot I could cite from it, but I'll just put on this one quote:<br />
<br />
In that cumulative process, today’s small inflection for good adds to what becomes tomorrow’s mountain of character.<br />
<br />
Little things really do make a big, big difference. Gotta love Elder Maxwell.<br />
<br />
Oh, by the way, it was really nice to talk with you guys on Mother's Day. Good to see you guys. I wanted to thank you for always being appropriate in our calls home, all four of them. Many of my companions don't choose to be too obedient on call day and talk to their families for 2 hours or so. I've loved that in every call, when we hit the 45 minute mark, Dad is the one who reminds us that it is time to wrap it up. Plus, it would have been easy to be "trunky" for the whole call and just talk about things that would happen as I come home, but we focused on mission stuff and your life stuff, but not really too much about me going home. I really appreciate things like that. Having a supportive family that talks about my mission and not my coming home helps me to work even harder. It is a great blessing that not everybody has. I am grateful for you help and your encouragement to keep going, and when the time comes, we'll see each other again. But for now, there is no reason to talk too much about that.<br />
<br />
I was pondering the other day on some of the many things that I've learned on my mission. For me, being obedient and being diligent has felt very natural and easy my whole mission, and I have never dwelt on thoughts about the end and going home. I was thinking about why that has come easily for me and why maybe some others struggle with that. I think I hit an "ah-hah!" moment early on in my mission.<br />
<br />
I think a big problem is that missionaries view the mission as a two year pause of their life; they leave things behind and their mission is a two year, short lived but happy life, then they go home and get back to the old things. There is your mission life and your "actual" life. I think a key to losing yourself in the work is to realize that this isn't a different time in your life where you spend a special kind of temporary service; it is a part of your life, your real life, and it is just the start of a lot more time serving. The only real difference is that we get to serve every hour of the day, which is a great blessing. This is not a separate life; it is really just the beginning of a life of devoted service. Having a mentality like that takes away the "if I can just make it two years, I'll have my stuff again" mindset and replaces it with thoughts of, "if I can do this right, I'll be ready to serve the Lord however He asks for my whole life." I think that too often missionaries trap themselves in thinking about two years, when two years really has nothing to do with it. It's just the time we get to serve in a place that is far away. The service never ends, so there is really no need to think about the end. I think that is one key to being a good missionary, and something that many people can't quite get.<br />
<br />
That was pretty deep, diga.<br />
<br />
Well, with all of the travels and whatnot, I didn't study too much so I don't have too much to share or tell you this week. This week with Elder Waddell I should have some sweet stuff to share. I hope he likes to joke around or it's going to be a really uncomfortable week. I should probably say something about the prayer he said in Conference, too, to gain some brownie points there.<br />
<br />
Oh, yeah, one more thing. We sort of got a little crazy in the apartment one night, and in self defense, I may or may not have broken the shower hose. I know that that sparks many good questions, but we'll just leave it at that. I may need to pay for that...but it wasn't my fault! It was four against one, I just did what I could to survive.<br />
<br />
Anyways, I love you guys tons! We'll talk in a week!<br />
<br />
Con amor,<br />
<br />
Elder Thomas<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-85993408311885285042014-05-19T15:08:00.002-07:002014-05-19T15:08:50.959-07:00"What do you do in the Lumberjack Club?" Ren Stevens "We talk about...lumber lore..and we sing lumber songs..." Louis StevensHey all,<br />
<br />
Nobody tried to rob me this week, bummer.<br />
<br />
It's been a crazy week--the typical when all of the new missionaries come. We have a lot to teach them in little time, so it's a week that goes by quickly after we do all that we have to do.<br />
<br />
I have a new companion, my replacement! His name is Elder Burleson, he's from Michigan. He finishes his mission in December, and he'll be great. For some accidental legal problems, he got transferred from his mission in Peru to Ecuador in January and is great leader. He seems great, I'm excited to get to know him better this change. He's a horse trainer and has tons of cool stories from various jobs he's had, I feel like he's at a Grandpa level with the amount of cool stories that he has. So, I'll be with him and Elder Miranda for this change training them in, then they'll be all on their own! This month is going to be a busy month.<br />
<br />
We have interviews this month, as I think I talked about last week, and we're focusing the time we have to train on the Book of Mormon. When we have interviews, we have around 22 meetings to do them. We don't want missionaries just sitting around for a long time waiting for their interview, so we divide the zone into two groups, one before lunch and one after lunch. Usually I get super bored of doing the same training so many times, but not with the Book of Mormon. I could talk about that book all day long. I've done it every day for 2 years, and I'm still not sick of it. Gotta love it. But 22 meetings is a lot of meetings.<br />
<br />
We're also going to have a visit from Elder Waddell from the 21-23 of May, and we're excited for that. We've gotta be super prepared for it with food and all that jazz. With a mission president, you can run a little late, but we're not so sure if a Seventy feels the same way. Here Papa John's doesn't give us the half our guarantee (shocker) so we'll see how we can work that out. We're not sure how much we personally will interact with Elder Waddell, it'd be cool to get an interview with him or something. But, he may just want to be with President and Sister Richardson and talk about old people stuff. Who knows! We'll at least be at each of the three meetings with him, which is a bonus. When he came in 2012, it was an awesome meeting and I'm sure it'll be the same this year.<br />
<br />
With all of the stuff with the new missionaries, we didn't have one single day to study this week. Bummer. I have had a lot of study goals for my last change, but we never get study time so it's tough to me. The biggest thing that I haven't like about being in the offices is how little we get to study. But, maybe I'm supposed to learn how to find time to study even when it seems like there isn't time to prepare myself for the future. Gospel study needs to be a priority. Maybe I can get better at finding the little times to get studying more.<br />
<br />
My goal at getting better with love and charity is helping me a lot. I'm praying every day for help with that, and I call at least one missionary each night to see how they're doing and to express my appreciation and love for what they are doing. It's so important to know that when we push them or ask them for more, it is because we know their potential, not just because we want to see more numbers. A phone call can make a big difference with that. That's one thing that I've learned from President Richardson, he can do a lot with just a phone call. So, maybe we're not studying, but I do feel like I am progressing in the Christlike attribute that I chose this month.<br />
<br />
One of my goals is to finish Preach My Gospel one more time this change. I recently finished chapter 4, and loved it tons, maybe a little too much. While studying it, I realized how much of an influence the Spirit has had in my mission. I feel blessed as a missionary to be in a state where it feels weird when the Spirit is not with us than when it is with us. It plays such an important role in everything in the Church, especially missionary work. Looking back on every person I've taught, I can remember distinctly the point where they felt the Spirit, and that what we were saying became less important. Feelings more than teachings are what makes missionary work successful. I remember listening to a talk by Elder Bednar where he said that in a survey of recent converts, 40% had no idea what the missionaries were talking about on the first lesson, but they felt something and wanted to come back. That is so true. I doubt anyone understands what we teach in the first lesson. A lesson is a success if they can feel the Spirit, not if they understand every word.<br />
<br />
There is a great example of that in our mission, Elder Smith. He is still working on his Spanish, he's a district leader and training now, and doing a great job. A lot of people can't understand him very well still, but he's baptizing like a maniac because whenever he talks, he invites the Spirit, every time. That's an amazing thing to see, and a testimony that we don't do too much as missionaries, but the Spirit guides us and helps us in everything. Good guy, the Spirit. Good book, Preach My Gospel. Do you all have a copy of it yet?<br />
<br />
We went to a cool place today, Pululagua. It's the most populated volcanic crater in the whole world. We had our mission council there in December if you remember well. We hiked to the bottom with President and Sister Richardson and had a sweet view, then hiked back up. It was a pretty tough hike, but super worth it. The view was awesome, I'll attach pictures. Elder Hess and I went running in the morning, so we burned tons of calories today. I'm super hungry. One of the secretaries, Elder Beltrán, is pretty chubby, the classic chubby funny guy. We weren't sure if he was going to make it, but he did it! Yay! And when we finished, they totally interviewed us to be on the tourism section of the news, and we dropped a missionary moment there. Super sweet, plus I bought a sweet statue of a Blue Footed Boobie made out of a seed. Dope.<br />
<br />
I hate weeks where we don't study because I run out of things to talk about. An Elder got his gall bladder taken out on his birthday, there's something.<br />
<br />
If the topic has moved to gall bladders, it's probably time to end the letter.<br />
<br />
We're talking tomorrow anyways, so that'll make up for what I didn't write today.<br />
<br />
Anyways, love you guys. Congrats, Madsens, on the new baby. Here, common girls' names are: María (for the Virigin), María José (Mary Joseph), María Belén (María Bethlehem), and Betsabe (Bath-Sheba). Not sure if you want to go with any of those.<br />
<br />
Love you guys! Talk to you tomorrow at 7!<br />
<br />
<br />
Con amor,<br />
<br />
Elder Thomas<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-65890577811043667782014-05-05T11:49:00.000-07:002014-05-05T11:49:11.287-07:00"Yeah, hi, I'd like to order an emu." Louis StevensHey all,<br />
<br />
Well, let's start off with some good new! Today, a family I taught in the Gasca got sealed in the temple! We taught the husband, Santos, who was the only non-member in the family. He had listened to the missionaries for over 16 years and never got baptized. While Elder Paz and I were working in the Gasca, he finally got baptized. Last weekend, Elder Paz and I went to visit them for part of our preparation day in the afternoon, and it was great to see them again. They were so very happy to have arrived at their goal of going to the temple. Their daughter will be leaving on a mission soon, as well. What a great family. Elder Paz and I were so happy to see them again and to see their progress over the last year. We wish we could have gone.<br />
<br />
Also, Esteban LeGrand, probably the strongest convert I have, also from the Gasca, went to the temple for his endowments today. He's awesome, and I see him often. He stops by the offices a lot. He's read the Book of Mormon like 4 times, Doctrine and Covenants, is the ward secretary, he's a stud. He was very prepared for the Gospel. He was the "golden" investigator that all missionaries dream about having. He contacted us, invited us to come, and was baptized three weeks after meeting him. He will be living in the U.S. soon as a Cuban refugee, so hopefully I'll continue to see him for many years to come. He is very spiritual and very awesome, and now very endowed.<br />
<br />
Moments like these make every tough thing worth it in the mission. There are some very hard days, very hard weeks where the excitement to work really isn't there. The worst feeling in the world is to have a really hard working week, and then Sunday comes and no one shows up to church. Weeks like that make it really hard to keep going. But, then you have the great moments. It really only takes one great moment to forget about all of the tough things. I remember that at the start of my mission, it was hard for me to be happy and upbeat, starting out working hard and not seeing much success. Every time great moments happen, you forget more and more about the hard things and can only remember the happy things. The longer you have in the mission, the easier it is to always be happy.<br />
<br />
I've had a lot of great moments now in my mission, all of them centered on the people I've met. When I see people like Santos and Esteban really become converted, I feel so blessed to have been a witness to that conversion. They are examples that the Spirit is the true teacher, and that we're only here to support the conversion.<br />
<br />
What I've really learned is how important the Book of Mormon is to having converts. I've been able to keep in touch with a lot of the people I've taught, and many of them are still active and faithful in the Church. All of them are in such a state because they are still reading the Book of Mormon. The ones who have stopped doing so have also stopped going to church. Real conversion can only come through a testimony of the Book of Mormon. I have seen it time and time again, with investigators and with less actives. The less actives don't read the Book of Mormon much, either, causing them to forget about the source of their testimony. So much depends on that book, and that is why it's so important to study it every day. I feel like a lot of times where we feel like life is tough and that our testimony isn't as strong as it should be, it's because we aren't reading the scriptures.<br />
<br />
Esteban is probably the best example I can give of someone gaining their testimony from the Book of Mormon. He is unshakable in the Church. When he told me that he was going to be sent to the U.S. for his refugee visa, the very first thing he asked was, "Will I be able to still go to church and the temple there?" I assured him that he could, and once he knew that, we started talking about other things. He has read it many times in just a year, and he is the kind of person that you can always count on in church. All of that depends on the Book of Mormon.<br />
<br />
Lots of missionaries have lots of stories about the power of the Book of Mormon in the work. For that reason, this month (May), we'll be training on using the Book of Mormon more in our teachings. When Elder Holland came at the beginning of my mission, he told us that we should be using the Book of Mormon in our teachings even before we explain what it is. He spent more than half his time talking about the Book of Mormon, and everything he said was true. I've tried to use his advice throughout my mission, and it's been very helpful. President needs about three hours to interview a zone, so we happily spend three hours talking with the missionaries about the Book of Mormon. The best part about training is that the one training is always the one who learns the most. Good blessing to have. We listen to a talk by Elder Callister, great talk. It's the one where he talks about the two dots, one is the Bible and one is the Book of Mormon. Good guy, Tad.<br />
<br />
In May, we're focusing on developing a Christlike attribute. Each missionary is to choose one and to set goals to develop it. I'll attach the sheet in case you wish to join us. We choose the attribute, set the goals, then pick the "fruit" that we want to see when we finish. I am choosing as my attribute for the month charity and love. I took the questionnaire at the end of chapter 6, and decided that I want to do better expressing my love a lot more with words. I write my love to people often and feel like I look for opportunities to serve, but I want to get better at expressing my love for others as I am physically with them. My goals for the month are:<br />
Read 10 pages of the Book of Mormon each day<br />
Call a missionary each day to do a verification and express my love and appreciation for their work.<br />
Read a story from Christ's life about His love each day<br />
Write a letter each Saturday to someone just to express my love for them<br />
Read a General Conference talk every other day about love and charity<br />
The fruit I would like to see at the end of the month is a "rescued" family. Here, a key indicator in the Area is "rescued" less actives. To be rescued, they need to:<br />
Receive all 5 missionary lessons<br />
Attend church at least two times<br />
Have an interview with the bishop<br />
We also like to give them a calling just to make their return a lot more official. I haven't done too many rescues in my mission, and I would like to as the end is coming up, plus it will keep me working very hard until the end, which is what I want. We'll be working hard and doing lots of divisions and trainings in these next 6 weeks to finish as strong as I can. But, that's my goal for May! Like I said, I'll send the sheet if you want to do it, too. I totally made it, the tree is pretty bomb, right?<br />
<br />
In a couple of weeks, a Seventy is coming to tour the mission, Elder Waddell. He came in November of 2012, so I'll get to hear him twice in my mission, which will be a great blessing. He is a great teacher, I really loved his visit last time. He talked about how to convert people more. He gave us the statistic that in the Area in 2012, about 36,000 were baptized, but there was only an increase in 9,000 in sacrament meeting attendance, which is not what we want to see. Hopefully he'll have some good stuff to say this trip, too. He comes May 21st, so those will be busy days trying to impress him. I've been blessed to hear from a lot of General Authorities in my mission, Elder Holland, Elder Maynes, Elder Uceda, and Elder Waddell (twice). It is always awesome to have them here, and when we listen to them, we never want the meeting to end. Lots to learn from these great men.<br />
<br />
Today, I finished the Principles of Leadership book. I learned a ton from it. I kept in my study journal and in the actual book the notes I took, and I feel like I've grown a lot as a leader as I've read the principles and put them into practice, especially about arriving at goals. In everything I do in the mission, I feel like I've gotten a lot better about talking about how to get there instead of where we want to get. For example, when I first did verifications, I would give comments like, "You need to teach more with members present. What would be a better goal? This week you had 60 in the zone. 80? Okay, get 80 and we'll see if you do it in the next verification." Which really doesn't get us anywhere. A vision doesn't do much until we figure out how to get there. Now, I try to focus on little goals. We figure out how to involve members more, how many we would need to have each day, how we're going to verify it, and we're seeing better results. There are many things that I feel like I am doing a lot better at with being a leader, another example would be being firm and correcting when it is needed. When you put young Elders and Sisters together, dumb things happen. The iron fist of Elder Thomas comes down with force in those times. I still feel like I have a lot to learn, but I feel like I'm improving. There was one chapter on martial arts in the book, I've still got work to do on that. Very key to good leadership.<br />
<br />
So, I finally got mugged on my mission. Almost two years and never once has it happened. But, don't worry, I'm not hurt and they didn't steal anything. In fact, I think that they were the world's dumbest thieves. Elder Hess and I get up at 5:45 each morning to go running. We don't bring anything with us, we just go run and come back to the house, no need for anything more than clothes. We jog to a park, do a loop, then jog back home. Well, as we were jogging to the park, all of the sudden two guys came running up from behind and grabbed us. One hand was one my shoulder, the other holding a knife and pointing it at me. My advice to thieves everywhere: if you are going to rob with a knife, be sure it is sharp. The knife the loser had couldn't cut a banana. Really? Then, the golden phrase by him. "Hey, give me your backpack!" I wasn't sure if I heard him right, because I had no backpack. I looked over my shoulder, and said, "Um...what backpack? I literally have nothing you can rob." I took out my pockets, nothing. Elder Hess was the same. The guy put his knife in his sleeve, then said, "Oh, sorry man. My bad." Then held out his hand to give me a high five and apologize. I didn't accept the high five. They left and I burst out laughing. Elder Hess is young in the mission, so was a little shaken up, but I just laughed and laughed. True idiots, bless their hearts. But, now I have a mugging story! Woo!<br />
<br />
Hopefully Mom doesn't freak out about that one. Don't worry, Mom, they were super dumb.<br />
<br />
This week is change week. I'll be losing Elder Ospina. He's been in the offices for 5 changes now, almost 8 months, and 4 of the changes were with me. He's been my companion for 6 months, and I'm going to miss him a lot. But, he wants to go back in the field to train the new zone leaders we'll be calling in these next few changes. He has 3 more changes in the mission, so he'll train a new zone leader each change. It'll be weird without him. My last change, I'll be training two new assistants, Elder Miranda, who has been here for 3 weeks already, and a gringo. I'll need to teach them a lot, but they'll catch on quick. As of Monday, in terms of the mission, I am officially "dying." But, I really don't feel homesick at all. I can easily stay focused on the work here, with the appropriate thoughts of home every now and again, but nothing that is distracting my from working hard. It'll be a great, hard-working change for me to end on. Time just flies right on by.<br />
<br />
I hope that you're all doing okay without Dash. I'm sure it's weird to not have him in the house, after all of the years of getting used to his Dash habits. He'll be missed!<br />
<br />
I'll have one more preparation day before Mother's Day, but it sounds like we'll be talking at 7 p.m. on the 11th. Can't wait!<br />
<br />
Well, I think that's enough for this week! I hope that you all have an excellent week and read your scriptures a lot. Go to the temple, too. And see Captain America for me!<br />
<br />
Con amor,<br />
<br />
Elder Thomas<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-56621568992831468822014-04-28T05:52:00.001-07:002014-04-28T05:52:44.940-07:00To Dashel Robert ThomasHey all,<br />
<br />
Well, I suppose it would be appropriate to dedicate this one to Dash.<br />
<br />
I am deeply saddened to hear the news about Dash. I didn't believe what I read at first, but after reading all of the letters, it hit me and I spent a few minutes alone soaking it in. Many tears were shed for that dear dog, and I'll miss him a lot. I'm sure that to a lot of people, it seems dumb to talk about the influence of a dog, but Dash really was a big help to me in many ways, and I would like to talk about those things today.<br />
<br />
I wanted a dog for so long. As long as I could remember, I wanted a dog. I don't think I really knew why I wanted a dog, it just seemed like something that would be cool. Whatever the reason, I wanted one. I'm sure that Mom can testify of the many pleading on my part to get one. I think that it was a good lesson for me to ask for so long, and looking back, I think that was my first thing that I really pushed for for a long time. Many things, if I'd ask and get a "no" response, I would call it quits there. I think that a dog was the first thing I really stuck with. If things are worth it, you'll wait for it, as long as it takes. I think that was the first thing that Dash taught me, and I didn't even have him yet.<br />
<br />
I remember very well the Christmas when Mom finally said we could get a dog. It was a small box, red if I remember right, with a ribbon around it. I opened it, and was confused, because at first I didn't see anything in it. I dug around the blue (I think) tissue paper and pulled out a small stuffed dog with a collar and a leash around it. I thought that Mom was trying to be funny and that that was my supposed "dog," but below everything in the box was a green note card, that should still be somewhere in my room still. I have kept that card all of these years because it meant a lot to me. All it said was a large "YES," written right in the morning, and in the upper corner "(Spring)." It clicked, and I remember shouting, "Oh my gosh! We're getting a dog!" No one really listened too much, they paid more attention to their presents after a quick cry of excitement. I remember crying when I got that gift, and I think that that was the first time I ever cried in my life because I was happy.<br />
<br />
I am reminded greatly of the scripture in 3 Nephi,<br />
9 Or what man is there of you, who, if his son ask bread, will give him a stone?<br />
10 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?<br />
11 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?<br />
<br />
I know that Mom didn't want a dog, but she wanted me to be happy. Thinking back on it, I think that that was the first principle of parenting that I learned. Being a good parent means doing things to make your kids happy, which I'm sure doesn't mean that they are things that make you happy. I am sure that millions of Dads get home from work, and the last thing they want to do after a long day is be the punching bag of an army of little kids, but they do it to see the smiles and hear the laughter of their kids. I learned there that loving others means sacrificing for them, a trait that my wonderful mother shows so greatly.<br />
<br />
I learned, too, about the importance for preparing for the future. I remember buying a book about dog training and reading it often. We looked for kennels, thought of names, where he would sleep, what he would eat, how we would walk him, all that jazz. It annoyed me at first when Mom and Dad always wanted to plan something new about getting the dog. I learned, with time, that they were all necessary things to do before he got there. But, once he finally arrived, I realized how even though we plan a lot, there are things to wing always. I guess the principle I learned there was to plan all that you can to prepare yourself, and then be ready to make lots of things up as you go.<br />
<br />
All of these things so far I learned before we ever even had Dash, excepting the last few sentences in the last paragraph. I attribute those lessons learned to him still, because without knowing that he was coming, I wouldn't have learned those things. Now, I'll start talking about when he finally got there.<br />
<br />
I remember the search for a dog to buy, originally looking for a Bischon Frise (I really don't care how you spell that), but the breed came to light first of a Goldendoodle, but then it was settled on a Cockapoo, a word that sounds as silly as it looks. We searched, and I remember one day, I think it was the last day of school, Mom had printed out a picture of a small Cockapoo puppy with green eyes. We had searched hard, gone and visited, and found nothing. Mom asked me if we wanted to go see him that afternoon, and I remember expressing doubt about that puppy at first. I remember that Mom got a little frustrated after working so hard to find a puppy and I didn't even want to go see it. I felt bad, and we decided to go later that afternoon. I think we went to Camp Snoopy that day for the last day of school, but all I thought about was getting the dog. We met up at a McDonalds, if I remember, and held the puppy. He didn't leave my arms after that moment. The owners spoke about how they always hid him because they didn't want to see him go. We bought him, and he became ours.<br />
<br />
I sat in the back of the Suburban with him, with newpapers on the seats to prevent damage from accidents. He licked my face, ran around a little confused, and I remember that Nikki and Amber were jealous that I was holding him. It was there in the car, I think, that we picked out the name Dash, because before going home, we stopped off at Walmart to print off a dog tag with his name on it, "Dash Thomas," with our address and phone number. Since the Incredibles had recently come out, we decided on Dash, which quickly became, Dashel Robert Thomas. (The kid's name in the Incredibles is Dashel Robert Parr.) We made it home, and there were fireworks to celebrate summer break. He was horrified and we tried to comfort him inside, but it didn't work too well.<br />
<br />
Dad always reminded me of the responsibility of having a dog. I listened to his words, but they went in one ear and out the other, I think. That first night, we put him in the kennel, but he whined and whined. I called it quits, Dad spent all night with him. Woops, my bad. I realized quickly that this dog thing wouldn't be too easy. I remember having thoughts about maybe giving up, that this whole "dog" things wasn't so much fun after all. I do remember getting up with him in the morning and sleeping next to him while he slept on the vent by the front door. I remember seeing him and thinking about how unreal it still felt that I had a dog, and that kept me going with him instead of giving up. I studied in that dog training book, and read a little bit about how they whined because they missed their siblings/mothers, and they needed to be around someone. We tried it out, setting up a barricade in my room, and it worked! He whined a little, but soon went to sleep. I think that there I learned that new responsibilities are hard to get used to, but with studies and a good motivation, you figure them out and you realize that they are totally worth it, because you finally have something that you want.<br />
<br />
I loved walking Dash. I remember the days when a walk to the end of the street and back, and that would knock him out for a good 4 hours. Picking up after him on the walks wasn't too bad either, and he didn't need that much food. But, little by little, he needed longer and longer walks, he left bigger messes, and he needed more food. Those thoughts returned of, "is this whole dog thing worth it?" It was tough, I remember doing something I promised Mom I would never do: complain about my dog responsibilities. She knew that would happen. She kept pushing me and reminding me of my promises, and I did my best to keep them. I tried to walk him every day, but I wasn't perfect in that. The initial excitement of getting him started dying down, and the realization of the long time commitment of a dog became more of a reality.<br />
<br />
Mom and Dad kept reminding me of the things I promised, and I kept all of them as best as I could. Because he grew, we put in an electric fence, and he picked up really fast on how it worked. He only got shocked two or three times and then knew what the white flags meant: stay away. He never really had problems with going to the bathroom in the house, I can remember two or three times it ever happened. We were in classes with him to learn tricks and stuff, and he caught on quick. (We stopped going to those classes, woops). He learned how to play fetch really easily, and loved doing it. And seeing him do those things brought me another kind of motivation. Growing up adds to our responsibilities, but the growing up in turn allows us to be able to do bigger and better things. Although it does get a little harder at first, as they learn more, they become more independent. And seeing those growing up progress brings us happiness.<br />
<br />
Dash would touch the leash with his nose when he wanted a walk, move the bowls when he wanted food or water, brought his ball when he wanted to play, growled when he wanted to be petted, and scratched at the door when he wanted to go outside. As he grew, it became more of a thing like me saying, "Hey, you know the things I can do to help you out. When you need something, just ask." He got to that point, and life with Dash continued to get more and more normal, and more and more happy. That's where we all need to get eventually with our Father in Heaven. He wants us to learn all of the right things, and become as independent as we can, and also recognize that help is always there if we need it and ask for it. Growing up is tough, but the progress we make is so important. Heck, Dash even got the point when he could let himself in the garage door! That's my boy!<br />
<br />
He was, however, a barker and a biter, something that he never got better at. We tried very hard to work with that, and he just wouldn't get better. I don't have too much more to say about that, because it doesn't take a lot of words to say that he barked and bit a lot, but that's just a good reminder that no matter how hard we try and work at it, we and all of those around us will have flaws and weaknesses that we should always help with, but also accept it as part of them sometimes.<br />
<br />
I loved my walks with Dash, and the people I often walked with. Those walks involved great conversations that helped me personally. I remember that those walks were important times for me to be able to think about all kinds of things. I loved using those walks as ways to get away when I was invited to parties or whatever where dumb things would be happening. I'd take him on a long walk, just him and me, and I loved that. It was one those walks that I dedicated a lot of time to thinking about my own future, the things that I wanted to accomplish and the things that I wanted to have. Those walks helped me to make initial decisions that led to bigger, better ones. Those walks became very special moments for me. That was one of the things I was most looking forward to about going home. I am saddened to know that that won't be possible any more, but I will always remember those walks, be them alone or with someone else, as very happy, very peaceful moments.<br />
<br />
I am grateful for those who have taken care of him for me whenever I haven't been able to, before the mission or during it. I hope that I have said thank you thousands of times for Dash, I have tried to make that something I do often. He taught me to be so very grateful for the things that we have. He was my miracles. I always asked for him, but never knew if I'd ever get a dog. I realize the sacrifices it caused for many, especially Mom, but I hope you know how grateful I am for every single minute that I had with him. I feel more gratitude for Dash than almost everything else in my life. He taught me to always be thankful for what we have.<br />
<br />
I remember making up our version of "Golddigger," sustituting things that Dash did, such as steal underwear, throw up all of the time, jump up on the table to steal our food, with the chorous being, "Go ahead, Dash, go ahead, get down," which was a fun day. He got stuck in the pipe under the road once, that was a fun one, too. I remember how sneaky we tried to be, too, when we would find Dash's throw up before Mom, and we wanted to clean it up before she noticed. We resorted to some crazy things, especially Heather and I. Mom could still probably tell, but it was still fun to try and fool her.<br />
<br />
The nice things about dogs is that they always feel like they are your friends. I remember just feeling better being around him, and I felt like we were buddies. I fought so hard for him, and liked doing things with him. He was always there when you walked home, always barking when Steel walked by, always bringing his ball up to you. I'll miss hearing him, as he sits next to us, growl until we pet him. He was a good friend.<br />
<br />
Sorry if the letter doesn't have a good flow, I haven't revised it well and I feel kind of out of it, but hopefully I got my main points across.<br />
<br />
I remember at the beginning of my mission having the gut feeling that I wouldn't see Dash again. I suppose I know why I felt that way now. I am quite sad about his passing, I was hoping so much to walk with him again. I am glad that he was able to be a fun thing for Eliza and Jack and other little kids, and that he passed away with Mom, Dad, and Amber. That dog meant the world to me, and he still does. I am grateful for all that I learned from him. I have only listed a few of the things that I remember of him and very few of the many memories that I have of him--there are certainly many more. The influence he had on me was one that I will remember, for because of my time with him I learned important lessons about responsibility.<br />
<br />
I loved Dash a lot, and I am grateful for the time that I had to be with him. I'll miss him a lot, and hopefully I can use many of the things I learned from raising him as the time comes for me to start a family of my own.<br />
<br />
Thanks for everything, Dash.<br />
<br />
Con amor,<br />
<br />
Elder ThomasUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-53736343844937537972014-04-19T21:37:00.001-07:002014-04-19T21:37:55.385-07:00"Today is Thursday, Dwight thinks it is Friday. And that is what I'll be doing today!" Jim HalpertHey all,<br />
<br />
<br />
Well, I was in Quito 2 days this week. Lots of traveling, but it was all good stuff that we were doing. And we ate some really good food, too.<br />
<br />
I just watched a new Bible video about la Semana Santa, it was super good with some new clips from the resurrection and other parts of the week. The Church is super true. I'll put some Easter thoughts at the end of the letter and fill you in on the week this week.<br />
<br />
<br />
I only had one day to study this week, which stunk. On Monday, we had the morning to study, then we had to go to the offices a little bit earlier than usual. An Elder, a zone leader, had extended his mission three weeks, so with his going home, we had to do some changes. In the changes, President assigned a new assistant to work with us, Elder Miranda. He is very humble and very awesome. We'll be in a trio until the change ends, then Elder Ospina is going back into the field to work as a zone leader and Elder Miranda will be the one who kills me. I'm excited and sad. Excited because Elder Miranda is awesome and we'll work really well together, and sad because Elder Ospina and I have been companions for 6 months, and right when we're in a great rythm together, it's time to split up. But, that's almost always how it goes. Right when you're getting good at something, that something ends. A good example of that is eating a really good hot dog. You figure out the right stuff to put on it, enjoy the first few bites, and right when you're really enjoying it, you accidentally bite your fingers because you ate the whole hot dog without realizing it. I hope that I'm not the only one that that has happened too...<br />
<br />
We spent the day doing verifications, we had a pretty good week. April will be a weird month because we only have to weeks where we can do confirmations, which is frustrating. But, it'll all turn out okay. We spent the night at President's house and got ready for the trainings we would do during the week.<br />
<br />
On Tuesday, we had a meeting with two zones, Calderon and Ofelia. It went really well, and we put Elder Miranda right to work. He did a really good job, especially considering that he had no idea what was going on. We gave him a crash course, and he was able to use the powerpoints to help him now the general direction of everything. We're doing a good job of doing everything that we need to do in the right amount of time. If you go too long with missionaries, they stop paying attention. We do lots of practices and offer them lots of pizza at the end, and we manage to keep their attention.<br />
<br />
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and this morning, we were in Otavalo. I love going there because it is so pretty there. Wednesday and Thursday, we did the specialized trainings. They went fine, just like the rest of them. We try to change things up a little bit every time just so that we don't get bored of saying the same things 8 times a month. They're fun missionaries there, so they made the training fun.<br />
<br />
Friday was a leaders' meeting, we have one every three months in different groups. We have a lot of new leaders and a lot of leaders that aren't doing a bad job, so instead of complaining about them not doing what we want, we train them for a few hours so that they being to do what we expect. A lot of times people seem to be failing just because they truly don't know what to do. Some can eventually stumble upon how to lead, some do it naturally, and some need you to sit down with them and go step by step how to do the job. We do a little bit of everything in the training, helping each kind of leader. Everyone has the potential, we just need to help them find it a lot. Little by little, they're getting where they need to be. It was another good meeting with some promising new leaders getting their feet set.<br />
<br />
I've learned a lot about how important it is to be patient with the missionaries. When I first got to the offices, if a missionary wasn't doing well, I just wanted to get mad at him for not working well. I've grown to learn how different each missionary is, and that if we aren't seeing the fruits from them that we want, they're probably struggling with something or just don't know what to do. A quick division with them helps out a ton, and as we focus on them as individuals, we begin to look at them not as problems, but as a person needing a solution. It's fun to work with them to help them figure out how to do things. That's a fun part about my job right now.<br />
<br />
Friday afternoon, President gave a fun training to future missionaries in the Ibarra District. That district is the oldest district in the whole Church, no joke. We are trying really hard to be able to make it a stake, and President's training helped out a lot of the youth to go on missions. If they can go on missions, when they get back, they would be a big strength to be able to make the district a stake. We did quick divisions at night, then stayed overnight one more time. For Holy Week, there is tons and tons and tons of traffic between Quito and Otavalo, so we waiting to leave until this morning to avoid traffic. Sister Richardson is still in the states, so we got to stay in the hotel with President. The pictures I'll attach will say enough about how awesome that hotel was. Paradise right there, baby.<br />
<br />
Usually when we go to Otavalo, it is very pretty, but very cloudy. You can't ever see the tops of the mountains, but the green hills are pretty. This trip, we got super lucky. I'll attach the pictures, but one night was crystal clear, which basically never happens there. Otavalo is a very simple city with few lights, so little light pollution. We got to the hotel, right on the lake, and the water was still as can be, making itself a mirror of the sky. It was a full moon, giving off tons of light, allowing you to see the outline of the volcano Imbabura. The stars dotted the sky and there was no noise whatsoever. A perfect night. Would have been a great time to ask someone to marry you. What?<br />
<br />
The next two mornings were also perfectly clear. The sunrise was beautiful, with mist whisping off the lake, creating an awesome light. The sun shone brightly, illuminating the valley and making all colors more vibrant. Not one cloud was in the sky, and you could see the entire volcano Imbabura. Super, super pretty. The birds chirped, the ducks quacked, and the llamas almost spit on President. Super pretty.<br />
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We've had a low key day today. We went shopping for food for the first time in weeks since we've been traveling so much. Now, we have food. I'm on a NutriGrain crave. The box isn't too expensive and they taste great, so I can't complain.<br />
<br />
So, that was my week! I have had no time to study at all, which is a bummer. I want to go over the Conference talks, but I haven't even had time to download them yet. Being busy is great, but we need a normal, low key day in one of these days to be able to study and to catch our breath again.<br />
<br />
Today and tomorrow all of Ecuador has Stake Conference. It's going to be a broadcast from the Area, the first time they've ever done it, we'll see how that goes. Knowing South America, something probably won't work out.<br />
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It looks like you guys had a lot of fun with the family visit this week, thanks for sending the videos. The kids are really cute and Mom and Dad don't look any different. Did you get new couches?<br />
<br />
I am very grateful for this Easter season. Here, the week is filled with a ton of apostasy. Tons. It's pretty sad to see how much weird stuff goes on in the churches here to apparantly celebrate "Pascua," or Easter. The most sad part of it all, I think, is that they pretty much don't do anything in regards to the resurrection of the Lord. They focus so much on His suffering, on His pain, and they somehow think that His pain must become theirs. It is a clear evidence to me of one of the many things that Satan does to gain power--to focus on the loss of a mortal body instead of the eternal resurrection that we are all destined to received. Of course thoughts of receiving a body that can't die would make Satan furious, so he wants people to forget about that as much as they can. Here, it works.<br />
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I am so thankful for the knowledge and understanding that we have from the Restoration of the Gospel. We know that His suffering was great, but it ended. His death was terrible, but it wasn't in any way permanent. The thing that makes it all different is that we truly know that He lives as a glofied being, never to suffer death again. We feel so much more light in our lives focusing on that. Seeing a wooden carving of a beaten and bloodied Jesus carrying His cross is not the message of Easter. The message of Easter is that He did something that no one before Him ever did. He overcame death, and now, we can as well.<br />
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I am reminded a lot of a few scriptures in Doctrine and Covenants that I wish everyone here in Ecuador could read,<br />
<br />
15 Therefore I command you to repent—repent, lest I smite you by the rod of my mouth, and by my wrath, and by my anger, and your sufferings be sore—how sore you know not, how exquisite you know not, yea, how hard to bear you know not.<br />
16 For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent;<br />
17 But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I;<br />
18 Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink—<br />
19 Nevertheless, glory be to the Father, and I partook and finished my preparations unto the children of men.<br />
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The message of Easter has nothing to do with sadness or suffering. The message of Easter has everything to do with light, happiness, and eternal life. Because of this week, we don't have to suffer. It is not the Lord's intention to have us to suffer. As long as we repent, we can feel His love always. He never invites us to suffer as He did, but to follow Him, to put our load on Him, and to learn that through His life, we can live forever with Him. That knowledge makes me happy.<br />
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I testify that Jesus Christ lives. I testify that He loves us. Everything that He did, He did for us, and all that He asks is that we live His Gospel. I will follow Him always, for I know that only through Him can I be happy. He is the Lord of all things. I know these things are true.<br />
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I wish you all a happy, bright, and inspiring Easter. I hope that you can all remember how great it is to have the Restored Gospel and to know how to follow Christ again. I love you all tons!<br />
<br />
<br />
Con amor,<br />
<br />
Elder Thomas<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-15102510332972478722014-04-14T14:45:00.001-07:002014-04-14T14:45:29.378-07:00"I don't even have to floss!" Groundhog's DayHey all,<br />
<br />
Another week under the old belt. And I mean that quite literally, my belts are quite old and starting to fall apart. How the week actually got under the belt is the real question.<br />
<br />
<br />
This week has been a good one. I don't remember if I've explained this to you, but we got through a three month cycle of what we do with the missionaries. One month is zone conference, one month is a specialized training, and one month is interviews with President Richardson. We keep that cycle until the Second Coming pretty much.<br />
<br />
This month we have specialized trainings. We've only had one so far, but it went well for us. We're training on how to teach the Apostasy better, it's a fun training, as I kind of talked about last week. We're studying the Apostasy, like the actual events that happened during the Apostasy. It really is a great Apostasy, there is tons of junk that went on when all of the Apostles died. It's so true what Preach My Gospel says about the importance of teaching it well. We talk about how often times, especially here in South America, many people understand and accept the story of the Restoration, but they don't progress because what they really don't understand is the concept of the Apostasy. Many people here think that any Church is fine, a common phrase is "It all leads us to the same God, right?" And sometimes we get frustrated that they aren't understanding the Restoration, but more often than not it's the Apostasy that isn't quite clicking. We train a bit, then we do tons of practicing. We want to get better at doing practices because if we don't practice, they probably don't do what we ask them or don't do it well. We're spending about 75% of our training times now doing practices. It's going well, hopefully they will now apply everything we learn in the field. If not, they are dumb.<br />
<br />
President does his training on the Restoration, and he does a great job. He talks about the importance of the First Vision, that that should be the spiritual climax of the lesson, and it is true. I don't know how many times I've recited the First Vision, I imagine that between practices and lessons it's getting close to a thousand. But, every single time, without fail, you can feel the Spirit easily and strongly. He talked about how important it is that we say it with feeling, something that some missionaries don't do too well. We need to keep eye contact, testify, and help them to know that they are feeling the Spirit. A very important question to ask in a lesson is "How do you feel?" It is probably the most important question you can ask. What they feel is a lot more important than what they understand (few people understand everything that we teach in the first lesson). How they feel will be something that they remember a lot longer than what we taught in the specific lessons during their investigation of the Church. Again, we spend about 75% of the time practicing, and we've seen some good practices. Woo First Vision!<br />
<br />
I was studying this week about the importance of councils. I learned a lot, great tips there. While there aren't tons of councils of big groups of people, so to speak, in the mission, we do have councils with President every week and the leaders' council once a month. It's important to help everyone have a great experience being part of any kind of council, and it is important to have a council in pretty much everything that we do. The chapter starts explaining that the Godhead is the Great Presiding Council of the Universe. How sweet is that title? How do I apply?<br />
<br />
"Oh, Elder Thomas, what do you do for a living?"<br />
<br />
"Oh, I am a member of the Great Presiding Council of the Universe."<br />
<br />
"Dope."<br />
<br />
It also provided an interesting study of Abraham 4-5, looking for the use of words like us, we, they, our, the gods, indicating a work of many people to build the earth, or a council to do so. I'd never really payed great attention to that before, but it's totally true. Rarely does it talk about one person, if ever, creating the Earth alone, it is always with plural words. Pretty sweet.<br />
<br />
It also explained that the Church is governed entirely by councils and that the purpose of each Church council is to "help God's children enjoy the full blessings of the Gospel." That is the purpose of ward councils, the Council of the Twelve, the Council of the First Presidency, councils of the presidencies of the Church in their various organizations, family councils, all of them. It spoke a lot about the family council, how we should use it to prepare the family for the future, and that when more people feel ownership of a problem on any level, including the family, more will want to find solutions and more gets done.<br />
<br />
It included two talks by Elder Ballard about the importance of councils. It taught a lot, but I won't share everything, just four points he gave to make us have more effective councils.<br />
<br />
1. Remember that it is ALL God's work<br />
2. Focus on the fundamentals<br />
3. Focus on people<br />
4. Promote free and open expression<br />
5. Participation is a privilege<br />
<br />
With number two, he talked about how easy it is to get off track and start talking about things that have nothing to do with the doctrine of councils or trying to discuss deep doctrine of the Church. He explained that if it isn't doctrine, it isn't in the council. He also warned against the danger of not talking about the names of people, and that a lot of council meetings just turn into calendaring. If we aren't mentioning specific names and making specific plans to help that person in the majority of the council, we aren't doing it right.<br />
<br />
I learned a lot about councils from that, it was a great read. You should check it out if you have time in that booklet I sent several months ago.<br />
<br />
In the Book of Mormon, I am reading about Christ's visit to the Americas. I loved seeing His pattern of adjusting His teachings to the needs of the people there. He starts out teaching the big things He taught in Israel, and once He covers, as He explains, what the Lord had commanded Him, He starts sharing things that the people need to hear to really understand. He explains the Sacrament, He explains the whole other sheep stuff, how important true faith is, just a slew of things that they needed to hear. He blessed the children, prayed for all of them, a great, great example of doing what we should do and should say, then looking around to see what else they need. We need to be good about that as missionaries, too. With the new Preach My Gospel way of teaching, we do have specific things that we need to teach them, but we also need to be listening well to be able to adjust the lessons to the needs of the people we teach. If we are robots, people don't think that we are awesome. Although robots are pretty sweet. (See Iron Man)<br />
<br />
In Preach My Gospel, I am currently studying chapter 2 about effective studying. It's a great chapter, I always find something that I want to do better in my studies. What stuck out to me this time as I was reading was the importance of knowing more than you teach. In more than one place, it talks about how we should always be obtaining more knowledge on the doctrine, but rarely, if ever, we will teach everything that we know, But, obtaining more knowledge will strengthen our testimony and help us to be better prepared and better converted with whatever question we face or whatever principle that we teach. So, we need to studying a ton if we want to be a good teacher. Right next to that, it has a quote by Hyrum Smith, I think, about how we know that we're true masters of something if we can teach it to a child and they understand. So, we need to know tons and also know how to sum it up very simply. That being said, if anyone wants to know more about Nephite rock carving customs, I'm your guy.<br />
<br />
Since this month is specialized trainings, we are able to do a lot more divisions, which I love. I love my time in the offices and the things that I am learning, but it feels so good to get out and work for a whole day and teach and find. I miss that a lot. We get to some nights during the week, but never all day long. It's great. I miss a lot of things about working in a sector all day. One thing is that whenever you pass by a little bakery and smell the fresh baked bread, you take a quick pit stop to each a bread or two, drink something, then get going again. I love when citas fall and you have to think of something more productive to do. Teaching people, seeing them understand what you teach and accept it, man, gotta love it. We do good divisions; we're so anxious to work all day that we bust it. We'll do as many as we can this month, I want to do tons in the next two months.<br />
<br />
This week was a little tough for President because his son got married and he didn't get permission to go to the wedding. Sister Richardson and Andrea did get to go, though. President used Skype to pretty much be there all day, and they had a cardboard cutout of him there. He's alone here, so Elder Ospina and I are staying with him for another week or so until his family gets back. We were with him a lot of yesterday to keep him occupied playing games. By the end of the day, the phone they were Skyping with from the States died, so they charged it for 10 minutes and it would die again. Poor President, you could see how much he wanted to be there. But, technology is a big blessing, and he could see almost everything that went on at the wedding. A good example of being obedient and sacrificing to better serve the Lord. Great man, President Richardson. He's in the jungle this weekend for a baptism. I really wanted to go, but no luck this time.<br />
<br />
We went to the Teleférico today for an activity. It was fun, I went at the beginning of my mission, too. I'll send a picture of today and a picture of almost two years ago to see if I've changed at all.<br />
<br />
Anyways, I think I've bored you guys enough for this week. Hopefully you've enjoyed reading at least some part of the letter, and remember that I am always willing to have that talk about ancient Nephite rock carving customs if you are interested.<br />
<br />
Love you guys! Thanks for all of your prayers and support!<br />
<br />
Con amor,<br />
<br />
Elder Thomas<br />
<br />
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The picture with us reading the scriptures is "lámpara" as they say in Ecuador, it would be something like cocky or showy in English. We're gonna use it for our council to show that we're always thinking of the Gospel :) </div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-78068368384199044112014-04-07T23:09:00.000-07:002014-04-07T23:09:55.962-07:00"Infamous? What's infamous?" "It means the he's so famous, that he is IN famous!" Three AmigosHey all,<br />
<br />
How awesome is General Conference? I loved it so much. It's a great opportunity to be around many other missionaries to listen to Conference together. It is a miracle that we have such easy access to watching each session of Conference. In one room, we had it perfectly streamed in English, in another room in real time Spanish. Pretty amazing stuff.<br />
<br />
Well, I'll start off with my General Conference comments then I'll take you through my not too bad week.<br />
<br />
First off, I thought the flowers and stuff behind the speakers were really pretty. Nailed it.<br />
<br />
I thought it was very interesting how a good number of the talks, especially on Saturday, focused on the increasing need to defend our faith. That story of the sister missionary by Elder Holland was a great example, I've had many times where I, too, have wanted to beat people in the face. I just throw a rock at their dog instead. Elder Holland gave a great talk, firm as always. I loved his statements about not having a "comfortable" God who is always happy with what we do, but a God of commandments and high expectations.<br />
<br />
Sister Reeves gave a great talk, as well. She, too talked a lot about standing up for what is right, even when the world says else wise. She spoke in a very effective way about the dangers of pornography and in contrast the happiness that a strong, clean, united family can bring to us. We should have daily desires to change.<br />
<br />
Elder Anderson talked about the trails we will face, I like how he said that the best defense is reading the Book of Mormon--it gives us strength to fight against temptation.<br />
<br />
I love President Eyring. He's a great speaker and a great leader. I loved his statement that every day, we can choose to make or keep covenants and our covenants leave an inheritance of hope for those who follow us. Mom and Dad have done a great job of keeping their covenants and giving us hope for our future. I thought of their example a lot during the talk. He talked about how many of the prophets have the attitude, "Oh, things will work out," an optimism that we should strive to have as well.<br />
<br />
Elder Nelson and Elder Scott both did a good job talking about staying on the right path and preparing ourselves for the opposition that we will surely face in the near future. They both stressed that popularity doesn't affect God's commandments, wrong will always be wrong.<br />
<br />
Poor Elder Hales, he was looking so weak. It is a such a tender thing to see men in such difficult stages of life still dedicating their time to the work of the Lord. As weak as they are, they still give great, great talks. His testimony of obedience was so great, I hope that all of the missionaries were listening. He talked about two kinds of disobedience to avoid--"natural man" disobedience and "selective" obedience. Any missionary who serves right should leave free of those traps of disobedience, but many times that doesn't happen. The obedient missionaries are always the happiest missionaries.<br />
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Elder Cook did a great job of reminding us how important it is to have temples today and the importance of the work we do there. I miss the temple so much, I am very anxious to be able to go there again. Poor President Richardson, he won't be able to go for three years.<br />
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Elder Oaks gave a great talk, one every member should read and study, especially the sisters in the Church. He explained perfectly how things are organized in the priesthood and how we all are part of the duties that the priesthood entails. He is a master speaker. I also liked how he talked about how there is not "up" or "down" in the Church, only forwards or backwards.<br />
<br />
Elder Uchtdorf gave a great talk about not sleeping through the Restoration. I'm sure that was a comical time throughout the talk as many men prodding their seat partner awake to listen to the talk. The three things that make us sleepy are selfishness, addiction, and wrong priorities. Great talk. Didn't even doze off during it.<br />
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President Eyring gave a great talk, I think the one that touched me the most, the one that made me want to act the most on what was being said. I have a bad habit of praying kneeling down in my bed. That leads to half-awake prayers, often falling asleep right in the middle of it. I need to get a lot better about praying, and Elder Eyring talked about how to do that. Very great talk about our heroes and how they influence our lives. It's weird, having Batman as a hero, you'd think I wouldn't have problems about falling asleep at night.<br />
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President Monson's talk about being courageous was outstanding and just what a lot of people needed to hear as we enter difficult times. He said that if we ever find ourselves where we shouldn't ought to be, get out! I liked what he quoted about Jabari Parker, too. As President Monson talked about the importance of being the same person wherever we are and whoever we're with, he threw in the quote by Jabari, saying basically that we should be the same person in the dark and in the light. Great advice, great council that we will need as we face more and more opposition in the coming days.<br />
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President Uchtdorf gave a great talk on being grateful. I like how he said that instead of having gratitude for things, we should be grateful in every situation that we are in. He talked about how we think too much about the end of things, but, as children of God, no end exists, only small interruptions. We can always choose to be grateful. Good stuff, it's like he's a prophet or something.<br />
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Elder Ballard gave a talk that I hope you all listened to about missionary work. I hope you all do what he asked and buy a Preach My Gospel and share your studies with me and the missionaries in the ward. I'll do better about talking about it, too. Be sure to follow up, too, and to invite someone at least once a quarter to listen to the missionaries.<br />
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Bishop Stevenson gave a cool talk, but I felt totally out of the loop since I had no idea what happened in the Olympics. Girls do the snowboard half pipe?<br />
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Elder Bednar is a stud, his talks are always great. We always need loads to give us spiritual traction or we will be stuck wherever we presently are. His explanation of being yoked with Christ was excellent, gotta love it. His testimony at the end of this being the day of Christ's birth was very touching.<br />
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President Monson gave a great talk on love. It is something that we all have to do better at, and very prophetic for him to talk about it. With the problems that we unavoidably face with things like gay marriage, many will be tempted to get angry at those who support it, but we cannot do that as disciples of Christ. We must all love and respect everyone's agency and hope that they do the same for us. He said that we may forget the acts of kindness that we perform, but the recipient never will.<br />
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Sweet Elder Packer, like Elder Hales, is such a great example of enduring to the end. He, too, looked so very weak, but he still gave a powerful talk as an Apostle of the Lord. A great instruction on knowledge and intelligence and various other things that he has learned throughout his life. His testimony at the end was so powerful, where he basically testified that he has seen the Savior and knows that He lives. Elder Packer is a spiritual giant, and I love hearing his great advice and his great testimony.<br />
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Elder Perry gave a great parable of a horse with the driver and the bit. I had no idea that a scripture existed that talked about that. Pretty cool. I think we all need to do better about being sensitive to the tugs and pulls of the Spirit.<br />
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Elder Christofferson's talk on the Resurrection was wonderful, as well. He said something along the lines of, "For having redeemed us from the Fall, our lives are essentially His." He quoted Elder Maxwell, and the quote went something like, "The Atonement eliminated the human predicament, now there are only personal predicaments." Nailed it, Neal.<br />
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What a wonderful conference. I am excited to be able to study it again when the Liahona comes. Hopefully it gets here before I leave, sometimes it takes awhile to get here. I have two big resolves after this conference: to pray better and to make conference a bigger part of my life. I study the talks every now and again, but never as I should. I want to avoid any tendency of listening to it, remembering it for a week or two, and then not thinking about it again until the week before the next conference. I want my study of the General Conference talks to go hand in hand in my study of the Book of Mormon-- it should be a daily thing. I need to get better at that. I know that it will make me happier. I also don't want to fall asleep as I pray.<br />
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Also, a quick side note, Elder Zivic and Elder Aidukaitis gave excellent talks, and the whole time I was thinking, "They speak English just like the bat from Anastasia." I hope someone else thought that same thing.<br />
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I love conference. I am ready to keep working hard, it is a good dose of spiritual vitamins that kick us back into gear and remind us just how much work their is to do, and that we so easily fall into a routine that doesn't demand too much from us. We are reminded in conference that we should spend time every day helping the work to progress. I am excited to work hard and to help the other missionaries in the mission to do the same.<br />
<br />
Alright, so my week really quick.<br />
<br />
Tuesday, we had our leaders' council and it went very well. We talked about how to commit people to do something and how to follow up, just what Elder Perry was talking about. March was the best month that the mission has had so far, it went really well for us and we are very happy for the work of the missionaries. April will be tough because the first week is General Conference (no confirmations) and the third week we have an Area broadcast for the Stake Conferences here. But, we'll still work hard. It was a good council.<br />
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Wednesday and Thursday, we had time to plan and to work in our sector. We got just about everything set for April. This month, we have specialized trainings, and Elder Ospina and I are going to train about how to teach the Great Apostasy better. President is going to train about how to teach the Restoration better. We read in Preach My Gospel that if people don't understand the Apostasy, they will see no need to listen to it. The compare it to a diamond on black velvet. The black velvet is the Apostasy, and the diamond, the Restoration. When they understand the Great Apostasy, the message of the Restoration will shine in their eyes, minds, and hearts. It should be fun. We're talking about super apostate things, basically the history of the Apostasy. When we finish the slide show, I'll send it so you can see.<br />
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Friday, we had a leaders' council, but not like Tuesday's. This one was with district leaders, zone leaders and sister leaders. We have a bunch of new leaders again, especially district leaders, that have no idea what they are doing. We prepared a leader's booklet for them, outlining everything that they should be doing as leaders. We spent a lot of time practicing, and they all left more confident in their abilities to lead. It was a great meeting.<br />
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And, yesterday and today was General Conference. It's the best "holiday" in the mission. I think I've said that before, but it's true. On days like Christmas, you spend all day picturing the delicious food at home and stuff like that. With Conference, we get time to rest, but leave super pumped to work hard and serve the Lord. Game time, baby.<br />
<br />
I got to study more this week, but this letter is already really long since I talked about the conference talks. Next week, we can talk more about my studies. Plus, you should now be talking to me about your studies, especially in Preach My Gospel. Get on that!<br />
<br />
Anyways, love you guys tons! I hope you enjoyed conference and set your own goals on things that you want to get better at. I hope you all have a great week, and I hope the same for me! Also, I haven't taken pictures in a week or too, sorry for not sending more.<br />
<br />
Con amor,<br />
<br />
Elder ThomasUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-58847508686327360462014-03-30T20:54:00.001-07:002014-03-30T20:54:05.335-07:00(Luke Dunphy to Phil as he leaves for work) "Smell Heather for me!" (Phil Dunphy with his wife watching) "I always do....not!"Hey all,<br />
<br />
Another week down. This was the crazy week with the new missionaries coming. It wasn't all that crazy since the group of new missionaries was pretty small (12). I got no study time until today, which totally stinks. Also, we're fasting this weekend here, I would imagine it's the same almost everywhere. It's our fourth time fasting this week. I say we deserve a day in a Paul Bunyan's or at least a shoutout in General Conference. If someone could talk with President Monson, we should get that moving.<br />
<br />
<br />
Well, we had a great baptism last Saturday in the evening. Esteban is Ronny's friend and another reference from a great family in the ward. He was lugged by his uncle to help him move at 3, then at night, his grandma fell and hit her head. They were worried that she wouldn't make it from the fall and the hit to the head. He still came to his baptism, he wanted to continue with it, but he was pretty worried about granny. We had the service, it was great, then almost right after he got a call saying that his grandmother was fine and was returning home to rest. He was really happy after that, and considered it a blessing from the Lord for having chosen to follow Him, and he was right about that. He got confirmed on Sunday, and hopefully tomorrow he'll be getting the priesthood. We've been having a lot of success with references in our ward. Lots of the members are the pioneers of Ecuador or the kids or grandkids of the pioneers. The chapel was the first built in Quito, it's an old chapel. full of old geysers, but they are faithful. They always have people for us to visit, and they're great references. Yay, good members!<br />
<br />
Sunday night we had changes, and there were a ton. We had a lot of missionaries in trios from sending so many missionaries home, new missionaries coming in, plus the missionaries from Venezuela to deal with in the changes. It took us a while to call them out, then the mayhem started on Monday. There is always some zone leader that messes something up in the changes, lots of confusion until about 12 on Monday, then things settle down a little bit. It was the farewell of three missionaries, Elder Damián, Elder Leal and Elder Lema. Elder Lema is a special needs missionary who did a mini mission to see if he could handle it. It looks like he'll be serving some kind of service mission instead of a full time mission. Great kid though, he just has fairly severe autism. Elder Damián and Elder Leal have been my friends in the mission for a long time, it was sad to see them go, especially Elder Damián. I've know him since my second change here in Ecuador and he was a great missionary. He was very sad to leave, he loved his mission so much. It's tough to see the end. but it's how things were meant to be. Plus, our mission of bringing others unto Christ never really ends, we just start to do it in another sector without a plaque.<br />
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Tuesday was the arrival of the new missionaries. Since it was a small group, we spent the day in the mission home. We've learned that since they come so tired, if we try to do too much, it's not effective, they all fall asleep. So, we did a few simply things, like memorizing the First Vision, then we sent them to the mission hotels to be able to rest. It was a tranquilo day, pretty easy and laid back.<br />
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Wednesday was our Mini-MTC, where we pound them with the rules and what we expect from them so that we don't have new people with the "I'm new and didn't know the rule" excuse when we catch them doing dumb things. It's a good thing that we do and it helps out a lot. In the evening, we have a dinner and a testimony meeting in the mission home. I never get sick of dinners in the mission home.<br />
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Thursday we had the meeting with the trainers and the new missionaries. The group of trainers that we have is fantastic. They are young and new, but excellent, well prepared missionaries. There is a program that all missionaries do called "The First 12 Weeks," and basically if the missionary is dedicated, in 12 weeks, he can be ready to train another new missionary. All of the trainers, well, almost all of them, are offspring of that program. Great, great missionaries. We'll see good things from this group of new missionaries and their trainers. We spent the afternoon in the offices getting some needed planning done with President.<br />
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Friday, we had our last zone conference for the month, and it went really well. It was a good group of missionaries, with some of my good friends in the mission, like Elder Murphy. He's the butt of pretty much every joke we make, and he takes the jokes really well. Gotta love him. It was with the Quito zones, so we didn't have to travel. Sister Richardson is practicing some of the food that they're going to make for their son's wedding, and we got to eat it for lunch. I don't think that anyone was complaining. It was a good training, we learned a lot, and we are hoping to see better work from the missionaries with the things that we were able to teach them.<br />
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We had trainings every day this week, so it is nice to have a P-day today. We've had a very low key day, bought some food and had some lunch, now we're just writing and watching videos on the Tabernacle Choir website. Great stuff, music. It was really fun to hear about Nikki's mission call, that'll be so great for her and she can send us those tasty waffle things to celebrate her work there in the Motherland. Congratulations, Nikki!<br />
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Super excited for General Conference. It's the best weekend in the mission, the best "holiday." With Christmas and stuff, you just sit around all day thinking about the turkey being eaten at home. With Conference, we don't have time to work too much, and we leave pumped and ready to work harder. It's the best. I bet it'll be a great one with lots of great announcements. I'd bet that we're at 90,000 missionaries now.<br />
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Seeing as how I had no studies, I don't have too much to share on that end. Here is a link to a great video that we watch with the new missionaries, though. It's about the Atonement and Missionary Work.<br />
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https://www.dropbox.com/s/mmtjgu62m2orasl/La%20expiacion%20y%20la%20obra%20misional%202.0-Mision%20Ecuador%20Quito.wmv<br />
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Very great video. Hopefully this week I can study more to share some bomb insights that'll blow your minds. Or I could talk about the great foods I've eaten. Either one has about the same level of spirituality. I'm not sure when I'm going to write you guys, I would imagine that Saturday would be tough. Maybe Friday or Monday.<br />
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Also, a public thank you for all who signed me up for classes, especially Heather. You're the best!<br />
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Love you guys! Talk to you in a week or so!<br />
<br />
Con amor,<br />
<br />
Elder Thomas<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-3738813682499209732014-03-23T17:32:00.001-07:002014-03-23T17:32:49.917-07:00"Dude, you've got some Arst on you." Hurley from LOSTHey all,<br />
<br />
<br />
Well, hopefully we'll be having our baptism today around 7:00 tonight. It was supposed to be at 3:00, and lots of members showed up. But, the investigator getting baptized didn't. We were with him last night, he said that he could at 3, members were playing soccer until 11 last night, they said that he knew to come at three, and his friend told him that he was gonna pass by him at 2:30. Nada. We called him, he didn't answer. We called his brother, didn't answer. We called his mom, and she told us that his cousin had dragged him to help him move houses. Bueno. We got the number of the cousin's wife from Esteban´s mom, and called her, but Esteban was with her husband. We got the number of her husband, but he didn't answer. Finally, he answered and said that he had forgotten to call us to tell us that he couldn't at 3 anymore. Bueno. He wanted to see if we could do it next week, but we told him at 7 tonight, 100%. We'll see if it works out, hopefully it does. Our skills that we developed in Operación Matacuy helped us to find him today. No one can hide from us.<br />
<br />
<br />
Well, we had, surprise, a crazy week. I'm learning how to function on little sleep, so there's a life skill earned! On Monday, we headed out bright and early to have our zone conference in the coast, diga. It went well, there are some great missionaries out there. Some of the best are sent to the coast, because it is a place that often creates problems with the missionaries. But, the ones that are out there are great. There is a new missionary, Elder Tituaña, he's originally from Otavalo and is a total Lamanite. He is a crack-up, I get along really well with him. Great guy. The food in the coast is so great, but just about everything else is poor and dirty, and the kids have no clothes and only live off rice. But, hey, good food makes me a happy guy, so I can't complain.<br />
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The zone conferences are going really well so far. We're doing a ton of practices to help the missionaries know how to correct missionaries when they're disobedient and how to be brave and to say what needs to be said. We are focusing a lot on our loyalty motto that is in the mission manual--our loyalty is first, to the Lord, then to our mission president, then to our companion. One thing that we've been teaching is that the respect that we want should follow that same pattern--the respect that we want should first come from the Lord, then our mission president, then our companion. A lot of problems stem from being more loyal to our companion than our mission president, and we're trying to fix that. Hopefully we'll see the desired results.<br />
<br />
We came back on Tuesday from the coast, and at night had a meeting with all of the missionaries from Venezuela. They are all Chilean, which is a problem. Pretty much every Chilean that I have met on my mission has gone home early. When I opened the Gasca, the missionary who got sent home was Chilean. We're worried. Of the 7, only 3 don't worry us. We talked a lot, a ton, about obedience, but we're not sure if it'll help. We'll have to keep a close eye on them to be able to help them progress and become more spiritually mature. But, the dinner was really tasty, so can't complain there!<br />
<br />
We finished the dinner on Tuesday night, and Wednesday morning, we headed out to Otavalo bright and early. Wednesday morning we had another zone conference with two of the zones in Otavalo. At night, we were eating dinner on a lake, Lago San Pablo, which is right at the base of the volcano Imbabura. It was a clear night, very rare in the mountains. You could see all of the stars because there is little light pollution in Otavalo. Behind the volcano, you could see the light from the full moon slowly moving up. We were so anxious to see the full moon come right over Imbabura. It was very pretty, stars, lake, moonlight, the perfect night for the moon to come up. I was waiting, looking through the window like a kid waiting for Santa to come. And, right when it was about to come up, the clouds came in and we couldn't see the skies at all. Boo. That was a pretty big let down. That would have been pretty pretty. Lame clouds. Thursday, we had the zone conference with the other two zones there, ate some burritos in a Mexican place, super good, then headed home and got home around 10:00.<br />
<br />
Friday, we had the verification of the new missionaries that got here at the start of the change. They are doing surprisingly well, it's a pretty solid group. There are only one or two that are struggling greatly, the rest seem to be progressing well. We always go to the Panecillo on the verification, and it's always so pretty to go up there. You can see all of Quito, the statue is on a hill right in the middle of the valley of Quito. You can see the north, south, all of it. It's pretty breathtaking, I love going there. We finished that around 3:30, went to the offices and washed President's car for him, then went to an appointment with Esteban where he told us that he wanted to get baptized the following day at 3, now 7. That was a pleasant surprise, we're happy with that. It's never a sad thing to hear someone say that they want to get baptized. I got home and went right to bed.<br />
<br />
Today is our first full P-day in three weeks, and even then, we don't have the full time because of the baptism. But, that's fine. It's Elder Damián's last P-day, he goes home on Tuesday. It'll be sad to see him go, I've been working with him since my second change in Ecuador. Great guy. We went and got some ice cream at Crepe's & Waffles, pistachio, delicious. Bought some food, filled the font, then waited for our 3 p.m. baptism eating Subway. And now I'm in the offices! That about sums up the week until now. Woof, busy week.<br />
<br />
A few of you were asking about how I'm doing with exercise. We've made it past step one in our Captain America diet, and are slowly making progress on step two, not eating cold cereal. But, really, we've been doing good with our exercises, mainly Elder Hess and I. We get up at 5:45, well, they days where I'm here, and we go running for about a half hour and do push ups, pull ups, and ab ripper X. When we travel, I try to do whatever I can to get exercise in, I can usually talk Elder Ospina into running with me for a little bit. We've got a pretty good routine down, and I feel like I'm a bit skinnier than when I left, but more of less the same. I haven't gotten any fatter, I'm pretty sure on that. I'm eating well, that's easier to control in the offices because members only feed us on Sundays, the rest of the days we eat in a restaurant or something like that. I've been good about not eating at night, too. A lot of missionaries eat tons right before going to bed, but I remain true to the doctrine that my parents taught me: don't eat late. Nailed it. A true heart doctor's son.<br />
<br />
I had one day to study this week, today. That stinks. That's the hardest part for me about being here in the offices is that we rarely get our full study time. Today I read a little in the Book of Mormon, and more in the Principles of Leadership booklet. I read today about honoring the priesthood and honoring womanhood. I haven't finished it, I have about two pages left to read, but I have loved what I've read so far. The chapter starts out stating how we have to recognize that the priesthood is what governs everything, and we must understand and respect that. I don't remember who, but some Apostle said that Christ has trusted us with His priesthood, and we honor him by honoring the priesthood, whether we have it or not. President Kimball (I think) then goes on to say that there is not one person on the earth that has not been affected in some great way by a woman in their lives, and that women play a key role in everything. He says that it is impossible to honor the priesthood without honoring womanhood, pretty dope. There is a talk by Elder Nelson talking about these things, but I haven't finished it yet. Hopefully soon we'll have a few days in a row where we can study, but probably not. As modern men put it, "You go girls!"<br />
<br />
Tomorrow we have changes, so that'll be crazy. Next week is another crazy week with all of the new missionaries coming, plus we need to finish up zone conferences still. Woo! One day, I hope to be able to sleep a full night's sleep. But, it's like good ol' Benny Franklin said, "there is time enough for sleep in the grave." True that. But, to be honest, I don't think the idea is that one day we'll be able to truly rest, we'll just be in a state where we don't need to sleep anymore. Or like Superman, we could just learn how to get our power from the sun. Option two would be a little bit cooler, but I'm fine with either one.<br />
<br />
Well, I think that's about all that I've got to say for this week. I feel like I haven't been able to think for a week. It's tough to go non-stop for so long, but that's how it goes sometimes! If I feel tired, I can only imagine how tired President Richardson gets. Love you guys tons, congratulations Lowes for the good news, and hopefully Nikki can get her call to Nigeria this week. Talk to you in a week!<br />
<br />
Con amor,<br />
<br />
Elder ThomasUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-67626314984081494442014-03-10T11:50:00.001-07:002014-03-10T11:50:07.669-07:00"Some people ask if I'd rather be feared or loved...Is it too hard to ask for both? I want people to be afraid of how much they love me." Michael ScottHey all,<br />
<br />
Did we have a book called "The Book of Virtues" with a buffalo on it or am I going crazy?<br />
<br />
These last 8 or 9 days have felt like one long day. It's been non-stop motion with a few hours to sleep every now and again. We're calling this Operación Matacuy (Operation Kill Guinnea Pig), hoping to make the situation a little happier. We also made FBI secret agent badge to feel cooler. We really have been detectives for about a week. I am writing down every detail in a digital journal. I was going to write it by hand, but that would have taken way too long. When the book is done, you can buy it for $20 at Deseret Book. It'll be under the title, "Operación Matacuy," I would imagine under the bestsellers list. It's about 12 typed pages long so far, so it'll be a good read. It is a sad situation, hopefully the Elders don't become inactive. We're hoping to send them home tomorrow, but we're still waiting on approval from Salt Lake City. We've done reports, we've gathered evidence, we've done about everything there is to do, even raiding missionary apartments. I think we should purpose a CSI:Quito show on CBS. I could see it being a hit.<br />
<br />
I haven't even been able to study that much these last few weeks, which is really sad. But, I did get to study a little bit, which is enough for now. I'm almost done with Alma this time through the Book of Mormon, reading the war chapters is pretty inspiring right now. We're in a definite Lamanite vs. Nephite situation right now. I wanted to go out and buy swords, but President didn't seem too excited about that idea. Maybe next time. Moroni was such a great guy. He had all the power in the world among the Nephites, but he never misused it; he never really even wanted to use it, just when they were being attacked and their freedoms were at stake. Everything described about him is what we look for in a good leader, it's always a great lesson to learn about him and how he worked in his position as the leader of the Nephite armies.<br />
<br />
I also read in that Principles of Leadership book the lesson about being happy as a leader, which was a perfect one to read during this whole situation. There is a wonderful, wonderful talk included in the lesson by Elder Wirthlin. He was such a sweet old man, his talks always uplift and make you feel much happier afterwards. This talk is called "Lessons Learned in the Journey of Life." He gave it as a BYU fireside in 1999, and I really, really enjoyed. He gives 5 tips to enjoying our journey through life. They are:<br />
<br />
1.) Have faith in Heavenly Father<br />
2.) Set righteous goals<br />
3.) Work to accomplish your goals<br />
4.) Magnify your callings<br />
5.) Enjoy the journey (he mentions learning to laugh at yourself)<br />
<br />
The last point was a stand out for me. He talks about how our happiness is really always our choice. We can always choose to be happy, we just have to actually do it. I'm going to paste a lot of this section so that you can read it.<br />
<br />
We have so much to smile about, be happy about, yes, even to laugh about.<br />
So many of us are always waiting to be happy. “If only I could graduate, if only I could afford a car, if only I could get married . . .”<br />
For too many, happiness is just over the horizon, never reachable. Every time we climb one hill, happiness beckons just beyond the next.<br />
It is a terrible thing always to be waiting for tomorrow, always depending on tomorrow, always excusing our todays because we are sure that only in the future will we possess the things that will fulfill us.<br />
Don’t wait for tomorrow. Don’t wait for the right job, the right house, the right salary, the right dress size. Be happy today. Be happy now.<br />
Abraham Lincoln said, “Most folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be”<br />
<br />
Good ol' Abe. Always knew what to say. Here's another chunck.<br />
<br />
Make up your mind to be happy—even when you don’t have money, even when you don’t have a clear complexion, even when you don’t have the Nobel Prize. Some of the happiest people I know have none of these things the world insists are necessary for satisfaction and joy. Why are they happy? I suppose it is because they don’t listen very well. Or they listen too well—to the things their hearts tell them. They glory in the beauty of the earth. They glory in the rivers and the canyons and the call of the meadowlark. They glory in the love of their families, the stumbling steps of a toddler, the wise and tender smile of the elderly.<br />
They glory in honest labor. They glory in the scriptures. They glory in the presence of the Holy Ghost.<br />
One thing I know for certain: the time we have here goes by far too quickly. Don’t waste any more time sitting on the bench watching life pass you by.<br />
Can I give you one other piece of advice? Be willing to laugh at yourself.<br />
<br />
And one more chunk.<br />
<br />
George Bernard Shaw said, “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” Don’t worry about searching for who you are; focus your energies on creating the kind of person you want to be! You will discover that as you pursue that journey you will not only “find yourself,” but chances are you will be pleasantly surprised and proud of the person you find along the way.<br />
Do not procrastinate a minute longer. Every moment is precious. Determine tonight that you will make of your lives something remarkable!<br />
<br />
Really great things that he said. I've realized that so much in my mission, how happiness really is a decision. So many hard things and unhappy things do happen in any mission, tons of hard things, to be honest. But, the best missionaries are the happiest missionaries. They aren't happy because they've magically made the hard things disappear, they just grow to understand how the Gospel allows us to always be happy. Agency is a great thing, we just don't realize how great sometimes. That's one of the great gifts of life--we are given time to figure out how to effectively use our agency. It's takes some people longer than others to figure it out, but if we try to figure it out using the principles of the Gospel, we usually make some fast progress.<br />
<br />
Dante and Ronny are doing really well. Ronny gave a talk this week and Dante was assigned one for next week. They've really become part of the ward, it's fun to see them with their group of friends now. Dante is facing some pretty tough opposition, but he's doing a great job fighting against it. His life before knowing us was not a great one moral-wise. His old friends want old Dante still, but he's fighting really hard to be a new Dante. He's a great example to a lot of people in the ward. He really turned his life around, and you can see his happiness that wasn't there before he started coming to church.<br />
<br />
We had another miracle this week, another if we do our part, God does his moment. We have had not one second to work in our sector for over a week. We didn't even go to church last week because we had to go to Otavalo. It's been crazy. One of Ronny's friends has come to church with him for 2 weeks now, but because of all this going on, we haven't been able to meet with him. We've tried, but it never worked out. Well, today, his fellowshipper called us over after church and said, "Hey, this kid wants to get baptized! Where have you been? Teach him!" So, after the church meeting, we sat down at taught him a few things. At the end of the lesson, we asked him if he wanted to be baptized next Saturday, and he basically said, "Well, duh! I've wanted to get baptized since Ronny got baptized!" We were very humbled and very happy after that experience. We had no time whatsoever to take care of our sector, so the Lord took care of it for us. We feel very blessed by all of the great things that the Lord has given us in our time working in the offices. This truly is His work, and He takes care of things when we can't. He just asks us to always do our best, then we can leave the rest to Him.<br />
<br />
I am sorry that I don't have any cool thoughts or experiences to share right now, this whole Operación Matacuy has been taking up so much of our time. One day I'll be able to sleep. One day. But, I've still been able to run every day during this. I'd rather sleep, but running helps me stay awake even when I don't have a lot of energy.<br />
<br />
I just want to close bearing my testimony of this work, of this Church. I know that what I am doing is what the Lord would have me do. I know that what I teach and share every day is the truth. My doubts of anything shrink with every page of the Book of Mormon that I read, with every light I see grow in an investigator's eye, with every person I grow to know and love. I know that God lives and that His Son, Jesus Christ, is our Savior. He suffered and died for us, and now He lives for us. As we follow Him, we grow to be better people and to be happier people. There is no better thing in this life than to preach the Gospel, whether it be as a missionary, a family member or a simple church goer. We can share the Gospel in all that we do, and that is the principle thing we should strive to do in life. I know that this is the truth, and I know that this is the pathway to happiness. Every sacrifice made is worth it, and when we do it for long enough, it stops being a sacrifice. Living the Gospel in the most intelligent thing that we can do. I pray that we can all find ways to live it better every day.<br />
<br />
Hopefully next week will be more calm and I'll have some cool things to write about and can write a letter a little bit longer. But, I'm not getting my hopes up.<br />
<br />
I love you all tons! Be smart and happy and go to the temple a lot. Read your scriptures, pray always, and eat lots of cookies. Life's short, might as well eat cookies.<br />
<br />
Con amor,<br />
<br />
Elder Thomas<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-46610074501070431262014-03-04T11:15:00.001-08:002014-03-04T11:15:40.184-08:00(As Phil Dunphy answers his cell phone) "What's Yo Yo Ma's favorite instrument? Cello!"Hey all,<br />
<br />
Well, this week has been a disaster! I don't really have that much to write today. I'll write more on Saturday.<br />
<br />
We were gone all week, we spent one day in Quito. Tuesday through Friday morning, we were in Ibarra and Otavalo to do interviews with our mission president. They went well. We did the training that we do during the interviews 14 times, so we were getting kind of sick of doing it. It was nice to be done with the interview month. I can't believe that it's March already.<br />
<br />
We got back on Friday with bad news from President. We had heard about various things going on, and with some planning and the help of some great missionaries, we discovered something very bad going on. We've been occupied pretty much every minute since Friday night trying to end this in the mission. It's almost done, we're just tying up some loose ends in the stories and the testimonies of the missionaries. It is a very cool story how everything worked out, but it would be more appropriate to save it until I finish my mission. For now, there is no reason for anyone outside of the group involved to know the details. But, the Lord blessed us and guided us, and we somehow whipped out an almost flawless operation, we would make good spies. But, it's all thanks to the Lord that it's working out. We've fasted twice now, hoping to help President know what the correct decisions are to take. Just always be so sure to fill your lives, your spirits and you thoughts with light, nothing else. Only the light that comes from Christ and the Gospel will make us truly happy. That's all I've got to say on that for now.<br />
<br />
I hope that all is going well with you back home. Nikki, I hope that your birthday was a good one. I hope that everything that you're doing in life makes you feel the light of the Gospel.<br />
<br />
I'll write more on Saturday. I don't have too much to write about all this, sorry that it is short.<br />
<br />
Con amor,<br />
<br />
Elder ThomasUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-59369965079432602212014-02-22T20:24:00.002-08:002014-02-22T20:24:51.397-08:00"Once upon a time, there was a magical place where it never rained. The end." HolesHey all!<br />
<br />
Well, another week done. It's crazy how fast time goes by. But, I like being busy, it keeps me busy.<br />
<br />
Ronny's baptism went really well last week. For the holiday, there weren't too many people there, but it was a great service. He's excited, as well, to keep coming to church and to prepare for a mission in the future. The father of the family that gave us the reference was able to baptize him, it was very special. The family had a musical number prepared, a talk prepared, they ran the show. They were so happy to see their friend get baptized. It goes to show that with references, everyone involved grows happier from the process. Very good day, his confirmation was great, too. He'll be a good member, hopefully soon he'll get the priesthood and help the ward out with the sacrament. This work makes me really happy, it is the best to see people progress in the Gospel and to become much happier for doing so. It is the happiest work that there is, I am so grateful for this time that I have to be able to do it.<br />
<br />
I've been thinking about how to judge my maturity level after being a missionary for so long. I can both listen to and find meaning in classical music right now, and find calm Tabernacle Choir music to be entertaining. I am listening to "Bring Him Home," from Les Miserables and finding great meaning in the words. I think I'm getting there. On the other hands, burps are still pretty funny to me, as is pouring cold water on my companions while they shower, and I still struggle staying awake in Sacrament Meeting, so we're not quite there. Maybe in the next four months we can make the jump. Progress, baby steps.<br />
<br />
Also, did you guys see the new Bible video with Jesus teaching in the temple when he was a kid? ¡Bacan! It's got Mary and Joseph looking for young Jesus with two of Jesus' little sibling, I guess his half-siblings. I think they took it down for a bit because it caused some controversy, but it's awesome because we know that he had siblings. You can still download it though. Super sweet. The Church is true.<br />
<br />
So, after doing the verifications on Monday, we got ready for various trips and meetings that are coming up in the next few weeks. We have a lot to get better at still. The mission is still so young, and missionaries still need to learn how to maintain a program, how to teach, find, lots of things, and we're trying to be patient through it all. When the mission divided, we kept the experienced leaders up till about when I leave, then we're in trouble. This change, two go home, in May, about 15 of the zone or sister leaders leave, then in my group we're 4 and all of the Elders are leaders. So, we have a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it. We'll be training a lot about how to be better missionaries. Lots of work, hopefully we can get it going before we lose all of our leaders. We have a few zone leaders that don't even have a year yet, which is usually not preferable. Toca a veces. We'll keep going, I feel like the Lord just really wants to teach us how to train effectively. I feel like I'm doing my best in the offices, and I feel that the Lord is happy with what is going on, while we do need to improve some things. But, if I feel good about it, it must be what the Lord wants from us right now!<br />
<br />
On Wednesday and Thursday, we were in the coast, diga! I love the heat, it feels like home, although the orient is better. We had some really, really good food this time. There is a dish called encocado, it is so good. It is with fresh fish and a great sauce, gotta love it. Sister Richardson didn't come with us because Andrea had a big soccer tournament, so I got to stay in the hotel with President Richardson. It was really nice, and may or may not have been right on the beach. It is funny, there is a beautiful beach right there, but it one of the poorest parts of Ecuador. The hotels are fairly nice, but the city is pretty bad. It's very weird, but that's how it goes. Esmeraldas can't progress well as a city because there aren't many strong families there, in or out of the Church. Without good family morals, no city will ever progress because no one feels responsibility. The missionaries work very hard to get people married, but it is very hard to do so. We had good meetings with them, the missionaries there are some of the most obedient, so we feel good about them there, they just need to work a little bit more diligently. It's the rainy season right now, so there is mud everywhere there. My shoes got destroyed, so did my pants. But I miss that. Coming home wet, dirty and muddy is a great feeling, especially when you've worked as hard as you can and have been diligent. Hard work is the best feeling in the world, few other things feel as satisfying as knowing that you worked very hard. It was a good trip full of good trainings and good foods. We listened in the car to a bunch of the talks from the mission presidents' seminar from last year, those talks are great. Lots to learn from the great leaders of the Church.<br />
<br />
Friday, we had more interviews, just like in the coast. I think that interview month is by far the busiest month of all. Friday was technically our zone, so we were supposed to have our interview, too. But, shocker, things came up and we had no time to have ours. But, we're always with President so we'll have ours one of these days. They went well, there were a lot of sisters. There are so many sisters here, it is crazy. I had to review their area books since Sister Richardson wasn't there, and the books of the sisters were unreal. The elders had good books, but just had the necessary. The sisters had colors, maps, fancy things, and I thing they even sprayed stuff on it to make it smell good. They show the elders up every time. Way to go, sisters.<br />
<br />
We went to Andrea's soccer game today, it was really fun. She is a pretty good soccer player, and we make quite the fan section. She told us that her teammates thought that we were college scouts to see if they were good enough to play for us. I think that they were pretty let down. I found a new great restaurant with curly fries, so that was my lunch today. We had a few appointments, and now I'm writing. Tomorrow is election day here, and the government doesn't like me, so we can't leave the house and we can only have one hour of church. Pretty dumb, but oh, well. This is the first time I've had to bake here, so I bought stuff to make bread tomorrow! But, we don't have measuring cups...or pans...so...we'll see how that goes.<br />
<br />
We got some killer good references this week. The Lord is blessing us big time. One just gave birth to twin boys, very cute little babies. She wants to get baptized, but won't be able to progress until she can leave the house and attend church. We'll keep teaching her and getting her ready, and then when she can attend, she'll be ready.<br />
<br />
The other two are total studs. There is a family that no one has visited for over 5 years, the poor people. He was a bishop twice, and they moved here 8 years ago and people never really visited them. They aren't without fault, they should be doing visits, too, but it is still sad to hear that no one has gone by to visit. So, we went! We had a simple visit, nothing fancy, we just shared our testimonies. The dad gave the closing prayer, we finished it, and he slowly looks up and says, "Elders, I have a reference for you..." and tells us about them. They seem great. We met them, and they are super prepared. The member family goes to the States every now and again to work with an organization in Utah. The reference went once, and attend Sacrament Meeting, Music and the Spoken Word, went to Temple Square, all that jazz. When we met him, he said, "I didn't understand one word said there, but I felt so peaceful. I would like to know why." The lesson was a weird mix. We started with a Mormon Message, "Earthly Father, Heavenly Father," and ended up talking about the need to receive the ordinances of the Gospel through the right authority. Very weird, but at the end, both references said, "Everything that you said is exactly what we needed to hear. We have family problems and have always questioned infant baptism. Thank you for helping us. This is the truth." Super cool. They're coming to church on Sunday. The only problem is that they live in another stake, but President said it would be okay if we taught them and baptized them if they were willing to travel to our ward, so we'll go with that :) A great blessing from the Lord. They're sharp people and would be great additions to the ward. Now that we know that we can baptize them, we'll put a date with them the next time we have an appointment with them.<br />
<br />
I think that the theme of my time in the offices is, "If we do our part, the Lord will do His." We've had so many times where we have maybe one day to work in our sector, but the Lord brings people to us. The members help with visits. The investigators keep their commitments. We get many references, many good, solid references. I can easily recognize the hand of the Lord in the work here. He is blessing us to very much, and I am so grateful for that. We are doing our best with the time that we have, and He is making that little time we have much more effective. I am grateful for the blessings that He has, is, and will give us.<br />
<br />
I'm in Alma right now in my reading of the Book of Mormon, and this morning I was reflecting on what I'm calling the "Amulek moment." Now, a brief synopsis of what is going on. Alma was preaching, no one wanted to listen, and they kicked him out of the city. He's on the walk home, surely distressed and sad for not having success. It specifically says that he was "weighed down with sorrow," for the wickedness of the people. As he's walking, an angel comes, tells him to turn around, and he "entered into the city by another way," and bumps into his buddy Amulek. Amulek had had his own vision and knew that Alma was coming and that he would stay in his house. Amulek lets him in, learns from Alma, and feels very blessed for having him there. He says his whole family has been blessed for having a prophet in the home. It says, "And Alma tarried many days with Amulek before he began to preach unto the people." So, we can assume that Amulek learned a lot, as did his family, before the game day came to go out and preach again.<br />
<br />
The day comes. Alma says pretty much the same stuff as he said before, and the people still mock him. They say that there is no way that they could believe just one man, that would be ridiculous. Keep in mind that these men are lawyers and judges, wise men who like to have their evidences. Alma is so brave in what he says to them, a true prophet of the Lord. No matter what the men are saying, questioning, or mocking, Alma says what the Lord sent him to say. Brave, brave Alma.<br />
<br />
Now, during all of this going on with Alma, we forget entirely about Amulek until verse 34 of Alma 9. It says, "And it came to pass that Amulek went and stood forth, and began to preach unto them also." Now, let's picture what has been going on with Amulek. His is there, listening to this man who he knows is a prophet preach the word and be ridiculed. He is probably listening to the ping pong between Alma and the unbelievers, and a conflict begins in his mind. From chapter 10, we learn that <br />
<br />
2 I am Amulek; I am the son of Giddonah, who was the son of Ishmael, who was a descendant of Aminadi; and it was that same Aminadi who interpreted the writing which was upon the wall of the temple, which was written by the finger of God.<br />
3 And Aminadi was a descendant of Nephi, who was the son of Lehi, who came out of the land of Jerusalem, who was a descendant ofaManasseh, who was the son of bJoseph who was csold into Egypt by the hands of his brethren.<br />
4 And behold, I am also a man of no small reputation among all those who know me; yea, and behold, I have many kindreds and friends, and I have also acquired much riches by the hand of my industry.<br />
<br />
Amulek wasn't just a random guy, he was a big deal. This helps us to understand his conflict. In his mind we can imagine thoughts like these. "I have so much to lose. I know that Alma is a prophet, but I was fine before he came. Some of my friends are mocking him. If I side with him, what will happen to me? What will happen to my family? I could just stay sitting here, nothing would happen, Alma would leave, and I would be good." As these thoughts, natural, understandable thoughts, he surely then started thinking. "No. I saw an angel that said this man would come. He came. He taught me, he blessed my family. He is everything that he says he is. What he says is true. I cannot go against him, for to go against him would be to go against the Lord. I chose the Lord." And it is probably right after those thoughts that he stood up.<br />
<br />
We all will have at least on "Amulek moment," or maybe we will have many. We cannot fight between one side and another. Maybe the Lord's way seems to make less sense, but it is the way that we need to go. We need to stand up, like Amulek, and be defenders of the faith, regardless of what we lose. Amulek lost pretty much everything. We can assume that his family was burned with the scriptures and the other believers by the wicked men, and his loss was so great that Alma took him home to comfort him in his pain. He lost everything, but he knew that it was worth it. The truths that a prophet taught him and his family were more valuable than any other thing. He knew that the prophet could help make his family eternal and that he could return to live with them again, as well as God. That was a knowledge worth "standing up" for. We should do our best to always be like Amulek in times of opposition and trials. We should always stand up for the Lord. Hopefully that made sense, in my mind it did. I love the Book of Mormon.<br />
<br />
I love you guys tons. Hopefully you've enjoyed my letter, I've enjoyed reading yours. Thanks for all of your help with everything going on right now, especially with school stuff. It is a big blessing and helps me to stay focused. The new debit card got here okay, I haven't used it yet though. I really do appreciate all that you do. I hope that you guys survive the snow.<br />
<br />
Con amor,<br />
<br />
Elder Thomas<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-48304395196987259442014-02-22T20:22:00.004-08:002014-02-22T20:22:51.266-08:00"Darnel gave me 5 bucks to walk by Andy and slide my finger over my throat to scare him. Darnel is a chump. I would have done a lot more for a lot less." CreedHey all,<br />
<br />
La semana loca ha terminado. Goodness me. The first week of the change, from Monday at 11:00 a.m. until Thursday at 3:00 p.m., we have absolutely no down time. But, it's all good stuff, and we've gotta help the new missionaries start off on the right foot. Plus, it is much better to be very busy than to have nothing to do.<br />
<br />
So, on Monday, the offices are completely crazy. Everyone who has changes comes here before traveling or to find their new companion if they are staying in Quito. We get about 50 calls in the day about how to get to various places, it is quite the headache. We sit down pretty much all day, but at the end of the day I feel like I've ran 10 miles. We also need to do the verifications with all of the zone leaders, which is hard to do with so many people making noises. Plus, we divided another zone this change, so we now have 11 zones. We'll have to keep dividing the zones as time goes. Next change, only 2 missionaries end their mission and we get 14 new ones, so we'll have to open up a lot of new sectors. Ay. Then, at night, we have the goodbye dinner for those that are ending their missions. This group that left was a dud. Basically all of them, except two, were disobedient, unfruitful missionaries. The testimonies that they gave were empty, it was very sad to see missionaries who never changed over two years. The next day in the car, President said, "Was it just me, or did that testimony meeting feel empty last night?" It was very sad. But, the new missionaries seem great, so out with the duds, in with the studs!<br />
<br />
On Tuesday, we went to the airport in the morning to get 18 new missionaries. 6 gringos and 12 latinos, I think about 6 were sisters. We have so many sisters in the mission. 60 right now, we'll get up to 65. And we only have about 180 missionaries, so a third are sisters. We have some zones with more sisters than Elders! Anyways, on the Tuesday of crazy week, we pick them up from the airport and spend the day with them giving them classes on cooking and stuff, and we do some legal stuff. We send them home early to go and rest, some have been awake for 24 hours almost. Not too crazy.<br />
<br />
Wednesday is the Mini-MTC, where we teach them all of the rules and stuff like that so that their companions don't trick them into doing dumb things. We split up into Spanish and English, and the other gringo office Elder wasn't there, so I had to train all alone for a good three hours. It wasn't easy. After being with a companion constantly for so long, it is weird to teach alone. At night, we had the welcome dinner in the mission home, so good. Andrea is learning how to do sweet napkin stuff, and she decorated the table really well. I tried to do what she did, and it just ended up looking like a wrinkly napkin. Room to improve there.<br />
<br />
Thursday is the meeting when they get their companions. It is a quick meeting. We start, split up between trainers and new missionaries, tell the trainers to be obedient and patient, meet together, they get their companions, we talk about a few things, then we send them off. At night, an Elder from El Salvador got in around 6. He is assigned to our mission but had to wait for his visa, and it finally came in. We got home around 8, and that was the day!<br />
<br />
Friday, we spent almost all day in the offices planning and preparing various things, since we had no time to do so earlier in the week. We had to make up the rules for the election day here and for carnaval. The president wants to be a dictator basically, and for his desires he doesn't like Americans. The Church is very much associated with the States, so on the 23rd, we can only have sacrament meeting and the missionaries can't go out and proselyte. Pretty dumb. And carnaval is crazy, so we can only leave the house for set appointments, we shouldn't be out contacting or just wandering around. We planned trips and interviews, too. Since Otavalo has 4 zones now, 71 missionaries, we need to spend three days there to do interviews with President. This next week, we're going to the coast, and we started planning March a little bit, too. Crazy days.<br />
<br />
Today has been tranquilo. We can't do activities, so we just relaxed in the house all morning, went grocery shopping, cleaned the house really well, and started filling up the font. We have another baptism tonight, another reference. His name is Ronny Cruz, and he was a big blessing for us. A family, the Chango family, brought him to church about a month ago, and he never stopped coming. It took us a few weeks to finally meet with him, and at last we set up an appointment with him. We asked if he had any questions, and he said, "Yeah, this baptism thing. I've heard a lot about it, I've been to a service and seen how it is, and now I would like to be baptized. How can I do that?" We taught him all the lessons in three appointments, he accepted, understood, and was already living everything that we taught him. A great blessing from the Lord and a great example of good, faithful members sharing the Gospel. Elder Ospina said today that he was confused how this baptism working out, because he thought it was too easy. The Lord really blesses us when we do our part. We're doing our job in the offices and working when we can in the nighttime, and when we do all that we can, the Lord really does the rest. It's amazing how He puts people in our path who are very prepared to receive the Gospel. It should be a great service tonight.<br />
<br />
Sorry to bore you with the play-by-play, but that's all I did this week until yesterday. We had no time to study, to teach, only be with the new group. But, today, I studied for 3ish hours. Since we can't do activities this month, we were just chilling in the house. I was reading in that booklet, "Principles of Leadership." I really love that book, I'm learning a lot. I read Lesson Four, about being a good example. As we grow closer to Christ and develop His qualities, we become better examples and thus better leaders. A good leader is never a hypocrite, and always does the right thing in righteous ways. But, what I loved more than anything in the lesson was the talk it focused on. It was President Hinckley's talk about his 6 B's. I have known about the B's forever, I remember Mom and Dad teaching us them, but I don't think that I have ever listened to or read the actual talk before. It is so good! President Hinckley was such a wise man, everything that he said was spot on. And looking back on my youth years, 12-18, everything he said, every warning, every promise he made, has been accurate and true. He was such a wise prophet. I love, too, how lovingly he talks to the youth. Several times, he says things like, "my dear friends," "my fellow brothers and sisters in this great work," and a few other ways to express the idea that he views the youth as his equals. He talked about how important the youth are for the future of the Church and how important their decisions are for the future.<br />
<br />
He spent a long time talking about the "B" be clean. Everything he mentioned is so accurate and true. We can't be good missionaries, good friends, good anythings if we aren't internally and externally clean. One thing that he touched on was how important it is that we pick good friends. Here's a quote:<br />
<br />
Choose your friends carefully. It is they who will<br />
lead you in one direction or the other. Everybody<br />
wants friends. Everybody needs friends. No one<br />
wishes to be without them. But never lose sight<br />
of the fact that it is your friends who will lead you<br />
along the paths that you will follow.<br />
<br />
That's another truth about life, especially in our time as youth. The youth in Lago Agrio are very faithful in the Church because they have left bad friends behind and have clung to good, true, clean friends.<br />
<br />
There are countless things that I could talk about from President Hinckley's talk, but it'd be better for you if you just read it instead of summarizing it all. The B's, to remind you, are: be grateful, be smart, be clean, be true, be humble, and be prayerful. Okay, just one more quote from be grateful:<br />
There are two little words in the<br />
English language that perhaps mean more than<br />
all others. They are “thank you."...The habit of saying thank you is the mark of<br />
an educated man or woman. With whom is the<br />
Lord displeased? He names “those who confess<br />
not his hand in all things” (D&C 59:21). That is,<br />
those who walk without grateful expression. Walk<br />
with gratitude in your hearts, my dear friends. Be<br />
thankful for the wonderful blessings which are<br />
yours. Be grateful for the tremendous opportunities<br />
that you have. Be thankful to your parents, who<br />
care so very much about you and who have worked<br />
so very hard to provide for you. Let them know<br />
that you are grateful. Say thank you to your<br />
mother and your father. Say thank you to your<br />
friends. Say thank you to your teachers. Express<br />
appreciation to everyone who does you a favor<br />
or assists you in any way.<br />
<br />
Way to go, Gordon B. Those prophets sure know what they're talking about.<br />
<br />
Here's a link to the talk: http://www.lds.org/ensign/2001/01/a-prophets-counsel-and-prayer-for-youth?lang=eng<br />
<br />
Well, that's about all that I have for today. The week wasn't too eventful just because of all the meetings, hopefully this week will be better. We're going to the coast on Wednesday, coming back on Thursday night, with more interviews on Friday. Woo! Interview month is going to be the craziest month, because there are 11 zones and 180ish missionaries who need interviews. Poor President.<br />
<br />
Well, love you guys tons! Hopefully I have some fun stories next week, or at least experiences from my studies that I'll finally have again. Work hard, study hard, and go to the temple lots!<br />
<br />
Con amor,<br />
<br />
Elder Thomas<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-38448955530543943272014-02-22T20:22:00.001-08:002014-02-22T20:22:16.866-08:00Part 2Okay, where was I?<br />
<br />
Analyzing the scriptures, what it tells us about taking two sides is the following:<br />
<br />
No man can aserve btwo masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.<br />
<br />
I've been thinking a lot about this lately. I think I'm inheriting Dad´s "relate everything to the Gospel," senses. It really is cool how it relates though. Trying to serve both gets us nowhere. It's a state of constancy, and that's just what Ecuador is...constant. The sun rises and sets at the same time every day, the only real change in the weather is if it rains or not. Nothing changes here. While thinking in terms of weather, that may be nice. When related to progression, it is the worst state to be in.<br />
<br />
This life is about progress, not stand-still, constant performance. It's like saying we should stay in elementary school our whole lives-- it's easier, but there would be no real progress. We always need to be improving. Life isn't a time to stand still.<br />
<br />
In Alma, we read:<br />
<br />
32 For behold, this alife is the time for men to bprepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of cthis life is the day for men to perform their dlabors.<br />
33 And now, as I said unto you before, as ye have had so manyawitnesses, therefore, I beseech of you that ye do notbprocrastinate the day of your crepentance until the end; for after this day of life, which is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not improve our time while in this life, then cometh the dnight of edarkness wherein there can be no labor performed.<br />
34 Ye cannot say, when ye are brought to that awful acrisis, that I will repent, that I will return to my God. Nay, ye cannot say this; for that same spirit which doth bpossess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world.<br />
<br />
These words that he speaks to his son help everyone to realize how important this life is. We have been given free agency, and now is the chance to be tested. Every decision is so important, so key. We must choose to progress; it's not something that can be forced upon us. Change is a choice as is progress. In the book of 2 Nephi, this principle is explained very well.<br />
<br />
27 Wherefore, men are afree according to the bflesh; and callthings are dgiven them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to echoose fliberty and eternal glife, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be hmiserable like unto himself.<br />
<br />
So, there we have it, the two basic decisions: follow the Savior or follow the devil. Which can easily be related to the experiments at the equator. One way or another, we need to act. If we try to take no sides, we will be "cancelled out," essentially not accomplishing anything worthwhile in life. But, whether we choose the Lord or the enemy, we will be progressing forwards or backwards.<br />
<br />
It doesn't take a lot at first--with just a slight change of 8 feet, we saw immediate results. With us, it is the same. Whichever way we're going, it doesn't take a lot to see the results. Dante, our investigator, started praying every day, and that little change in behavior brought him to baptism. Little things do add up. Every decision counts. When we are indecisive, we feel like we're not progressing, because we aren't. By neither choosing the Lord nor the enemy, we cannot go anywhere. So, those are our choices: the Lord, the enemy, or a whole lot of nothing.<br />
<br />
Not sure if that makes sense. I'm a little delusional with lack of sleep, but I hope that I got my point across. There are many ways to interpret the stuff at the Equator, for good things or for bad things. For example, the consistency of the sun could be compared to the consistency of the love and aid of a different kind of Son. But, for today, we'll focus on what I talked about.<br />
<br />
<br />
We had a good lesson with Dante today about the priesthood, he'll be ordained next Sunday, and hopefully in April he'll be ordained to the office of Elder. He's doing great and looks awesome without his piercings. He came to church in a shirt and tie today, so great. He has his own scriptures now, and he's marking them up. Our Gospel Principles teacher is outstanding, he's a college English professor and he really teaches well. He's helping us out a ton with our investigators, they all talk about his class when we ask them how church went. Our bishop is really great, too, very calm and very helping. Good leaders make such a difference in the work that we do. It makes it very easy to keep people coming to church after the missionaries leave.<br />
<br />
We have changes tonight, we'll leave soon for President's house to get them taken care of. We show up, he shows us the changes that he did and why, we pray about them together one last time, then we make the calls to everyone. There will be a lot today. We need a new secretary, a few new zone leaders, new district leaders, 20 trainers for the new missionaries coming and we're opening up 6 new sectors. Yay, changes! It'll be sad to see Elder Morton go, he was my running buddy. We get up at 5:45 every morning to run for about 40 minutes in a really pretty park. I'm gonna go with another one of the secretaries, Elder Hess, once Elder Morton leaves. Dad, I don't know if I told you, but Elder Hess, the missionary you met in the airport in Lima, is one of the secretaries now. Small world, eh?<br />
<br />
Well, I think that's enough for this week. Wish me luck with the change week, it's the craziest one of them all. I can't believe that I'm already in my third change here, it feels like just yesterday I was sent here.<br />
<br />
Love you tons!<br />
<br />
Elder Thomas<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-82860651512193934172014-02-08T15:47:00.001-08:002014-02-08T15:47:12.069-08:00"For over 500 years I have walked among men, and now the only thing that I don't have is time!" GandalfHey all,<br />
<br />
I've got a half hour before we need to go to the chapel, the baptism is at 7. He's an awesome kid, named Dante. He's 21, and he's gone through a big change in the past month that we've taught him. He's the one that has tons of tattoos, piercings, etc. He told us last night that he's taking out his piercings today, and he'll never put them back in. He wants to serve a mission, he's at all the activities, he's reading his scriptures every day, he's a true convert. He was a great reference from a great family. The dad of the family is the son of one of the first converts in Ecuador. When I have more time, I'll write a little bit more about him.<br />
<br />
We played basketball today, on a real wooden court. Andrea's high school is super ritzy and has everything a normal high school in the states would have. We got permission to use the stuff today. We played soccer for a little bit, then we went into the full sized, wooden basketball court. We played a game of 21, and I won it! I thought that I would be really bad at basketball for not playing for over a year, but I wasn't nearly as bad as I thought I would be. I'm excited to play some more on real courts when I'm in America again. After, we went out to eat with the Richardsons in the Denny's of here. It is pretty good food, but not as cheap as the faithful Denny's. I ate a ton of breakfast, super good. We did all of this because Elder Morton, one of the secretaries, is leaving the offices with this change. He's been there for 8 months, and he wanted to work in the field before he ends in April. He's a great guy, and we had a really fun day today playing around and eating pancakes. And Captain Crunch. I love basketball, it was so fun to play for a bit.<br />
<br />
We had our leader's council this week, it went very well. Last year, we had a thing that we did in February and March, "The faith in February will bring the miracle of March." It sounds better in Spanish, but oh, well. We sacrifice some things in these months to better focus on the mission, and we strive to find as many people, be them investigators or less actives, that need to come to the Church to receive the necessary blessings. Last year, we had 223 confirmations in March, so it is something that works. We can only listen to music that would be played in General Conference (Some missionaries like to listen a lot to EFY songs and other songs like that), we can't do zone activities on preparation day, and we are to pick one personal sacrifice for these two months. I'm not sure what mine will be yet. In February, we want to end with 165 confirmations and 150 rescued less actives, and in March, 200 of each. We're really trying to push the missionaries really hard so that we can see great success in the coming months. I'm excited. Last year, I was in the Gasca for these months, and by sacrificing a little more than usual, we definitely saw a lot of miracles. For example, a brother who listened to the missionaries for 16 years got baptized. He and his wife are going to go to the temple with their family in the coming months to get sealed. I know we'll see cool miracles these year, too.<br />
<br />
I'm gonna start writing about something I've been studying, but I won't have time to finish today. We went to the equator a few weeks ago, and thinking back, there are a lot of great gospel lessons to be lived there.<br />
<br />
The equator is a "nullifying" line. On the equator, there aren't any big storms, no tornados, nothing dangerous from weather. The reason is that the way the earth spins causes the northern hemisphere to go in one direction, and the southern goes the other direction, just because of the spin. While watching the earth spin and looking at the poles, one pole spins one way and one spins the other. For that reason, the middle, the equator, is where they cancel each other out.<br />
<br />
The guide took a bowl of water with a hole in the bottom. When he unplugged the hole while the bucket was right on the equator, the water just fell straight down, without spining or anything. When we went 8 or so feet to the north of the line, it spun in one way. When we went 8 feet or so to the south of the line, it spun the other way.<br />
<br />
When walking on the equator, if you close your eyes and try to walk right on the line with your hands spread out, one on each side of the equator, you can't do it. The difference of the spin makes you lose your balance, and you always fall.<br />
<br />
When you are 8 feet away from the equator, if you put your hands up and someone tries to pull them down with all their force, you can resist, no problem. When you do the same thing on the equator, the person pulling down on your hands can use only two fingers, and you can't resist at all. Your hands go right down and you lose your balance.<br />
<br />
These experiment got me thinking about the idea of serving two masters. We just can't do it. When we try to serve both, nothing happens, just like the weather or the water on the equator. We're weaker, we lose our balance, we can't even walk. We have to choose one side or the other, or nothing will happen. It is just like that with choosing between the Lord and Satan. We can't try to do both, no progress with be made. We must choose one or the other. If we choose the Lord, we will progress for the better. If we choose Satan, we will take steps backwards. But, in this life, we are not able to choose a stalemate.<br />
<br />
Out of time. I'll finish my thoughts whenever I can find time. Next week will be crazy, it's change week again.<br />
<br />
Love you tons!<br />
<br />
Elder ThomasUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-73449562282453135292014-02-02T16:35:00.002-08:002014-02-02T16:35:39.129-08:00"Creed gave me a tapeworm to start losing more weight." Kelly "That wasn't a tapeworm." CreedHey all,<br />
<br />
<br />
What a great week. I love being a missionary. I feel really happy right now.<br />
<br />
<br />
I am going to start out with the best part of the week. I went back to Lago Agrio! We decided lasat minute to go out there to get everything done with the missionaries out there for the next three months. It is hard to find time to make it out there, usually about every three months President goes out with the assistants to do trainings, interviews, etc. We decided on Monday to go on Friday and come back today around 12. I got there, and I just felt so happy. Part of me will always be in Lago Agrio. I got to see all of my converts, the members, everyone. I was so happy to see them, and they were happy to see me. Since it was last minute, they were kind of mad because if they knew that I was coming, they would have had an activity or something. I love all those members of that little branch so much, even the headache members. We got in Friday morning (we flew, hallelujah) and did trainings all night, and in the evening the members showed up to say hello to me. Here comes the best part of the trip.<br />
<br />
Elder Burr and I taught and baptized the children of a family, the Cedeño Gordón family. The kids are pilas. They got baptized last July, and by the time I left in October, they were some of the most faithful members of the branch, and they still are today. They all have mission plans, they all read their scriptures, they're the best. The parents are also great, but they didn't get baptized with their kids. The dad works for an oil company, so he can come to church once a month, and we have 2 or 3 days to teach him in a given month. Because of that, his progress was a little slow. His name is Bernardo. The mom, Elvira, is also very faithful. Ever since we first found them, she hasn't missed a single Sunday. She was more faithful than some of the members. But, she wanted to wait to be baptized until her husband decided to be baptized, as well. When I left in October, he was almost there, but not quite. The companion that I left, Elder Murphy, kept teaching them, and around December they were both ready, but they said that they only wanted Elder Burr or I to baptize them. The Burr wasn't really a realistic option, although he is arguably Superman and can probably fly, but they were hoping that in some way at least I could go back to do the ordinance. They already had goals for temple, supporting their kids on the mission, etc. Basically members, just needed the baptism. Well, our trip to the orient just happened to fall on the weekend where he doesn't have to work, and we had time this morning to do a baptism, so we did so!<br />
<br />
It was such a great service. President Richardson was there, the missionaries in Lago were there, and a lot of the members of the branch were able to come. It was a very special service, almost like a family reunion. Everyone had been waiting so long for Elvira and Bernardo to get baptized, they were all so anxious for this. They are some of the best people I know, and they are such good members of the church. We got there, a little hurried because of the flight that we had to catch, but we performed the ordinances that I had been to so many times, this time being very special. I baptized the husband, and he had a big smile on his face the whole time. He's more of a quiet guy, but you could see the joy coming out of him. Elvira was next, and as she got in, I could see that she was starting to cry, and I mumbled to her, "Por fin, hermana," and she looked up at me an smiled, I said the prayer, and she was baptized. I've never seen a reaction like hers before, she was so, so, so happy. She came out of the water and gave every single person a hug, and was just so visibly happy. They gave their testimonies, and talked about how they knew that this was going to help their family be even better than ever, that the temple would bring them great happiness. It was so awesome to hear their testimonies and see their conversion, all brought about by the power of the Holy Ghost. Such a wonderful thing. President gave some great thoughts for all of us, then they asked me to say a few things. I basically just talked about how important the family was for Elder Burr and I, and that although we may be far away from them, we're always thinking about them and praying for them. I wish Elder Burr could have been there, that's the only thing that the service lacked. Everything else was perfect. After, Elvira knows that I love colada morada, so she made some for everyone. It was delicious. We talked for a little bit, then it was time to go back.<br />
<br />
It was hard to leave there again, like I said, it's like part of me will always be there. But, the Lord needs me in other places doing other things, and I understand and happily do what He needs of me. I'm learning a lot being in the offices, and am excited for the things that I will continue to learn in my months here in Quito. Every book needs to end, and I feel like this was a good way to "close up" for now my work in Lago. I am blessed for my time there, and I am blessed by having my assignment in the offices. What the Lord asks, I'll do! That's such an important thing that I've learned while being a missionary, when we do what the Lord wants, we're happier. When we whine and complain about what is asked of us, we distance ourselves from the Lord and end up being grumpy. Doing what is asked is really the only right way to do things. We'll end up being happier that way. Plus, that attitude helps us to keep progressing gradually to being more consecrated, although we'll never quite be as consecrated as we should be. For example, I will never share my Captain Crunch with anybody. Forget about it. But, we all need to be improving constantly, and that's a big task; we've got a lot to get better at. But, the right attitude makes all the difference in our quest to be better. It's important to choose to do what the Lord wants, thank goodness for agency!<br />
<br />
On Tuesday and Wednesday, we were back in Otavalo, so beautiful. It's a good fight between Lago and Otavalo for prettiest part of Ecuador, but I think that Otavalo wins because of Imbabura. The trainings went well. It was the last group to receive the trainings, so we had all of the kinks worked out, and it went really well. It always turns out that right when we get good at something, it's the end of doing that thing. That stinks. Right when we got good at a training, we'll never give it again. Oh, well. But, we taught all of the same things that I have already talked to you about--being good leaders, being good followers, how to cleanly eat chicken is a suit-- the usual. It went very well, and we're starting to see the results we want little by little. We are asking more from the missionaries and pushing them more, with promised cookies and other goodies at the end of the road. It seems to be working, I think that the things that we trained on were just what the mission needed to hear. The Lord definitely inspired us to know what to teach and what to do to help the mission, hopefully February can be a great month. Tuesday we went and checked a bunch of the houses to see if they were clean, some were, and some stunk. Literally. One bathroom was the end of me, I lost my eyebrows walking in. Some missionaries need to learn how to clean. Heather, you could teach a lot of people here how to clean. Wednesday we had the last meeting, and the President met with the stake presidents there. Otavalo has the nickname "Utahvalo" because there are tons of members there. They say 40% of the city are members of the Church. It is a town roughly the size of Rochester, with two stakes and 11 chapels, all of them gorgeous. They have solid attendance, and when they go to the temple, they fill up tons of buses of people. President Kimball, when he visited there once, said that they were some of the purest blooded Lamanites that there are today. Pretty cool, huh? The promises of the Book of Mormon are being fulfilled, they Lamanites are accepting the Gospel again. They speak Quichua, a sweet ancient Lamanite language. All I know in Quichua is the Book of Mormon--"Mormonpaj Quicashka." Talk about fluent, eh?<br />
<br />
We got back late Wednesday night, and because of the last minute trip to the orient, we had to have the interviews planned for Friday in Quito moved to Thursday. We had absolutely no time to plan anything for them. We got home at 10:30 Wednesday night, and had the interviews at 9 the next morning. So, we applied our motto as assistants: "Fake it 'till you make it." It seemed to work quite well. President told us what he wants us to train, so we just made it up as we went, and when we needed time to thing, we put an 8 minute video on to give us time to think. Classic. It turned out fine in the end, and I don't think that they could tell that we made the stuff up. We have our Mission Council on Tuesday, a very important meeting, that we also need to plan still. These weeks have been and will be crazy, we have very little open time to sit down and plan. We'll find time soon to get everything ready. I hope...<br />
<br />
When we travel with President, sometimes we get to listen to the mission presidents' seminar from last year. There are some very interesting talks there, lots of cool insights from the Church leaders. They put so much importance on the missionaries and their presidents, it's interesting to see how important it is for them to train the presidents well. They do a good job, too, the talks are outstanding. He's got 30 discs of talks, lots to learn and to listen to.<br />
<br />
Elder Callister recently gave a CES devotional. We couldn't see it, but this week the text was put up to print. Killer talk. I'm not sure if you've listen to or read his talk, but you should. He talks about the blueprint that Christ left for His Church. He used various scriptures, only from the New Testament, to explain what Christ had in His Church (Prophets, Apostles, Seventy, Priesthood, knowledge of the plan of salvation, temple work, the importance of families, etc.). He used the example of how he and his wife had planned out a new home for their growing family. They submitted the blueprint, and occasionally requested changes to be made to the plans. He said that at the end of construction, there was only one house in the world exactly like his. There are many similar houses, an occasionally similar window or door or room or table, but piece for piece, design for design, there is only one house in the world like his. It is the same with Christ's church. He made it in a specific way, and while there are other organizations that have similarities, there is only one church that matches the blueprint perfectly: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He talked about the "change orders" in Christ's church being revelations. The example that he used was that Christ had told the Apostles to only preach to the Jews, but in a dream to Peter, said that everyone could here the Gospel. The only changes that can be made to the blueprint have to be made by revelation. There was never a revelation that said that we no longer need prophets or the organization of Christ's original church, so we must do our best to search for the truth and to stay with it. Very interesting his talk. I loved it, you should read it if you haven't.<br />
<br />
As a mission, we've studied a talk called "The Fourth Missionary," given by a mission president many years ago. He talks about four types of missionaries, I'll summarize very briefly what I learned. The #1 is disobedient and goes home for doing something stupid or by his own choice. #2 stays in the mission, but is disobedient and doesn't do anything good. #3 is obedient and works hard, he has success, but he only serves with his might and strength, not his heart and mind. He does the things a missionary should do grudgingly, he withholds part of himself and doesn't give himself completely to the work. He is a good guy, but not quite there. Because he holds back, his progress is minimal on a personal level, although he helps many to receive the Gospel. #4 gives it all. Heart, might, mind and strength. He holds nothing back, and grows greatly from his mission. He is consecrated, he is dedicated, he thinks of nothing but the work. The mission president obviously expounds on this with more details (25 pages), but that is the general theme of the talk, and he invites all to become a number 4. I like how he did the invitation. He said that being a #4 is the intelligent thing to do, in the end, it is the easiest thing to do. When we withhold a part of ourselves, we will always have an inner conflict between ourselves and the Lord. When we take the step to be a 4, all we have is the Lord's will, so there is no conflict and we'll be happier. Being a 4 is the intelligent thing to do. Pretty cool thought. I wish I could share more about the talk, we'll have to read it together sometime. In a group of 100 missionaries, he said that 5 would be 1's, 20 2's, 70 3's, and 5 4's, but we all have the potential to become a 4, we just get lazy. Reading it gave me a lot of good goals to help me have more and more characteristics of a 4.<br />
<br />
I haven't had too much time to study other things, with all of the traveling, we've lost a lot of our study time. That's probably the hardest thing about the offices--we lose our studies all of the time. But, I study when I can, and I am still learning and progressing. Training and teaching is probably the best way to learn, anyways. The teacher always learns more than the students, unless the teacher is Dumbledore. Studying the Gospel is just the best. Studying in general is great, but especially the Gospel makes me super happy.<br />
<br />
I hope that you haven't fallen asleep reading the letter. I've gotta take advantage of the weeks where I have the full two hours to write you guys, some weeks it is tough to get a good note off (next week may be one of those weeks.) I hope that you all know that I love you a lot, and I pray for you always. This Church is true, this work is important. I hope that you all have chances to share the Gospel this week. Love you guys!<br />
<br />
<br />
Con amor,<br />
<br />
Elder Thomas<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-59941643220216931332014-01-27T22:46:00.003-08:002014-01-27T22:46:18.720-08:00"I am a stratus cloud, Mister Stratus is my name, I'm long and low but wherever I go, I often bring you rain!" That movie with the flying trainHey all,<br />
<br />
<br />
Another crazy week, but we finally have a tranquilo P-day without anything taking away tons of time. It feels good to take some time to relax for a bit from all of the craziness. And eat lots of food.<br />
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So, I got the mega-load with packages. I got Steve's mother-of-all-packages, and the next day I arrive at the offices to find another package from the Ebberts, with essentially the same things. You all know me too well. I am presently in heaven, eating a little bit of everything, and trying to hold back my companions from eating everything all at once. The Captain Crunch has not been open yet, two big boxes waiting for me. One complaint with the Captain. They finally changed the front of the box, yet the back remains the exact same. It has had the same back for years and hasn't changed. Get with the times.<br />
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After doing the verifications and stuff on Monday, we had a great leader's meeting on Tuesday here in Quito. What we're doing this month is having a leader's meeting on Tuesday, and a general meeting the next day with all of the missionaries. It's been working well so far, and Elder Ospina and I stay for a few days to do divisions. This week, the meetings were in Quito, so we didn't travel Tuesday or Wednesday. The meetings went great, we are seeing the progress we want in the mission little by little. We were really happy to see the weekly Area report this week--usually we are quite low in everything, but in January, when we started pushing the missionaries a little bit more, the numbers spiked up, and we're at or above average in almost everything, now we just need to get our number of baptisms up. We're pretty low in that for a lot of reasons, but we'll getting better. We're still in the "building" stages of the mission, we'll get there. The meeting on Wednesday was huge, there were about 90 missionaries there. But, it was a great meeting, with good participation and good commentaries. We're happy with what we saw there.<br />
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On Wednesday night, we traveled to Otavalo, well close to Otavalo. A pretty little town called Ibarra. It really is so pretty in that area. I forgot my camera, so I don't have pictures, but we'll go back on Tuesday for trainings. There is this volcano, Imbabura, that I just can't get enough of. It is so big and so green, it really takes my breath away every time that I see it. Right at the base of it, there is a clear, blue lake, picture perfect. I thought that the orient was the most beautiful part of Ecuador, but Otavalo wins it. Loved it. Ibarra has some problems. Supposedly, it is the oldest district in the Church, it's been a district forever. Hearing about it, I thought it was some poor little town, but I had no idea because I had never been there. I show up, and it is a huge town with 2 malls and around 10 KFC's. I was really surprised, being in Ecuador, it could easily have 2 stakes. There is a lot of work to do there, but the missionaries who are sent there usually see it as a death sentence rather than an opportunity to grow. I was with the zone leaders, and I shared with them my experience in Lago--arriving and it was a failing branch, and by the time I left, it was strong and growing. It all depends on our attitude and our work, there is nothing else that impedes us from having success. I went to their district meeting with them, tried to help the zone get excited with the work, then we worked hard all day long and killed it. We had 4 or 5 lessons with members, found 4 new people, got some lady ready for her interview and stuff, a great day. The zone leaders felt really good about the day, and hopefully they can keep working hard and have every day be the same. They just gotta work hard and believe that they'll have success. It's amazing how much of an influence your attitude has.<br />
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We were there until Friday in Otavalo. After the divisions, we had to help the secretaries find new houses for the changes coming up, we're opening more sectors in Otavalo. In just the city Otavalo, we'll have 30 missionaires, so we'll have to divide the zone soon. We have 10 right now, in the coming months we'll have to divide lots because we'll get up to 225 missionaries and we're only at 175 right now. 50 more will call for more zones, but it should be a great blessing. More missionaries should mean more success. Friday night, we had time for two appointments at night, both of them are great. We're working really hard with an inactive family, the Cabrera family. They got baptized a long, long time ago, and for various reasons and trials, they went inactive. The dad was never baptized, but their four kids were. One of them even went through the temple. But, they're all inactive now. We've "rescued" the mom, she attends every week. We're focusing a lot on the temple with them, and we want to help the dad get baptized and activate the other kids and their non-member wives and kids. It is a family with a lot of potential, and little by little they are progressing. We had a very, very spiritual lesson with the mom and the dad last Sunday, an excellent lesson. We focused on the temple and the priesthood and how important it is to have the priesthood in a home. They told us of all the trials that they are facing right now, and they were pretty sad with all that was going on. I started speaking, and some unplanned words came out, totally inspired words from the Spirit. After they told me about their problems, I told them that the Lord was putting them in their life right now so that they can arrive at the temple, so that they understand that the only real refuge is what the Lord can give us as we make covenants with Him. I said that, and they all started crying, even we were. The dad, who usually never prays, offered to give the last prayer and got very emotional during it. We're seeing progress, I know that we can help them to get to the temple if we can keep pushing them.<br />
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The other appointment that we had was with Dante, a sweet kid, a reference from a member. When we first met him, they told us, "Don't judge him, he's got things to improve, but that's why we need to teach him the Gospel." All right, great introduction. We meet him, super tattooed, piercings, etc. But, we taught him, and it was a good little lesson, but for a few weeks we weren't able to meet with him. With the new year, he wanted to really focus on the Gospel and grow closer to the Lord, so we started working hard with him. He's been to Church twice now, and he's going to be baptized on the 8th of February. A few cool experiences with him. After his first attendance, we met with him, taught him, he's great. Everything we leave to read in the Book of Mormon, he reads and he understands, everything you want in an investigator. But, we had the fear of the impending "you need to take out your earrings" talk. We went to Esmeraldas that week, and had no appointment with him before church came on Sunday. The whole time, we were thinking, "How do we do this?" We showed up to church, and Dante was already there...without his earrings in, looking great. We had no idea what was going on, no one had told him that he should take them out.<br />
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We went to an appointment with him later that day, and he told us his story. He went to visit his parents, they live in a town called Santo Domingo, about four hours from here. His parents don't like his tattoos or his piercings, and they got in a little fight about it, that it was time for him to grow up and be more of an adult. He got mad and went to his room, he said he was crying. While he was there, he said that he did the only thing that he could think of--pray like we taught him. So, he prayed, and he said that after he looked at himself in the mirror and thought, "How ridiculous do I look?" and took out most of his earrings. Some of them will take a little bit of time to take out completely, but he took them out totally by his own choice, without anyone telling him to. He just prayed, and he felt what he needed to do. How cool is that?<br />
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During the lesson, we're talking about his baptism, he said he still felt so so about it, he wanted to study a bit more and stuff, but he wanted to eventually. We supported him and told him that we're always willing to teach and help. After, when we were leaving, he said, "Wait. I have one more thing to say. I am getting baptized on February 8th. I don't know, I just feel like it is what I need to do." Super cool. That's a real conversion story right there. He has learned the principles- prayer,scripture study, church attendance, the commandments-and he is now able to govern himself. He is making changes to his life, but is so happy, he's told us that many times. He loves to pray, loves church, loves it all. The family that gave us the reference is a great help to him, and he's already great friends with all of the youth. He will be a great member, he is understanding the Gospel and the blessings of the Atonement.<br />
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Gotta love the mission. I hear that some of you are going to eat with Elder Burr. Treat that boy like a king, he is such a good guy, I learned so much from him, and I miss being his companion. He's the best!<br />
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I found this great manual on lds.org, I'll try to post it with the email. It is awesome, I think that it was a BYU class manual, but it about how to be good leaders. I've only studied a couple of chapters, but I'm learning tons about how to be a good leader. It's interesting, one of the first things that it teaches is the importance of living the "Golden Rule," and that only good leaders truly do that. It cites scriptures from almost every religion, and of everything that they believe differently, in every book of their scripture, it mentions in some form the Golden Rule. Pretty interesting, and it is so true. If we ask someone to do something that we wouldn't do, we'll never lead well. Jesus did that, as always He is the Perfect Example. I'm learning a whole lot from it, you should study parts from it while you can. It also mentions how when we better understand the Plan of Salvation, we become better leaders. We understand everyone's divine potential and better serve them, because we know what they can become instead of focusing on who they are. We also feel an increased loved for those whom we serve, because we know that we are all children of our Heavenly Father.<br />
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We watched the Joseph Smith movie today before going to the soccer game, it was helping me with all these things that I've been learning about being a good leader. Joseph Smith was awesome. I love the scene when he rebukes the drunk guards mocking the Mormons, shows them up big time, the stud. But I love when right after, he says with emotion, "The worth of every soul is great in the sight of God." The way he says it is so great, stressing on the words "every" and "great." That is the view that the Lord has, and there is no better leader than him. As said earlier and in many ways by many people, we must love those whom we serve, and see them through eternal eyes, focusing on their eternal worth. I feel like I have tons to learn about being a good leader, but I love studying these things and applying them. There are so many great leaders in history with many different great ways to lead. There is always something new to learn about leadership, I hope I can always keep learning and progressing as leader. Maybe one day I could make it to manager of a Wendy's.<br />
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Elder Callister is a boss. He is becoming a new favorite of mine, up there with big Neil and Gordon B. His talks are killer. There are two that I love, one about integrity and one about being a consecrate missionary. I'm reading the consecrated missionary one this week for my first time, and it is awesome. He gave it in the MTC in 2008, awesome talk. He talks about how we need to leave everything behing, focusing entirely on the mission. No worries about home, about school, work, girls, nada. He gives the example of Parley P. Pratt, who served a mission for around 25 yeras. I'll put in the quote right here, it is really cool what Parley P. says.<br />
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I have desired, after travelling for twenty-five or twenty-six years, mostly abroad, to stay at home and minister among the people of God, and take care of my family; but God’s will be done, and not mine. If it is the will of God that I should spend my days in proclaiming this Gospel and bearing testimony of these things, I shall think myself highly privileged and honored. And when the Spirit of God is upon me, I think it matters but very little what I suffer, what I sacrificed–whether I secure the honor or dishonor of men, or where I die, if it so be that I can keep the faith, fight the good fight, and finish my course with joy. I have all eternity before me, in which to enjoy myself.<br />
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Pretty cool, huh? That's a great attitude to have. I'd recommend the talk for anyone who hasn't read it, and to read it again if you have. We won't be asked to serve for 25 years, but we can still be more consecrated to the work from home as well. If we're consecrated, we give up pride, we give up disobedience, we give up talking bad about others, we do all that we can to give everything to the work. There is one more thing that he says that I liked. Paraphrasing, he says, "If you want to baptize a few people, talk to a few people. If you want to baptize a lot of people, talk to a lot of people. If you want to baptize everybody that you can, talk to everybody that you can." A consecrated missionary chucks fear at the door and just invites all the people that he can to come unto Christ. Killer talk, so good. Way to go, Tad.<br />
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I'm learning lots here, and I feel like I'm growing to be better and better every day. There is so much in life that we need to get better at, and when we focus on the Gospel as we try to do so, we can happily and consistently improve and become more like the Savior.<br />
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I love you all tons, and wish you all luck in whatever you need luck for. I know that the Church is true, and I know that we need to say that more and more to other people. We're going to Otavalo this week, hopefully I can take some pictures. I'll attach one that was on the computer, it's pretty, but doesn't do it justice (it looks like it was taken in the dry season. Right now it is very, very green there). Read your scriptures, go to the temple, and do all that you can happily! You're all the best!<br />
<br />
Elder Thomas<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-11765468374308692152014-01-20T12:44:00.000-08:002014-01-20T12:44:03.008-08:00"I see the moon, and the moon sees me, God bless the moon, and God bless me." That weird Mother Goose movie we watch when we were littleHey all,<br />
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Time is short today, so I am going to write briefly, and whenever I have more time to write again (maybe not until next week), I'll give more details.<br />
<br />
Monday, we just did verifications all day and planned stuff for the trainings this month.<br />
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Tuesday, we left bright and early for Esmeraldas. It is pretty when you leave the city, but when you are in the city, it is like a sewer, bless its heart. I do miss it a lot, though, I love my time serving there. I especially have missed the heat, after living for so long in hot conditions, my body got used to it. It felt good to sweat again. We got there around lunchtime, and got to have a great leaders' meeting with all of the zone leaders and district leaders there in the coast. It was a great environment, just me, Elder Ospina, and the Richardsons in a smaller room with the leaders. We called a lot of new, young leaders this change to try to vamp things up in the mission, and we had this meeting to train them in a little bit. It was really great. We talked about a variety of things, their responsibilities, the forms they should fill out, what we expect from them, etc. Elder Ospina and I have been preparing a training for quite some time about becoming good pastors, and we feel like it went well. We got to stay the night in a really pretty beachside town, Atacames, with the Elder who live there.<br />
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Wednesday morning, we got permission to go running on the beach, super pretty. It was just us and no one else out there on the sand, really calming to hear the ocean waves and to see out into the horizon. The earth is super pretty, just when you're around dirty people, it can loose its appeal for a bit. We spent the day in a meeting with all of the missionaries, not just the leaders, and the theme was basically that we're expecting more from them than we are currently seeing, a "pep rally" of sorts to get us working harder. It went well, I think that they got the message. We also talked to them about the importance of supporting their leaders. Some of the new leaders are very young in the mission and are leaders of missionaries with a lot more experience, so we need their support even if they feel like they should be the leaders instead of the young pups. After, we went by 5 or 6 of the houses to verify them, and we were shocked to find them really clean. Usually, they are disasters and we have to get on their backs about cleaning, but we were surprised by what we saw. Hopefully they can now stay clean (they probably won't). I spent the night with on pair of zone leaders, Elder Ospina with the others so that we could do divisions on Thursday.<br />
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Thursday, I spent all day working with the zone leaders. It was great. It was my first full day of proselyting since I've been in the offices, and it was so much fun. We had our district meeting, ward council and mission correlation meeting, and we had some good appointments and found some new people. It was a very effective day. It rained all day, and we came home wet, muddy, and sweaty, and it was the best feeling in the world. I miss working full days like that, especially in the heat. But, the offices are a blessing as well, and a great opportunity to learn. I am happy where I am. We were able to spend some time at night talking about the needs of the zone and how the zone leaders could get better, and we set some great goals.<br />
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Friday, we headed back home. There is this great dish called encebollado ("onioned" in English), that is one of our favorite things to eat here. It has fish, so it is best eaten in the coast where the fish is fresh. We stopped by the best restaurant in Esmeraldas and ate a bowl or two before leaving. The bus is about 7 hours long, and they usually play movies on the ride, so we get excited to see what movies they put. Sometimes, they're great, sometimes, they're duds. This time? About as dud as you can get. Breaking Dawn Part 2. Boo.<br />
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Yeah, we have to go right now, I'll finish later. We have a baptism tonight that we need to get ready. Sorry. Quick finish, we went to the Equator today, totally balanced the egg on the nail and got a special certificate. Boo yah. Also, I got the Madsen, Lowe, and Jensen Christmas cards this week, thanks for send them!<br />
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Love you tons, I'll write more later,<br />
<br />
Elder Thomas<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-40324345739698941262014-01-20T12:42:00.001-08:002014-01-20T12:42:37.353-08:00"Once an Austrian went yodelling on a mountain so high, when he met with a milking maid interrupting his cry. OOOOOEEEEEEAAAAAA Oli rock ahi a holi rock a who! Arf Arf! Grr! Rumble rumble! Oli rock ahi a holi rock a who! Arf Arf! Grr! Rumble rumble!Oli rock ahi a holi rock a who! Arf Arf! Grr! Rumble rumble! Oli Rock ahi a ho!!! Wee sing presents, "SIllyville!"Hey all!<br />
<br />
<br />
What a great week!<br />
<br />
Monday, verifications, nothing special there.<br />
<br />
Tuesday, we celebrate Elder Damián's birthday, President took us to Crepes and Waffles. So, so good. We spent all day planning the leaders' council, getting our trainings ready and getting all of the papers ready, yada yada. Nothing too exciting, just doing lots of power points.<br />
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On Wednesday, we had our leaders' council, and it went really well. We focused on pushing ourselves a little bit more, that what we're doing isn't enough. We had a good training by President, he talked about the things that the First Presidency and the 12 told the 70 last General Conference. It was all interesting stuff, and a lot of them talked about how important it is to learn how to machete someone lovingly. That's an interesting thing for them to mention, but obviously it must be an important thing for us to get better at, or they wouldn't be teaching it. Others spoke about how important it is to fast, how important faith is, lots of great things, it was a good training. After, we talked about "gavillas," no idea what the word is in English. Elder Ospina and I had a good talk with the leaders about how the work we do and the amount of people that we help is important to the Lord. There are a lot of missionaries who are "sleep walking" through the mission; whether they have success or not doesn't really matter to them. We read in Alma 26 and DyC 75, and helped the missionaries get inspired to work harder. Compared to the Area averages, our mission isn't doing too well, so we need to push ourselves more. After talking about that, we raised our "norms" in the mission-the goals that all the missionaries should have in their sectors. We raised those to try to raise the work that the missionaries do. I think that it went well, that we'll be seeing results quickly. Elder Ospina and I finished with a sweet quote from Joseph Smith, paraphrasing he says, "If you do not do your duty, the Lord will hold you accountable for those you would have saved had you done your duty. If you do your duty, it will be as if all men received the Gospel." Nice, Joseph, nailed it. It was a great meeting, though. We were able to speak frankly, but happily and energetically, getting everyone excited to work a little bit harder.<br />
<br />
On Thursday, we had the verification of the new missionaries and their trainers from the last change to see if they're doing everything that they should be doing. We went to the Panecillo, a really pretty viewpoint. It's a hill right in the middle of the valley with a giant statue of the virgin from Revelations that is going to "stomp the snake." Really cool. The meeting went well, the gringos still stink at Spanish, but they'll get there. At night, Elder Ospina and I traveled to Otavalo to do divisions there. This was a night to remember.<br />
There is a house in a place called Agato. Agato is known to be haunted. I didn't believe it, I wanted to see this for myself. So, we spent the night in Agato. My goodness. It is a house all by itself, all the houses around it are abandoned. There is a cemetery right in front of it. It is a badly lit house. It was a dirty house. It was a scary house. You walk in, and could right away feel a heavy, dark feeling. It was freaky. We tried playing games, singing songs, but we just felt lonely and scared. What a mistake to go there. There are stories of seeing people that aren't really there, hearing people walking around in the vacant upstairs, tapping on the window, everything. We turned the lights out to sleep, and I instantly turned into a baby girl. I woke up steadily every thirty minutes or so, completely horrified. Any noise, any movement, anything scared the pants off of me. I didn't even want to open my eyes. Someone called us at 3 in the morning, and Elder Ospina and I gave each other animos to keep going, both horrified. At last, at long, long last, the sun came out. The long night had ended, I had come out triumphant. If you want to send me a shirt that says, "I survived Agato," please do. Super scary. But, it's really pretty around there, right at the base of a giant volcano. Nailed the adventure. I hear that they're thinking of making a Ghostbusters 3, if so, sign me up for the tryouts. Boo yah.<br />
<br />
Friday we spent in divisions, it was a good day. We talked to an atheist when we contacted, it was super sad to see him, he wasn't happy at all, complaining about everything. Having faith in something makes such a difference in the happiness of life.<br />
<br />
Today, we went and had lunch with Dad's reference, Ana Delgado. She is super, super nice and super, super, super, super wealthy. She had tons of cool stories, and tons of great insights. She is super ready for the Gospel, hopefully we can keep visiting and teaching her. Her husband was killed in 1992, when her daughter was 6 months old, her father recently passed away, she has tons of great religious questions and already thought we needed a restoration to believing in God again, she's great. The lunch she made us was fantastic, super delicious, and we had a good lesson on the Restoration. She has a Book of Mormon and the conference edition of the Liahona, and hopefully we'll go again sometime. She was very receptive and very kind. We visited her with President, it was a very uplifting experience. With a few more visits, I could see her developing a strong testimony.<br />
<br />
That's all that I'm going to write for now. I only used one hour for now, we're going to a baptism of some missionaries. I'll write some more later today or tomorrow.<br />
<br />
Love you all!<br />
<br />
Elder Thomas<br />
<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-11246823132449366372014-01-06T15:10:00.003-08:002014-01-06T15:10:23.294-08:00"Neil was my high school rival. I was a better cheerleader than him, but he always beat me at close-hand magic." Phil DunpheyHey all,<br />
<br />
<br />
Totally went to a bomb zoo today.<br />
<br />
Another crazy week. The first week of the change is always crazy.<br />
<br />
Monday. So, we had 4 different flights with missionaries coming in. 10:30 a.m., 4:00 p.m., 5:30 p.m., and 11:00 p.m. President had to do exit interviews in the offices all afternoon for the group going home. Usually, the new missionaries come on Tuesday, but for the holiday, we had them come on Monday. It was nuts. We went together with President at 10:30 for a group of 10 latino Elders and took them to a chapel an hour away. We didn't want to have to deal with them, so we gave them lunch then sent them with their "baby sitters," the Elders that worked nearby. President couldn't make it for the next group, so we took a taxi to the airport. At 4, 8 gringos came in, 4 sisters and 4 Elders. We left one at the airport with one of the newbies to wait for the flight at 5:30 while we went to the chapel with the other gingos. Elder Ospina and I had to drop off the bags where they were going to stay. Girls pack a ton of stuff, super heavy bags. That was our workout for the day. Everyone from the 4 and 5:30 flights eventually made it to the chapel, around 7, and we had dinner for them while the Elders that went with the baby sitters made it back to the chapel. We sent them to their hotels to sleep around 8:30, then Elder Ospina and I had to go to President's house to make it to the end of the goodbye dinner for the missionaries finishing their mission. We took pictures, yada yada, then we had to leave for the airport for a missionary and Matt's girlfriend. We made it, and had to wait FOREVER. The flight got in at 11:06, but the sister didn't come out until 12:15. We met Matt's girlfriend (now fiancé), she was nice but it is really weird to be around girls. We took a taxi with the sister, getting her home around 1:30, then went to our house. The missionaries who left stayed in our house and left at 3:00 a.m., so after taking care of that, we could sleep a little bit. It was sad to say goodbye to Elder Dearden, but not super super sad, just because we both study at BYU and I'll see him in the fall. He was a fun companion, I'll miss him, but I know that Elder Ospina and I will have a lot of fun together, as well.<br />
<br />
Tuesday, we had to entertain the new missionaries, but we had a rule to be in the house at 5 at the latest to avoid all the vainas in the streets. So, we did some training and practices, at some food, watched some videos, it was a good time. President spoke about various things, and we had various classes on how to do things (iron, cook, not get constipated, the usual). We bought them Subway and sent them home to rest and study around 4, then we had to go the offices. On Monday, we had no time to do the verifications, so we did that on Tuesday evening. We made it home and cooked and cleaned a little bit, then at midnight we went on our roof to watch the fireworks. I hope I can send a video. It was like World War III, honestly. There was such a ridiculous amount of fireworks. The air is heavy here, so by the end, Quito was covered in smoke. But, it was awesome. In the whole night, in the whole city, they probably launched more than a thousand fireworks. It was insane, super fun. We hit the hay, and got ready for the next day.<br />
<br />
Wednesday, we had the Mini-MTC, bascially our time to teach all of the missionaries the rules and how to teach before they get their companion. We split up in English and Spanish classes, and stuffed them full of information. It's helped a lot to have this before they get their companions, though, because there are a lot of rules they don't know and a lot of their companions don't follow the rules. We give them a heads up so they can't play the "I had no idea!" card. It's fun to be with the new missionaries. They are so excited to be here, their excitement and their spirit is contagious. It's such a fun week when we're with them. They have great ideas, and we need their spirits to keep everyone working hard. At night, we went to President's house to have the welcome dinner. I will never get sick of the Richardson's food. I have like 4 plates every time we eat there. You only live once. We sent the newbies home after eating, then had to plan for a few things at night since President was going to travel with his family. Home at 11, got to sleep.<br />
<br />
Thursday, the trainers came. It's a quick meeting with them. We show up and split between trainers and new missionaries to give them various instructions. Elder Ospina and I were with the trainers, and we had a really good meeting with lots of great participation. Usually it's just us talking, and when we ask for comments, no one talks. This time, almost everything said was said by them, which is the best way to teach and train. We had a good Subway lunch again, and getting everyone to their sectors was a headache. There were a bunch that needed to go to different places, and we had no idea how to get there. We just put them in a taxi and hoped the taxi driver knew how to get there. We went to the offices after, and spent all night preparing informs so that we could do divisions on Friday. We got everything done around 11 and headed home to sleep.<br />
<br />
Friday, a normal day, finally! We got up and went on a nice, long run, which felt great. We've been getting up at 5:45 every morning to be able to run longer at a really nice park, parque Carolina. We go with Elder Paz and Elder Clark, and it's really fun. We went to a district meeting here in Quito after, and spent the day in divisions with the zone leaders and a companionship that is having troubles. Elder Ospina and I want to do lots of divisions this month, each time one of us will go with the zone leaders and the other will go with a companionship that needs a little bit of help with things. Hopefully it will work out okay, and will help us to have much better leaders. This change, we have a lot of new leaders, and the focus of January is to train our leaders, so we have a lot of work to do. But, if all goes well, it will help us to have a much better mission, with a lot more success. Yay, training!<br />
<br />
Today, was a good day, but I am really tired. We had a long week, and spent all day walking around. But, the zoo was awesome. I took tons of pictures and some videos, it was awesome. When we were going, I thought it was going to be some broken down zoo with a few big turtles and a monkey that can escape and bit your finger off. We got there, and I was super surprised. They had monkeys, big ol' turtles, pumas, jaguars, lions, more monkeys, beautiful birds, llamas, donkeys, guinea pigs, turkeys, ocelots, bears, frogs, ostriches, and tons more stuff. Plus, I didn't feel dirty there! It was a clean place! Very fun P-day activity, probably the most fun thing that I've done since I've been here. I just want to sleep now, to be honest. I feel so tired. I think the whole week's tiredness hit me today.<br />
<br />
Sorry that I didn't include too many spiritual things this week, but I have had no time to study personally nor time to work in my sector yet. But, I would like to include what I could about some spiritual moments in the week, because we always have some, we may just need to search for them. It's interesting how easy it becomes to tell when someone is being obedient and when they aren't. With missionaries, you really come to feel when a missionary is being a good missionary, or when he is being dumb. I've learned to listen to the Spirit in that way. I was on divisions with a missionary who has had some struggles with obedience in his mission, and who claims to have changed. I could feel right away that something wasn't right. We were able to talk, and while he has improved in many things, he still has a way to go. We set some good goals, hopefully he'll get better quickly. I'm sure you can tell, too, when you're talking to a good missionary and a not so good one. The good ones just have a good light about them, and good feeling when you're with them. And, they have a real smile, they're really happy. When I see good missionaries like that, it makes me so happy and so hopeful for the work that we are doing. That's one thing that I've learned to do with the Spirit; tell when things are okay and when they aren't.<br />
<br />
Another thing that I've been thinking about is how happy the Gospel makes everyone. Nidya got baptized and confirmed last weekend, and it was a great experience for her. She said that after her confirmation, she could feel a weight being lifted off of her, the pain of her mother's death, and that she knew that she would get off the trial of seeing your mother pass away. She made us a really good pasta, too, which is a bonus. But there was a very visible difference between the Nidya on Friday, coming back from her mother´s funeral, and the Nidya on Sunday, baptized and confirmed. The Gospel really can heal us after hardships, it is the best way to be healed, actually. I've probably said this many times, but it's something that I learn and appreciate more and more every day. I am so happy for the Gospel. The more I study it, the more I apply it, and the more I share it with other people, the happier I am, and the happier other people are, as well. What a blessing it is to be an instrument in this process of the Lord. I hope that you are looking for ways to make other people happier by applying the Gospel in your lives and theirs. Often the best way to share the Gospel is to serve others.<br />
<br />
With the new missionaries, we had a testimony meeting that was wonderful, very spiritual, lots of people crying, especially the sisters. I was able to bear my testimony to this new group of young pups, and I felt so blessed to be able to do so. A lot of things in my testimony are things that I've know for a long time, a few things are new, and a lot of things are simply stronger than they were a year and a half ago. I think more than anything, I've learned how to apply a testimony more than anything. I've had a testimony for a long time, clearly it needed strengthening, but here is where I think I really learned how to live what I believe. More than not drinking, not smoking, not being in bad places, but really living the Gospel. Standing up, speaking boldly, inviting lovingly, all great things that I now know how to do. The mission really is such a blessing, and I am so grateful for both the testimony I now have and its application in my life. The new missionaries teach us a lot by the testimonies they bring, even though they can't speak Spanish yet, the can invite the Spirit.<br />
<br />
Well, there's another week down! Crazy, but good. It's good to be busy, it makes life better. I hope that you all have a great week, learn lots, and work hard. I love you all tons and wish you the best in all that you do! Until next week, adeiu (I have no idea how to spell that word).<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
<br />
Elder Thomas<br />
<br />
P.S. Those monkeys wanted to pull me in and eat me, pretty sweet.<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4192658061673762897.post-76431349605152076352013-12-30T13:06:00.000-08:002013-12-30T13:06:58.387-08:00 "There is no place like home for the holidays...or prison..."Hey all,<br />
<br />
Well, I talked with the family on Wednesday, which was great, and a lot of the things I would normally write in my letter I told them in the video chat. I don't feel like typing all of that stuff, so whoever wasn't in the video call can talk to the fam to get the low down. I would encourage all to ask about what happened on my Christmas Eve. It is a tale involving missionaries, hospitals, police, and prisons, so it's worth a listen.<br />
<br />
We have a baptism today at 4! We're really excited. Her mom passed away last week, and she's been in Columbia with her family for funeral stuff. She got back Thursday night, and we stopped by last night for a quick visit. She was still pretty sad, understandably. Elder Dearden and Elder Ospina have both had family pass away, so they offered some great consuelo for her that seemed to help her out. I did what I always do when I'm not sure what to say, open my scriptures until I see one that works! After they talked, I read some scriptures with her about the Holy Ghost and the comfort that we can receive from Him. It was a good talk, she understood it, then we talked about her baptism, and her response was really funny. She was going to get baptized and confirmed before going to Columbia, but she didn't end up having enough time. So, we asked her yesterday if she wanted to get baptized today, and her answer, well, the best translation that there is in English, was, "Well, duh! I wanted to do it last week? Why are you even asking?" So, we'll leave from here in about a half hour to have that service. I'll probably have more time to write in the night, I only have about an hour right now because of the baptism. But, it's a great thing to miss a P-day for. Plus, it's a great way for Elder Dearden to finish his mission, his last weekend with a baptism. I'll miss that guy, you guys should buy him tasty treats.<br />
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We did some more surprise studies this week, and they are working out really well. Every time we've done them, we've discovered missionaries doing things that they shouldn't be doing. We help them set good goals to get better and to get more out of their mission. We need a lot more dedicated missionaries, that's one of the downsides of having such young missionaries now. We're seeing problems with sisters, too. Before, they were the mature ones in the mission, now they all flirt and it's uncomfortable to fix it, so we just look for food and use that as an excuse to leave. Life's lessons learned right there. We're working hard and brainstorming a lot about what to do to help out our missionaries. I've been really frustrated with the inexperience of all the missionaries here, but now I am trying to see it as a chance for me to learn how to train good leaders. Maybe the Lord needs all of us right now to get better at that for future things. Lots of missionaries with good potential, they just don't realize that yet. We scheduled all of our trainings and divisions for January, it's going to be a crazy month. And just, for the record, some weeks I may not have a P-day, so if I don't write, don't freak out, we're just busy.<br />
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It was really great to talk to you guys, thanks for teaching the kids how to say my name. You all look great and older. Soon we'll be talking again! I loved being able to communicate, even for just a brief time.<br />
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Well, I don't have too much to say since I was able to videochat this week. I'll give you a good letter next week. This week is going to be crazy with the new missionaries coming in on Monday. Here are a few random thoughts to finish.<br />
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Mango season is the best. We are in it right now.<br />
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Pistachio ice cream is really good.<br />
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The corn is really weird here and is not appetizing.<br />
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I don't get how the money works here. They use the dollar, but have their own 5, 10, 25, and 50 cent pieces here. Here, those "Ecuadorian coins" are worth money, but if I take them to the States, they aren't worth anything. How does that work? Wouldn't that mean that it's a lie when they say how much money they have? Come on, government here.<br />
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Here, on New Year's Eve, they burn the viejo. They buy sweet dolls made of paper and burn them, as if to say "out with the old, in with the new." As they burn it, they start a new year, burning the things from the last year that they want to change. We may burn one with Elder Dearden's face on it since he goes home that day. I think it's a cool tradition that they have here. I want to buy an Iron Man doll.<br />
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Love you guys! Don't do dumb things!<br />
<br />
Elder Thomas<br />
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