Monday, January 20, 2014

This New Week


Well, this week was great.

It was full of horse races and teaching and walking and stuff.  Also this letter will be pretty short.  Sorry.

So some great things happened this week.  First off transfers were last night and I am still with Elder Naylor which is weird because President said he was splitting us but oh well.  No complaints here.
So we did some extra work to get members out to work with us here since the first baptisms ever of this area will be this weekend.  Manuel, our Elders Quorum president came out with us one day, and he was super sweet to teach with.  Studd.  Our branch president came out another day.  It was his first time ever helping the missionaries, and he made some good improvement during the day.  The first lesson he slammed one of our investigators about how he needs to have better friends to stop smoking, which was okay.  Not super tactful, but very clear which is good.  Slamming people isn´t something that can happen every lesson, but every so often they can help.  Our next lesson was a little worse because he went in and started bible bashing our investigator about tithing.  One big thing that is important is that we don´t ever really tell people what they belive is wrong, because that usually doesn´t do any good.  Instead we ask them how Christ did things and then let them tell themselves that whatever they believe (it isn´t really even critical to know what they belive exactly) isn´t the same as Christ taught and had been corrupted.  Then we invite them to follow Christ.  It isn´t, Your catholic baptism was wrong, it´s Christ was baptized by immersion with preisthood authority from God at an age of responsibility.  The Scriptures are great here too.

So we have been teaching Ana and Denise.  We found them through a drunk kid that invited us into a bar and then his friend was drunk too and we marked an appointment in the bar for another night and then when the bar was closed that night, we gave up, but then ran into the friend again on the street, and he said his mom (Ana) had read the pamphlet and liked it and so we marked an appointment but couldn´t find his house after searching for 50 mins, and so the next day right before the appointment, we finally found it, and the kid wasn´t even home, but his Mom and Cousin (Denise) were there and we started teaching them.  They have been to church twice and came to a baptism.  We have been trying to get them to accept baptism for weeks and finally in church on sunday, they were sitting with Cely who is getting baptized this week, and we asked them if they would attend, and then also told them that if they wanted, they could be baptized the same day.  That night in our lesson, we were talking more about Cely´s baptism, and mentioned that they could still be baptized and Ana has been hesitant to do stuff on her own, it has always been, "Whatever Denise wants" etc... and denise still won´t accept a baptisimal date, but we asked, and Ana wouldn´t say anything, but she asked for Denise´s pencil, and wrote in the back cover of her book of mormon, "I want to be baptized on that day too." and handed it to us. She had finally decided that doing what was right has to happen now, even if she doesn´t have Denise to go with her to make it more comfortable.  Denise still might accept baptism this week or maybe another day. She has a doubt we are still trying to find because she loves the book of mormon and studies it with a dictionary in hand.  This week is going to be grand like the high flying flag!

Anyways,
So the spiritual thought for today is this:
Love.  It has to be the basic fundimental motivation for everything you do or your are doing something wrong.  If everything you do is out of love, you won´t have fear to help others do hard things, and you won´t have fear to accept other people´s agency, even though it may be sad.  God is sad when we use our agency wrong, but he never gives up on us.  He loves us to give us exactly what we need to get back on the path.  So, find a way to Love everyone more this week!
Love,
Elder Sampson

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