Feliz Navidad

Merry Christmas people.. Don´t be sad, Ill be there NEXT YEAR!! wahoooo!!!

It was a good week. It was so hot... I miss snow, but it was good. Christmas here is a lot different. They dont do anything on the actual day.. its all on xmas eve. They stay up till 12 and make a lot of meat (thats what i want, to stuff myself full of salt before i sleep) and then shoot guns and rockets off and scream and play loud funk music until about 5 in the morning. Yeah, its SUPER reverent. They LOVE respecting Christ´s birth. I heard next year they are inviting Ossy Osborne to sing the annual "Silent Night."

 We had transfers and i stayed here. My new companion is Elder Carrol from Cary, North Carolina. He´s the man, i like him a lot. He´s getting here in a firestorm of change in the ward, with everyone kind of recovering from the recent shenanigans. Our new bishop made a churrasco for us though on Christmas Eve and we had a great chat about what we can do to start the new year right to help this ward. Pride is dangerous, avoid it.

Yesterday was a good day for us. We were able to catch up a bit and contact some good references. At night we went to my boy Jacson and his soon to be wife Danielle. Im not sure if I´ve told you about them but they give me a lot of grey hairs. Its a family of members that never had testimonies. We go there to teach Jacson who is getting married and baptized on the 21st of January, but we very rarely are able to teach much. His mother n law is a member that hates the church. And all she ever wants to do is ATTACK us with faithless questions. She is one of those classic people that somehow manages to blame the church and its members for everything bad that has ever happened in her life. Instead of trying to prove the church is true she looks for anything she can find to prove it is false. Last night after calmly listening to them argue about whether tattoos were sins, whether it was possible to engrave 500 pages on gold plates, and WHY Adam and Eve couldnt have children in the garden of Eden, we had had about enough, people that cant walk (read the book of mormon) dont need to worry about running (exaltation)  We explained to them that we are here to prepare people to be baptized. We explained that we will not answer their profound questions any more, and that we will not move on to the next lesson until ALL of the commitments are kept. We promised them that if the people took the committments we leave seriously, there would never be an unprepared baptismal candidate. Members or missionaries to not drive people away from the church. People drive themselves away. THEY do not decide when they are ready to be baptized, WE do. 

Point to the story: Read Moroni 4:5. Yes the sacrament prayer. Think about what we promise to do each time we take that bread and think about what the Lord promises. We promise to keep his commandments, remember him, and take his name upon us, or to pattern our life after his. He promises us his spirit. When we do not take the sacrament we do not have that promise. We do NOT have the spirit, and thus we do NOT have the capability to rationalize, and see things the way he does. We will lose ourselves, and we will do it fast. We will have doubts, and there will not be answers. We will become pessimistic, faithless, and frankly pathetic. I made myself a promise last night that I will never allow myself to be in a position where i cannot take the sacrament. Its the greatest gift the Lord offers us. But when we dont take it, we have no guarantee, and its a slippery slope as my father likes to say. Take the sacrament every week, and you will never cease to find answers to your doubts. 

Im so grateful for the invaluable learning i have gained on the mission. I told my companion yesterday its not so much the my core desires have changes drastically (they have a little..) but that the way i view things and my perspetive of God´s plan on earth is 100 percent different. Love you all, Happy New Year. 

Stay Classy.