HEY BROTHERS AND SISTERS,
Woah Woah Woah! It’s the holliest and jolliest week, am I right!
Just one more week and Santa’s coming to town. Nice.
We just had a pretty jolly week ourselves. On Thursday we
had the Missionary Christmas Conference. So we headed our way over to Santa Fe,
with anticipation for festivities! It was a great conference with some
fantastic testimony, including a sister missionary who has been out on the
mission for quite some time now. And I really appreciated her words. She said
if there was anything she was going to testify about, it would be about Christ.
And it was really a great testimony of Christ, which made way for the rest of
the talks that were given after. I really do believe the words of John, when he
said in Revelations that "the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy."
And I want to make it clear that the most important testimony you can have is
of our Savior Jesus Christ.
Our mission president gave some great words about work in
the mission field, and I am always appreciative of the words he gives because
they seem to give answer when I need them. As missionaries we teach the plan of
salvation to people, and President Perez challenged if we truly believed in
that plan. Because if we believe in His plan, we know that Christ’s atonement
is central to the plan, and that Christ came because there was going to be pain
and hardship in the world. And so as missionaries if we have hardships, or
pain, and if we have a testimony in Christ, then worrying about our pains shouldn’t
be a problem, and we then focus on bringing others the remedy of Christ. It was
very good. And I got a kick out of it when he said, "So if you’re hurting,
should you keep working? Yes. Foot pain? Yes. Arm? Clearly. Back? Obviously.
Head? Clearly yes! Of course get some medical attention, then get over it."
Then we listened to some words from the Area Seventy, and he
was really focused on being a consecrated missionary. So I thought it was kind
of funny when he said, "Your parents should call you Elder, and you should
call your parents Hermano ‘something’. I have a daughter and she calls me Papi.
She obviously has not figured out missionary work yet."
We ended the conference with a great meal; having an awesome
chicken breast and some really weird mint flavored juice. I guess you can
quench your thirst while having minty fresh breath. We had a great little gift
exchange, where I got a super cool watch; gold with diamonds on the rim byy Michael
Kors. And I met up with all the buds from Galvez, and the MTC fellas. So that
was neat.
I love these conferences, because it totally becomes
segregated with English white kids talking to each other, and the Spanish Latinos.
So I thought… hey let’s reunite everyone with a great Spanish song. What’s a Spanish
Christmas song I know? Obviously it’s time for some Jose Feliciano. Well… turns
out all the white missionaries know "Feliz Navidad" and not a single Latino
knows that song. Back to segregation.
We had another pretty awesome Christmas party with the ward
too. And the Hermanas kept bugging us about being in the nativity. So half the
actors in the nativity were missionaries because none of the kids wanted to do
it. So I got to be the roman soldier. NICE. But this was the best nativity I’ve
ever seen. First off, it was in Spanish, but none of it was scripted from the
bible, it was all made up dialog. For example, "Hey Mary, we should go
find a bed to sleep in. It’s getting cold out. Are you cold?"- Jose,
"Yes Jose, I’m very cold" - Mary. The best part is that at the end
they wanted us to sing jingle bells. But we only knew how to sing it in English.
So after Jesus was born and gifts given, we began to sing, "Dashing
through the snow"...."jingle bells jingle bells." It was awesome.
Apparently the Spanish version is completely different and talks about Christmas,
but no one had any idea. So we just got tons of complements on how beautiful
the song was at the end.
We have been showing this Christmas video the church made,
with everyone we see in the streets, and everyone is just down to pull out
their phones right in the middle of the street and start watching it. It’s super
awesome because now people are just psyched for Jesus and get out and serve.
We´ve been teaching this awesome dude Ignacio and his wife. And
Ignacio is totally into it all, he came to church, but was crazy nervous. We
had got on the ward´s case last week about saying hi to the investigators and
when Ignacio came, every person went nuts saying hi to him, it was pretty awesome.
We had a really great lesson yesterday with him, where I felt the spirit pretty
powerfully, and I hoped he did too because he was really up for the challenge
of finding out if this is the true church.
I went to the apartment of the other missionaries and found
the ensign with all the conference talks, which I hadn’t seen yet, so I got
pretty pumped to read it, and I was reading for like 10 minutes until I realized
that it was in English, that’s a plus. Apparently Elder Gardner’s mom sent it
to him. So I enjoyed rereading some of the talks. Especially, Elder Ballard’s
and Elder Cook´s. Elder Ballard talks about how there is no other path in this
life except through Jesus and his church. And if we ever think that we can
leave that path we have nowhere else to go.
Jesus is the subject guys, let’s get that through our heads.
I love my savior and exemplar and leader. It’s a great time of the year.
I love you guys, and I can’t wait to talk to you on Christmas.
Everything should be all good and set up. We are getting some laptops in the
church building to use the church Wi-Fi. And we should be getting on about 3-4
o clock your time. 7 o clock my time. I’m making a Skype account right now and
you should receive some kind of friend request or something.
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