Who We Teach and Why

 In this post you are not just going to find pictures that look like we are having tons of fun but a family that was really fun.  The family below is a family that were recent converts when I got to the area. They are one of the strongest famlies I have seen in the gospel. 

Hermana Otonelli is a recent convert, She was found by missionaries knocking doors. The missionaries past her house several times and were about to give up on her when she let them in and they found her and her three daughters two which are twins and the other in the picture below in the purple sweater. The one in the pink is actually thier cousin. Anyway with time they all accpted the invitation to be baptized including her husband who was sadly out of town when we took picures.

They are very faithful, and you can see that the gospel has changed their life. I don´t believe they had tons of problems before they were baptized becasue they are an amazing family but you can tell they went from content to a joy beyond all measure.  Hermana Otoneli reguarly gave us amazing food, but also would leave with us and has given us many refrences of her huge family that at the point when I left were just starting to meet with the missionaries.

One really cool thing, that Elder Call and Elder Muller did while teaching them was give them the challange of Elder Ballard and invite a friend or make a new friend and invite them to meet with the missionareis every three months. Every member in this family has beein doing that. I really liked how Elder Call explained it to them. That they willl have a new friend in the gospel or they will just have a new friend. Currently they are working with there family members and as you can see their cousin is enjoying the time with us just as much as we are enjoying the time with them.

 

Through the mission we have the oppertunity to talk to many wonderful people, and famlies like the family Otonelli. In some cases like them we have seen content families obtain more happiness, and some families who have had hard times come to this truth. In the end yes what we teach is important because the message of God and it is true, but just as important is the message is they why. We are teaching our brothers and sisters and so they can enjoy of the same blessings that we recieve. We are not teaching just to have more members in our church we are teaching and helping our brothers and sisters. If everyone in the world thought this way the world would be a whole diffrent place.

In the end I just had to put this picture of another family we taught in Dolores they are not members but are on the road to be members the last I heard they were progressing and I am hoping within the next few weeks they will be baptized. Best part is the little girl Mataina already told us she believes the Book of Mormon is true. Looking over this post the words can´t even describe the moments I spent with these famlies, and just seeing how the gospel can make a family happier even if they already thought they were happy.

In the end I invite you all to take on Elder Ballards challange and in the next three months find a friend you already have or make a new one and in 3 months the worst thing that can happen is you will have a new friend, but even better you will have a new friend that is enjoying the gospel.

What We Teach

This week was really a good week. We had a last minute confrence and working in the office means we have to help buy everything with following all of the rules and processes the churches has which is a lot of processes and sometimes makes it dificult to work but in the end keeps everything running well and organized.

The confrence was really good. We went over what is it that we are suppose to teach. When I got to the mission we were introduced lessons 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3. Basically all 3 are lesson 1 from Preach  my gospel. The idea is they are just organized in away to give commitiments and teach a very short lesson with a lot of impact. In the end we always should listen to the spirit but we were given guidlines on how to do them.

Confusions of these lessons came varied from some thinking that 1.1 was just a lesson about prayer other thought it was to just teach the restoration. In the end the purpose is to teach the restoration in a way that the investigators can have an experince with prayers and pray asking Father in Heaven for what they need most in there life. We were also trained on how to connect and ask them to ask to see if Joesph Smith was called as a prophet, becuase this is also very important.

1.2 is about the Book of Mormon. Missionaries would do exactly has was given a year ago mostly word for word. I feel into this group. We would read the interduction and the first 12 verses of the Book of Mormon. We were told the purpose is to help them have an experince with the Book of Mormon. usually this will work but the message always needs to be applied to their needs because that is what the gospel is for us and our needs. The commitment is after god has answere there prayers for them to prepare to follow the example of Christ and be baptizied.

1.3 A lot of people were focusign on the doctrine of christ which is really important, and next week I will explain this because it was amazing what we learned and when we have applied this lesson we have had tons of success. For right now 1.3 is mostly a verification part but usually held if we can in the church and we review about how the priesthood authority exists today and the need of the sacrad ordinaces such as baptisim and the sacrement. If they have not already usually this is when they should accept baptisim.

I wish I had more time to explain I am short on time today. I can say these three lessons have changed peoples lives not just because this is the restored church, and the message is true but these lessons teach gospel princples in a way that can be connected and made personal for every person. The Gospel is gods plan for us to return back from him, when we really apply it to our lives we can see the truth. This week I have caught myself saying if only they had the gospel. I use not ot think it was a huge diffrence but after talking to tons of people who are not relgious in any regard to people who are very active in other relgions that they are missing something some more than others and that is the restored gospel of Jesues Christ.

No Fears, No Regrets, and Talking in Everymoment

Real quick. I am running out of time for the week to post but I wanted to talk about another experince I had with my night companion Elder Tolema. We currently have been focusing on talking to in every moment and we have talked to some really intresting people. Only in Uruguay where it is legal to smoke marijuana will you talk to 2 diffrent groups of people smoking and have conversations about life and and Gods plan for us. One  turned out to be a dud but the other was really great, and were with it enough to have a really good conversation. They did not accept our message but took a pamphlet and started thinking about things they have not really thought about.

We also ran into some really cool families one who had the missionaries visit her when she was a little girl and gave us her phone number to visit her family sometime next week. Another girl we meet was a young mother who has some really hard situations and she was with her new boyfriend and her  three year old girl was hilarious and really ended up helping the situation in the end but they were just making fun of us walking down the street, but we went up and talked to them and by the end had a little intrest and we will also try and have a lesson with them with them next week.

Other people we talked to ended up being a college student waiting for the bus, a man helping park cars, and many others that may not have really accepted our message but had a good experince.

Elder Teloma and I were talking about our amazing day and we talked about a District meeting where a another missionary had talked about what is worse the fear to talk to a complete stranger or the regret of knowing you should have talked to them.  For me Fear at times is the hardest but it seems after everytime not talking to them regret always follow. I have learned at times it is hard to talk to people, especially about the gospel at times but I know that if we overcome our fear we will have a amazing results and never have regrets.

Hoy es El Día or in other Words Today is the Day

We have a Creencia or a belief that is called Hoy es el Día which means today is the day. Today is the day the lord is hastening his work. Beign in the offices we do not have tons of time to work out in the field expect for the nights but I just want to share a few of my experinces of this belief.

First this sunday we had three people from the Domincian Repulic who just happened to show up at church. They have recently moved here and all meet in the airport. One is a convert for five years I believe who is coming back and just happened to bring all of her non member friends, to the church. They all now have baptisimal dates and were there for an amazing testimoney meeting. Later this week the day the accepted there baptismal dates they also brough another friend who also accepted, then the next lesson another friend who really is not that intrested but that is four people that have found us and not us finding them. We also have a 16 year old who was invited by people that had been invited by missionaries in the past to play soccer every Tuesday and he is also on the road to being baptizied.  They all found us not us finding them!!! It is incredible.

The other is one of the testimony from a less active member who bared her testimony and she did not say us but just said two priesthood holders passed by and helped be wake up from my sleeping state. What had happened is we had visited and commiteed her to starting to read the scriptures everyday. This is the cool thing with things going on in her life and such the Lord just happened to place the article President Uchdorf´s article Are You Sleeping in the Restoration.  She read this and as she said woke up. She has been attending for 2 weeks. Because of how we divided the area the others have not been able to pass by her house and find her available but each sunday she is there with her daughters and I feel she won´t be living anytime soon. This is nothing that we did yes is it was great to hear our efforst actually helped her but only could that have article in that moment impacted her so much that she felt the holy ghost so strong to return especially with out us being to follow up with her as much as we would like.


To finish

Yo salto de la cama todos los días and trabajo con fuerza y fe sabiendo mediante las profecias inspiradas que HOY ES EL DÍA en que el Señor está apresurando su obra.


I jump out of the bed every day working with all my effort and faith, knowing that through the inspired prophecias of the prophets that today is the day the lord is hastening his work.

The Importance of Feedback

If you look in a Preach Gospel you will see in Chapter 8 about planning if you go through the steps the last step I do not know what you would call it in English but here we call it Paso Trece. In this step is where we talk about difficulties we are having with the other, things we need to do better, and so forth. We had a training on this chapter in planning from Preach my Gospel and President Smith taught us a method to give this feed back. This is how it is translated.

What I most value about....(Your work, efforts, the way you teach, etc.)
What I think you can do more efficient is.....

When President taught us this he taught us not only how important it is to give and recieve feedback. This has really changed the mission and has really helped me and companions get a long better and resolve problems and help us be a lot more effective. This week we have had a lot of these some more intense than others, but It has really helped out and this last week has led us to be way effective in the offices and in the field. We have given two of our investigators baptismal dates! It has been great feeling, but it has been a trial of our faith and work. It is really an answer to our prayers. I can really testify that prayers coupled with obedience, faith, and of course trials of faith well prepare us for the moments God has set up for us to suceed.

This week has been a huge turn around becasue of the feedback. Because of our contact with finances we have been blessed to have meeting with President Smith everyonce and a while and some times getting feedback from him can be a very humbling experince, but the feedback has blessed our companionship, our area, the lives of the people we are teaching, and has impacted me and made me a better person.

I would just like to conclude this blog post asking for your feedback about the blog I am writing and things you like about it, and things you would like to see or how I can improve it.  Please post your feedback for me in the comments so I can see that and tomrrow when I get on for Pday can apply your feedback for me. Hope you all are doing well and enjoying your day!

Being a Perfectionist vs Becoming Perfect in Christ

 I have been thinking a lot about doing my best lately. The constant debate in my mind has always been either I did not do that perfectly and I need to be perfect or I use the excuse I am not perfect, I can not be expected to be perfect, so why try. In short I found an article that I really want to share that was my answer to this question. For me though more important than the answer was the timing.

In the offices we are always doing something, and I mean always running around doing something that needs to be done to help the missionaries focuson the lords work. I was having a really hard day and well sometimes even though we are on the mission the mission offices is just like the office and can be very hard to feel the spirit. We had recently had been talking to president about how we do not have enough time to do all or our studies and it is hard. He told us we need to change our mindset and make it a priority.  This morning I had not had my personal study because we had to go get my Uruguyan ID card. and number very early in the morning and we did not have time to study.  In all the choas I decided I just needed about 30 minutes to have a my own personal and with everything going on the question of being perfect and doing my best was at the front of my mind and I found this article on the homepage of lds.org.  I can not describe 

https://www.lds.org/liahona/2014/07/young-adults/becoming-perfect-in-christ?lang=eng

For those of you who are short on time I am just going to paste the a few parts I really liked but I know Gods loves us and he answers prayers and through the atonement we can recieve the motivation to do better and our weaknesses can be filled through his mercy.


Hope you all enjoy and have a good day.

"As we act and are not acted upon (see 2 Nephi 2:14), we can navigate between complementary virtues and achieve much of life’s growth. These can appear in “an opposition,” being “a compound in one” (2 Nephi 2:11).

For example, we can cease to be idle (see D&C 88:124) without running faster than we have strength (see Mosiah 4:27).

We can be “anxiously engaged in a good cause” (D&C 58:27) while also periodically pausing to “be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10; see also D&C 101:16).

We can find our lives by losing our lives for the Savior’s sake (see Matthew 10:39; 16:25).

We can be “not weary in well-doing” (D&C 64:33; see also Galatians 6:9) while taking appropriate time to refresh spiritually and physically.

We can be lighthearted without being light-minded.

We can laugh heartily with but not haughtily at.

Our Savior and His Atonement invite us to “come unto Christ, and be perfected in him.” As we do so, He promises that His grace is “sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ” (Moroni 10:32).

For those burdened by cares to find perfection or to be perfect now, our Savior’s freely given atoning love assures us:

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

“… For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28, 30).^7"

Feeling the Spirit in the Office

One of the things I am really learning is that being in the offices is still part of the mission, but is still very diffrent. If we are not to careful the offices can just be an offices even though we are doing things for the church. Later in the week you will see a blog post appear about an experince I had this week.

Thinking about this I really have been studying how can we feel and recognize the spirit. For me this is something that is really hard, and I have heard many things that have helped me and I can and probably will write many more blog posts about recognizing the spirit, because it is not only one of the most important things we need to do but something that I am really studying.

For now I want to just write about feeling the spirit in the office or how you can feel the spirit througout the day. I know they are your usualy sunday school answers but they are basics and are very imporant that is the importance of prayer, and scripture study. I can testify now that these basics help us feel the spirit during the day even when we are not in the church. First and foremost as you will read in another blog post about my experince of personal scripture study in the near future. Since I have been here the past three weeks I will be honest we have not had our studies everyday and I can tell you there is a huge diffrence. The other is just simply always having a prayer in our hearts.

For now I want to talk about some changes we have made here in the office that have made us really feel the spirit and change how we have worked this past week. When I first got here we would come in and just start working and that was it, we also had tongs of problems with coordination because we have to share a car and with all 6 of us having to do very difffrent things, on time and in diffrent places it made it really hard. This also made tentions rise and at times we would have a spirit of contention.

How did we fix it. Well president Smith suggested we start everyday with a meeting where we verify the plans, and plan for the next day. This is going to help either way, but he then said we need to start it with a devotional and a hymn. This is something that is only 10 or 15 minutes at the most but not only are we working more effciently, but I can say I am not just working in an office but the office of a mission.

Other things that has been intresting ways to feel the spirit is through focusing on christ attributes. Especially at times when we are driving and people cut us off, or we get a call from a angry land lord.  Things are very diffrent when you have to start the conversation off with Elder Holt speaking from the Montevideo Oeste Mission. How can I help you?  Focusing on those attributes have really helped especially focusing on the attribute with patience. We get a variety of calls, and we receive a lot of them, but becuase there is a focus on helping the person and being a representive Christ there is a huge diffrence in this offices than any other offices I have worked on and that diffrence is the spirit.

Hope you all have a good week. On a side note I am to a point some of these things are easier to just write in spanish or think in spanish it is funny to think I never thought I would have this probably where I had such a struggle with the languag