Hola Familia! Elder Lewis aqui en Bucaramanga once again.
Happy 6 meses! Oh crap… happy official 6 months! These first
6 months have been good ones. They have gone super fast! Today, March 13, 2017,
marks 6 months ago that I left my family and everything that I knew for Mexico
and then on to Colombia for something that I knew nothing about and with a lot
of questions and things that I wanted to resolve. So now, as I sit here in
Bucaramanga, I realize I can take a second to sit down and think about my
family and all the things that I have learned, I wrote down in my journal a few
points. One says: “Bueno, tonight marks 6 months since I was set apart as a
full time missionary, what has changed in the first 6 months? First of all, I
have gained a good 15 pounds. I now weigh close to 170 pounds.” So there’s
that. I have learned to be a bit more humble than before and much more aware of
my faults. When you come out on the mission you know absolutely nothing. But
that itself doesn’t stop you from being prideful. What stops you from being
prideful is when, by experience, you know that the pride detains your work.
When you are seeking your own, it really holds you back. You lose love, and
that’s the essence of this work. Love, not pride. I believe that pride is, well
I will read an excerpt from my journal here:
“I have
really learned a lot about being humble and humbling myself this week because I
have had to. I really can see the destructive nature of a person who only seeks
to build himself a resume and to gratify his own ambition and desire over that
of Heavenly Father. I believe that pride is the most destructive characteristic
a person can have because he builds himself a fake wall of achievement that is
blown over by any wind of slight contradiction or correction. It is also my
worst struggle. I hate it. Sometimes I get so prideful, and it hurts to realize
it. That I have been a real jerk all my life, and I have a lot to change. It is
not my intention to have a pity party here, but in these last six months I have
realized that I have a lot to change, and I have started to change. We are
going to continue doing that.”
I have gone from knowing 6 or 7 words of Spanish to gaining
some measure of fluidity. I’m not completely fluent, I haven’t mastered the
language yet, but I am getting there. Hopefully by my goal, talking like a
native at a year and a half, I think that’s possible, I just have a lot of
vocabulary to learn. One of my zone leaders told me that my accent is coming
along very well. He actually mistook me for my companion, who is Peruvian, over
the phone, so theres that.
Finally, my testimony has gone from the flimsy kind to one
that is very firm, coupled with a desire to make good in this life. My desires
and things aren’t where I would like them to be, I would like them to be more
with the work, but they are better. I really can say that I am quite a
different person and I will continue to do that. In a lot of ways, I am still
the same person, still bull-headed and stupid (ha-ha) but we’re gonna hit the
pavement and press forward. So there it is, 6 months, half a year, there’s a
quarter of my mission right there. It just went by like the blink of an eye.
Well, this week we had a multi-zone conference, that’s
always fun, and we got to hear from Elder Falabella of the seventy. Got to hear
from a special witness of Jesus Christ. It was quite a good experience. Got to
shake his hand and learn a lot from him. I was with Elder Watts, from my group,
its always fun to talk with him and see how far we have come since the days of
the CCM. I had an interview with President, and found out the Elder Stevens,
from my same group, had to go home due to health reasons. Hit me as a shock
because Elder Stevens is one of my best friends. We really grew close in the
CCM. His name is Kyle Jess Stevens, if any of you want to look him up on
Facebook, I dunno. Drop his parents a line and let them know how much I love
their son, and that he has an absolute heart of gold, and thank them for
raising such a son. Elder Stevens has an absolute heart of gold. He is the
biggest cowboy that you’ve ever seen. I was talking with his trainer at the
zone conference and his parents sent him a lasso. Every night he was lassoing
the chair. He is a team roper, in fact, he knows Tremonton quite well for that.
He would bring the lasso to district meetings and lasso the Hermana’s Hahaha.
Here’s another excerpt from my journal: “we met a guy last
night who sure has problems. We had been teaching some ‘Viejitos’, some old
guys, and we met a new one last night. We were teaching the doctrine of Christ,
and testified of the way that God has prepared for all men to repent and have
life eternal and peace in this life also. This man informed us that he has 2
houses. One in one city and one elsewhere. That’s ok, but he has 2 different
women. One is his wife, and the other his mistress. What a mess. They don’t
know about each other. We talked about it and as we were leaving he turned to
me with tears in his eyes and asked me if he could really fix this, if he was
really not beyond repair. I looked him in the eyes and told him that the road
would be very long and hard, but there is hope for him, and that if he would
come clean and repent, that he could be clean. It should be really interesting
to see what’s going to happen.”
That was a very interesting experience, but also a very
heartbreaking one. What a mess. Sometimes people have REAL PROBLEMS. Its really
a shame what happens when people follow their own ambition and seek to gratify
their own natural desires, pride, and in this case, lust.
Yesterday I had a cool experience in church; I was kinda
stressed because we were trying to push and present a plan to our ward council
to see if we can get more references. We presented a plan to them, how we were
gonna do it. There are a couple of people in there that have the same problem
that I do, they are prideful. They absolutely shot me down. We ended up presenting it to them anyway,
because the Bishop and others thought that it was a good idea, just not these 2
people. I was really upset about that. Toward the end of Sacrament meeting, I
just felt a voice that said: “It will all be ok. Don’t worry.” After that,
things started to pick up. We first of all presented our plan for referrals as
planned with our leaders and people in the ward, because we really need more.
We’ve only gotten 2 in the last month. SO we set forth a plan to help the ward,
and help us help them. Then, after that, we received 2 references right off the
bat. 2 really good ones. We also had 5 investigators come to the church which
was a miracle. We also had a really weird experience. There’s an Argentinian
that came in and said “hey, I’m living here in Floridablanca and I want to
learn more. I am ready to join the church.” We said: “have you heard from the
missionaries before?” and he said “yeah, like a year ago.” And we said ok. So
we sat him down after church and taught him about the restoration, gave him a
Book of Mormon, and challenged him to read it and be baptized. At first he
accepted a date for the 1st of April, but then he changed his mind
and said “Part of me says that I need to do it on April 1st, but the
other part says that I need to wait.” “well, you can wait a little longer. how
long do you think?” he said: “honestly, 15-17 years.” WHAT?! I then changed my
game tactic and said “well, that’s ok. Let’s not set a date right now. Lets
just take it one day at a time. I want you to go home and read a little of this
book and ask for an answer. Pray.” And he said that he needed time. I asked to
meet in 2 weeks. He said “well I will read the book, but to ask I need like 5
years.” We were like “oh my gosh. Why!?” So we will see what happens with him.
He’s 17 and a semi-professional soccer player working his way up the ladder
there and just feels an emptiness. Real strange guy, but ya. Why put off for 5
years what you could know this week? Something that could change your life so
amazingly….
So that’s what has been happening this week. I have become a
little bit discouraged this week, just with some things, just with the fact
that I probably wont get to see many of these investigators baptized. They are
progressing, but most very slowly. We met a girl named Deanna, that should be
baptized in a couple weeks. So, por favor, pray for Deanna Libralis, that she
can have the strength and conviction to get through and keep going and be
baptized. She was a reference, surprise surprise. References are better than
contacting. She should join the church. She’s a little bit, part of me thinks
that she principally wants to do this just because of her friend, but we are
going to work with her and hopefully get to a point where she has a good solid
base and testimony. She has 17 years, and she has actually attempted suicide
once, by pills. So we are working through some doctrine of Christ and plan of
salvation. Every person is different. Everyone has problems. The atonement of
Jesus Christ can fix every single one of them if we just work with him on these
things.
Everyone is getting sick again. Elder Lore got Chicken Pox.
It’s so bad. It’s everywhere on him. The soles of his feet, everywhere. He is
hardly recognizable and is confined to his house. I saw his companion in
Casique, it’s like a mall, the missionaries met up and someone is trading off
with him so that he can leave the house. They haven’t left the house in 5 days.
He showed me pictures of Elder Lore and his back is covered in all these boils.
In his face, in his mouth, his hands, he cant walk, lay down, nothing. It’s
just painful. His companion has to rub the cream all over his body and be
careful, because if one of the boils pops, it becomes extremely contagious.
Right now it’s not contagious because all of us Gringos have been vaccinated
better than others. Chicken Pox isn’t principally contagious until one of the
boils pops, so he has been really careful. Took him an hour and a half. He cant
go to the hospital. He called President Laney, who is a doctor, he actually
co-owns a hospital in Gilbert, AZ. President Laney said “Elder Lore, you cant
go to a hospital. If you spread that to someone with an autoimmune disease or
get close to a baby, they will die. So, he can’t leave till every one of them
is gone. It’ll be about 2 weeks. Man. That just sucks. My health has improved
this week, last week I had a couple of things that went weird. First I had
strep throat pretty bad and it messed with my whole head. Next I got an ingrown
toenail, which I think is fixed now because I followed the advice of a manual
that I got from the Secretary of Health. What you do is take put cotton with
alcohol under the toenail, and that pretty well fixed it, I think. It really
hurt. This week I am doing better.
I hope you all are doing well. I want you to know that I am
doing well, that my faith is strong, that I know that God lives. I know it. I
know that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God. I know that Joseph
Smith was his prophet, called to restore the gospel of Jesus Christ, fully and
totally, to the earth today. I know that Thomas Spencer Monson is a prophet of
God, called by him to direct us. I believe in his plan of redemption. I believe
that God has a plan for each and every one of us. I have seen his mercy on me
and on others and I really believe that a mission is nothing more than putting
yourself in a front row seat to see the miracles of God. Really, honestly, us
missionaries don’t do anything. We just put ourselves in a place spiritually
and physically where he can work through us. It’s like we are spectators. I
know this to be the truth. I tell you this simple testimony that I bear of Him,
in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Well, I surely love you all, I have been trying to keep my
thoughts on this continent, but every once in awhile every Elder gets a little
trunky. I am not very trunky, because I haven’t thought about it very much, but
I surely love you all and miss you (well, now I’m trunky…) We are going to
press forward, hit the pavement, and work. I love you all, talk to you next
week. Chao!
-Elder Lewis
No comments:
Post a Comment