Tuesday, September 14, 2010

DO YOU EVER FEEL LIKE EVERYTHING IS BACKWARDS?

Everything backwards? Of course I feel that way, I find it actually normal to wear Sunday clothes while doing dishes or pushing cars out of a ditch or just walking long distances in the middle of Main Street. In the rain. Yup. Backwards is pretty accurate. Haha. Also, retiring in my 20s and working later does seem like a sweet idea. I think I'll go for it. I'm all for unexpected things, but I'm just so used to doing the expected. Grrr. An epic journey does sound cool. I'm not sure what it'd be, maybe bike cross country?? Go to Hawaii? We'll talk it over, me and Jeff. I think that would be excellent.

Oh, and night person - I'm definitely still a night person. Although it’s nice to have so much time in the mornings to get things done and not be rushed. But I still like the night, don’t worry.

HOLLY: QUE TE SIENTAS MEJOR! (feel better)

Camper life, moving to OBX.... sure let’s do it. It couldn’t be too bad. I can only imagine the additions that we'd be able to put on the camper after selling the house. I think it’d be cool. I'm sure we could be in national news and such if we do it right.

Well, it’s only been like 4 days since I last wrote you. Not a whole lot has happened,,, ha, we had a stake conference too, we did it in the like 150 year old tabernacle here in Logan, has balconies and an organ that rivals the Mo Tab organ. Was pretty cool until the 2nd counselor of the Elders Quorum recruited us to translate. We had to go to a little stuffy booth for 2 hours and translate, and the Hispanic people listened in headsets. So, yeah, we had to watch through a little window... man, it’s REALLY challenging to listen to someone talking in English, and say the same thing but in another language at the same time. A lot of people talk REALLY fast, so their random funny story about dogs biting their ankles next to a farm and relating it to an obscure scripture that has a play on words.... translated as: "....... they're talking really really fast...... dogs bite our ankles.... it hurt..... uh, there's a scripture in.... (can’t find it in time, so just read the first good one on the page)... and that relates to faith... (even though it doesn't...now he's talking about something completely different....) I'm sure half the talks made zero sense after we butchered them, but it was kind of fun. Inventing words on the fly and making exasperated faces to the other translators... anyhow, fun stuff.

Haha, thanks for the encouraging words, being a ZL isn't all too stressful so far. Just getting things coordinated in such long distances is hard. And making sure Elders aren’t homesick, fights get resolved, etc. Today we have a zone activity, going to watch Joseph: Prophet of the Restoration - have you all seen that? It replaced the Testaments movie at the Visitor's Center- that movie about the visit of Christ to the Nephites. The Joseph movie is sweet, tells his life story, from a kid to his death. But it’s super powerful, the situations and the persecution. It also shows his focus on the Savior. Really good. If it’s at the Visitors Center in DC, I'd go sometime and take an hour to watch it.

That’s a sweet miracle your mission president told in conference! Good job Elders.... and amazing that our stake is doing so well! Did I tell you I know a guy here that served in the Fredricksburg spanish branch a few months back? And that I met Elders that served over Culpeper when they used to meet in the bingo hall? They were really impressed that it had become two separate wards.

Amy, that’s sweet! WEHE-TV is the best. Hopefully someone still does Bookworm Bill. Wow, that was eternity ago....

Haha, thanks for making an online birthday party for me, Jeffrey, I hope everyone had fun and left satisfied. The Lambaren party like I said really didn’t happen - the oldest kid had their birthday the 6th, so I went to hers, and on my actual birthday they were going to do something but the mom had to work from 8 pm Monday to like 11 am Tuesday, and didn’t have time, but did wake up and come out and talked to me for quite a while, which was really perfect, gave me some confidence that they are going to be ok. Super faithful. Sorry that Grandma Pat couldn’t come to the "party" here, hahaha!

Ha, well, I love you all a lot; we're doing well, and having success. A 14 year old will be baptized the 24th of September, pray for Maria de Jesus (Mary of Jesus - that's a girl’s name. For short, they say Chuy pronounced "Chewie" I'm having a hard time not making jokes about that). We talked about the plan of salvation on Sunday, and she said "an eternal family - I want that, a LOT. Like, for MY family, my WHOLE family." Pretty sweet.

Also cool, in our stake conference a counselor of the mission presidency spoke about how WE cannot ever convert anyone, it’s not our role. It’s ONLY the role of the Holy Ghost. WE are just instruments for providing opportunities for the Holy Ghost to touch people. Cool, because a couple we're teaching last night brought up a lot of doubts - "I'm not very convinced now, how do I know if the Book of Mormon is true, everyone says their church is the right one, maybe the Bible isn’t even true, just a story" She kept asking for things to convince her, because she said she didn’t think the Holy Ghost could tell her the answer. It was a huge comfort to say "We can’t do that. We can prove the truth with a million scriptures, we could show you evidence, temples in South America with these things engraved in them, we could show you miracles - but it will not convince you because the ONLY way to KNOW is for you to believe with faith in Christ, and humbly ask Heavenly Father if this is true or not. There is no other way. Don’t believe because we're your friends, don’t believe it because we have good scriptures to back it up. Pray, and you'll know." And it’s cool, because once we have that knowledge, we KNOW, not just "Ah, I think it’s good, and I'm kind of convinced that this is good, makes sense." Nope. It lets us be able to say "I know. Period."

Love you guys, hear from you later!

Elder Chris

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