I Love the Island! - week 81

Hello all!

What a great week, this week went by so fast I hardly even know what to write! First off, I love the Island - it is a great area! We are really being blessed by Heavenly Father, and are working with some really great and amazing people. Elder Garcia is a great companion, we are having tons of fun and getting lots of work done! We have met with one Mexican guy together but I am of no help on the Spanish end haha we keep trying to find Spanish speakers for fun, but they are eluding us.

I had a great opportunity to help out with a training for the branch Presidents and leadership for the International District, it was really nice to see the hard work and Spirit that goes into their end, because I know how hard the missionaries are working and praying for them and for the work on our side of things. We did a brief training on effective and meaningful planning etc, but I really liked listening to the District President train them and inspire the leaders. He talked about the cliche definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. It is cliche, but cliche for a reason, because we really are people of habit, repetition, and get set in our ways. That's why we so often need to be reminded of things, humbled, etc. And that's why in the mission we are always changing areas, companions, assignments etc because we always have to be stretched, and try different things to get the results that we are capable of. He also focused on the idea of a personal ministry, we aways have to be living the principles that we are to be teaching. If we want to teach something, then we have to have a recent personal experience in whatever we want to teach or emphasis. Great principle of leading by example, as the Savior always did. I am grateful for all the experience I have had here and helping out President Lam, it has really helped me gain a lot of perspective on serving and helping build up the church, and being a more effective tool. It is the most satisfying and worthwhile work to be a part of!

We are teaching some really wonderful people currently, we are working a lot on building up everyone's foundation. We are teaching for the most part save on person people with no Christian background, and a lot of them are newer investigators that we have gone through as we get this area going. I love meeting so many new people and starting a new relationship with them and just trying to make them happier and learn about who they are. It has been really fun, the past two weeks I have taught tons and tons of very simple basic lessons on some of my favorite principles, God is our loving Heavenly Father. He loves us. We can communicate with Him through prayer! What a great principle. It has been wonderful to be part of many people's first prayers, and I have enjoyed hearing my companions experience with prayer, as well as sharing my own experiences. It is the first step to developing a relationship with Heavenly Father, feeling his reality, and finding one's true and divine identity as a child of Heavenly Father. I am excited for the path of learning and growing that is set before many of these great people! We have invited many people to ask Heavenly Father if he knows and loves them. It is a simple question, but for some reason most people don't think to ask it, but if anyone asks a perfect, all knowing Eternal Father if He loves them, of course He will tell them! It has been a great strength to my personal testimony this week as we have shared and promised and testified that there is a God in Heaven, He is our Father, He is involved in and aware of our lives, He wants us to have joy, and He loves us all.

We also had a great lesson of the Plan of Salvation with our investigator May who does have a Christian background, and it was one of the best Plan of Salvation lessons we have ever taught. We taught fairly simply, and it was amazing to see her questions and confusion all clear up, and see the light of understanding grow in her eyes and mind as she came to feel the truth of the plan. She clearly understand that we lived with God before, understood the purpose of the fall and our choices, felt the direction and blessings of this wonderful life we have here, and felt hope in the Resurrection and end goal for us all. But most importantly is the Atonement of the Savior, I am so grateful for Him and the Atonement! He did it because he loves us, and because of the joy he feels in helping each and every one of us. There is no better role model than the Savior, and no gift more precious than the Atonement. I am touched every week as I partake the sacrament, not just eat it, read the words of the sacrament hymns, and really remember Him, and ponder upon the great and incomprehensible suffering of the Garden of Gethsemane, and upon the cross where he was left completely alone, so that he could finally understand what all of us feel, have ever felt, and will ever feel throughout the trials and mistakes of our life here. I am grateful that he has become more and more real to me here on the mission, he is real, and can become real for anyone that will reach out to him, and follow him!

Love you all, have a great week!

P-day bike day!

Bolo bao pbj - genius :)