Week 86

Hey guapos!

This past week, we had the wonderful opportunity to have Elder Perkins of the Seventy come and visit our mission. We had a Zone Conference where we learned a bunch about the Preach My Gospel and using the Book of Mormon to resolve concerns. He also came to our Mission Leadership Council and, in a way I've never seen before, we addressed the problems of the mission, and we counseled about them. I cannot do his stories and his teachings justice, but all I can say is that he brought a very personal Spirit into my heart. He will also be giving a talk at this October's General Conference, so be on the lookout for him!

We had a lesson with my boy Rubino and his household of 6 muchachos. After we had started to read in the Book of Mormon, the legend himself, Brayan, walks in the door and takes a seat. We handed him a book and at that moment, we realized that he was absolutely drunk. He starts rambling in broken Spanish about some random unrelated topic, and everyone else was quietly chuckling to themselves. At some point he crashed on the couch, just to wake up blabbering off something he was dreaming about, went silent for 3 seconds, and then crashed again. This segment was brought to you by the Word of Wisdom.

So with the blessing of being able to eat with other people now, comes... the curse of eating with other people as well. Our recent convert, Carlos, invited us over for some food, and it was pretty good. I was still a bit hungry, so I asked for "un poco" of everything. Apparently "un poco" meant filling up my entire plate more than what was on it the first time around, including the burnt rice at the bottom of the pan. Carlos stated, "I see you got the best rice." I was like, "What, the burnt rice?", to which he had the audacity to say, "It's not burnt, it's toasted." 😑 It literally stabbed my gums every bite.

On exchanges with some English Elders in the Zone, we came across an atheist, who must've had a grocery list of problems with our church and with religion in general. With the worldly perspective that he possessed, he honestly brought up some decent points. But if he were to have had an eternal perspective, these problems that he brought up would be insignificant in God's eternal plan for us. Normally an experience such as getting bashed by an atheist would be a faith-damaging experience, but I feel like my faith grew. I honestly am super grateful for the hope that comes through the knowledge of God's plan for me, the

Miracle:

We had a visit with a guy named Antonio, and his brother-in-law, Hugo, was sitting in on the lesson. We got to know him a bit, and although at first he "wasn't very religious", he asked us a bunch of questions and doubts that he's had with the Catholic church... ALL of which we were able to answer using the Book of Mormon. It was super cool to hear him perk up every time we had the answer, and at the end he said, "I would love to learn more about this Joseph Smith guy. He gladly accepted a pamphlet of the Restoration and a Book of Mormon, and promised to read 4 chapters before our next visit.

God is still a God of miracles.

Elder Terry

Fotos:

1) Our Zone covers the new Taylorsville temple and I got a shot next to it during construction