Aug, 15, 2011

No se preocupen familia. No olvide de mandar mi carta. solo es que fui al templo en Jueves y el lugar donde escribimos cartas era cerrado cuando llegamos. Pero mande una carta de mano, entonces debe llegar hoy dia. But ya so the temple was just so awesome, and that is so awesome about Payden! I love him. And these past weeks have been way good. Ya so this week we most definately ate at the Mongolian Barbecue and it was so good! Be Jealous Nick and Steve. But ya miracle of the week was with an investigator named Gustavo. He is somewhat crazy but ya just way too many drugs in the past or something. But for the last week and half we have been teaching him the atonement of Jesus Christ and why he needs to repent. And there has been little progress... why? Because when an investigator does not act on invitations, there is no progress! It is as simple as that... becasue with every invitation, whether, reading, church, baptism, or whatever it is, it's an invitation to repent and except fully the Atonement of Jesus Christ. And so about 4 days ago he decided to act on our invitaions; and boom! He got it! We learn ten times more through action and application than we do by listening. That was a fact given to me about a week ago. Another cool experience i had, was in a lesson with an extremely nice...basher... not the best word to describe him because we didn't really bash at all. But he told us how we needed to forget the rules and become free in Christ. I think we might have been talking about grace and works. But anyways, I learned a lot from this comment he made as he described to us how we were in chains, and that we needed to be free in Christ. And I remember the Spirit just hitting me a little while later, as I learned what it means to keep the commandments of God. Without an understanding of the purpose of the commandments, or with an understanding of we NEED to keep the commandments or we are not going to be saved... comes a false belief that commandments is equal to restrictions. Well as we know; one of the greatest gifts that God has given us is agency. If God has given us agency, has he also given us restrictions or "chains"? Absolutely not! the word agency and restriction are opposites and therefore commandments are NOT restrictions. If you love me, keep my commandments. We have been given the gift of agency for the purpose of testing our love for the Savior and for our Heavenly Father. Are the commandments chains? Is love a chain? Is love a restriction? Very simply put the truth shall set you free. Jesus said I am the truth. So in order to have the truth we must follow Jesus Christ. What is a follower of Jesus Christ? - a disciple. By this shall men know, that ye are my disciples, if ye shall love one another. By love we follow Jesus Christ and his commandments. By following Him, we in turn keep his commandments and walk in truth. And by the truth we are set free. Are commandments chains? No, but indeed are what sets us free; free in Christ. One more cool story that happened about a week and a half ago is when we were walking in the back alley to go try a potential, I saw a lady fixing to walk into her house, and I felt like we should contact her. So we ran up to her and started talking to her. and she just kept on saying how wierd this was that we showed up at this exact moment; and so of course we asked why that was. And she went on to tell us how she had moved here about 3 months ago and how she decided the day before she was going to change her life. She had told God that she was going to do everything she could to find His true church. And so as it turned out that she had just gotten back at that precise moment from buying 20 different books on Christianity from different denominations. And had just brought them inside and was just coming out at that second to shut her trunk. We then went on to teach her about the Book of Mormon and how God has restored His true church on the earth again. She agreed with everything  that we said, accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon, and asked us if we could come back in 2 weeks. We said yes. And well the lesson with her should be today, so hopefully we can complete this miracle that God has given us.Awesome! Well i Love yall so much and have a good week