Second, How cool was it to hear President Russell M. Nelson mention the missionaries in Chile? Let me answer that, REALLY COOL.
This week went really well for me. Not only did we get to watch general conference but I also got a chance to go proselyting this week, which was incredible! I don´t know if it is just because I was a missionary this time, but general conference was awesome, I loved all of the talks that were given. I hope everyone was able to watch all of it, and if not go back and watch it! I know I want to listen to some of those talks again. It seemed like a lot of them were focused on self improvement and strengthening each other. A lot of talks were given about service, which is so important because it is much better and you will be much happier if you try to think of others before yourself. I loved that a few spoke on Christ´s moral character and how we can all strive to be more like Him. The other topic that seemed really important this conference was about the importance of reading the Book of Mormon daily. One of my favorite talks given was from Russell M. Nelson about treasuring the Book of Mormon in our lives and gaining a personal testimony of it. So many talks addressed this topic, and I even wrote about it last week in my email, which I don´t think is a coincidence, so I urge all of you to read the Book of Mormon for yourselves and truly study and pray about it. My favorite talk however was from Jeffrey R. Holland. I loved that talk so much. He spoke with such love and emotion and power. I love Matthew chapter 5, which his talk was kind of focused on and I loved all of his advice on trying to be more Christlike everyday. If you only listen to one talk from General Conference, listen to this one. He spoke at the end of the Saturday morning session. Also remember to always try to apply what was taught in General Conference to your lives! My other awesome experience this week was when we went proselyting. It was incredible! I can´t wait for the field. Everyone in my district were assigned a companion from the santiago west mission for the afternoon and as soon as we got there I totally called it. First, I called that I was going to be assigned the shortest companion, and then I called that I was going to be in a trio. Both were correct. But my companions were really cool, they were the zone leaders. The whole time we were walking around I had such a big smile on my face. I learned a lot that day about faith. Faith is incredible, it is truly the opposite of doubt. I´m probably the only missionary in my district who hasn´t really worried about learning the language because I´ve seen all 3 of my brothers learn their mission languages, and I always just had this feeling in the back of my mind that if I really need the language for something, then I´ll know what to say. I´ve only been learning spanish for 3 weeks (4 weeks now) but I was able to understand everything except one conversation while we were proselyting, which I´ll explain later. We taught a lesson to a recent convert and I was able to understand all of it and even teach and testify for part of it. It was incredible. The same principle applies to everything, all week I´ve been pretty sick but I´ve done my best not to worry or complain about it and just trust that while I´m on the Lord´s errand I´ll be taken care of. Whenever I teach, especially proselyting, I´ve never felt healthier. It´s incredible, have faith in the Lord. Near the end of our time proselyting we went to an area where there were a lot of Haitians who speak French-Creol. One of my companions was able to speak it pretty well(as well as english which was nice for me), but I was again astounded as I was able to understand their conversations, I couldn´t speak back, but I could understand what they were talking about. It was so cool. There was one Haitian who could speak a little spanish and a little english, so he really wanted to talk to me because I was clearly from the United States. I felt so stupid, for some reason I couldn´t understand what he was trying to ask me though, all I could gather was that he mentioned me being in Chile, and the verb venir, which means to come. So I assumed he was asking why I came to Chile and I began testifying of why I was serving a mission and of Heavenly Father´s love for us(my purpose for serving a mission was in my farewell talk if you´ve read that), and eventually one of my companion stops me and tells me that he was asking where I was from. I FELT SO STUPID. After thinking about it for a little bit though I realized something cool. That was the only conversation I didn´t understand all day. Before he left that guy stayed back and shook my hand continuosly telling me over and over again that it was beautiful talking to me. I think I was supposed to misunderstand that conversation and bear testimony. As all day i´d been able to understand the language with the help of the Lord, by the same power I couldn´t understand that question, but only in order to bear testimony to him. It was a powerful realization. I hope everyone is doing well at home! I´ll talk to you next week!
Elder Blaylock
No comments:
Post a Comment