Jack- September 3

This is it, a couple of days away from the official one-year mark!

This week was pretty, rough. We had some great plans, we´d found a bunch of new people to teach but then this week every single plan we had fell through and we lost a lot of people to teach. So we´ll be starting pretty close to scratch this next week. We have some good ideas though, so onward we go.

Honestly, my mission has been pretty hard, I´ve worked as hard as I can, yet I´ve experienced a lot of disappointments and a lot of times I´ve felt pretty hopeless. (Don´t worry this´ll get better) 

But this week, after a lot of long, rough days, I felt like this. Sometimes I´ve felt in my prayers at night like I´ll just collapse, but at the end of my personal study this week a scripture caught my eye that really encouraged me to keep reading, it literally seemed to speak to me. The scripture is in the Book of Job, in which, if you didn´t know is basically about a dude who is super righteous, then in an instant loses everything, in this part one of his friends is offering him some advice and words of comfort.

Job 4:

3 Behold, thou hast instructed many, and thou hast strengthened the weak hands.

4 Thy words have upholden him that was falling, and thou hast strengthened the feeble knees.

5 But now it is come upon thee, and thou faintest; it toucheth thee, and thou art troubled.

6 Is not this thy fear, thy confidence, thy hope, and the uprightness of thy ways?

7 Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent? or where were the righteous cut off?

8 Even as I have seen, they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same.

...

12 Now a thing was secretly brought to me, and mine ear received a little thereof.

13 In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men,

14 Fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake.

15 Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up:

16 It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof: an image was before mine eyes, there was silence, and I heard a voice, saying,

17 Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his maker?

18 Behold, he put no trust in his servants; and his angels he charged with folly:

19 How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth?

20 They are destroyed from morning to evening: they perish for ever without any regarding it.

21 Doth not their excellency which is in them go away? they die, even without wisdom.

Right. So all of this is complicated, I honestly had to read it a couple of times to understand it, and I don´t even know if I understand it perfectly, but I definitely think I understand what I was supposed to. A lot of times I´ve felt really sad or depressed because I hadn´t accomplished any big change in anybody´s life, I´ve had some great, really powerful experiences, but then afterwards it´s almost as if there was no change, so a lot of times, I felt pretty down. But I really liked how Job´s friend reminds him that he´s taught a lot of people, and that a lot of people have been strengthend by him, because even though I haven´t accomplished that great impact I was always looking for, I can say that I have taught a lot of people, I have been there in the exact moment that they needed comfort, I have offered the exact words needed to strengthen them. Then in verse 5 Job´s friend acknowledges that he´s had a lot of troubles, but asks him in verse 6, basically, "Isn´t this what you believe in?"

"Don´t you know that everyone must pass through difficulties?"

"Isn´t this what you believe in?"

He qoes on to explain that even though challenges can be to punish us, most often they are to teach us something, they´re there so that we can grow. And if we´re experiencing difficulties, we should know that the innocent never perished, that the righteous were never cut off from the Lord. So we have to know that He´s right there beside us to help, strengthen, and guide us through the trials. 

Later on his friend explains a vision he had that´s a little tough to understand, but he basically asks "Shall mortal man be more just than God?" which is to say "Do you think your plan for you life is really better than God´s?" 

"shall a man be more pure than his maker?" - "God literally made you, I´m pretty sure He knows why He made you"

"Trust in His plan, even though it´s tough, it´s better"

Maybe God´s plan for me is much more day to day, to help on the smaller yet just as important scale.

At the end he says, a little strongly, that we all die without wisdom, but what I think he means is that we´ll die one day, and still not understand why we went through so many difficulties. But one day when we´re back again with our Heavenly Father we´ll understand. And we´ll thank Him.

"Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed. For I am thy God, and will still give thee aid." - How firm a foundation

"When ye are weary he waketh morning by morning." - 2 Nephi 7:4

Even when it´s tough, when all you can do is get to the next day, He´ll be there to wake you up, and He´ll watch over you day by day.

I love you all, have a great week!

(I definitely did not describe all of that well enough but oh well)

Jack - August 27

Hello!

 It´s going to be a short letter today because I´m a little short on time. But everything is going well. I´m really enjoying training because my companion is awesome, we get along really well and we´re having a great time. Even though the work is hard we´re both working diligently and faithfully through it. This week we were studying together one of the talks that the mission gave us to read in our welcome binders and it was really fun to read it again and think about it with my companion. The talk basically just makes you realize that you can choose to become who you want to be, it´s kind of a heavy talk and kind of just puts everything right there in front of you. So when we had to pause in our reading it was always funny to hear my companion "You can´t leave me hanging on that!" We always refer to the talk as talking about our futures, it´s a pretty fun time.

Even though I haven´t hit a year in the mission yet, my companion pointed out to me that I have less than a year left. That was weird. But I´m happy and excited for this next year!

I hope everyone is doing great!

Jack - August 20

50 weeks! 

That´s a lot of time.

Welp, this week went well. I think. We spent a lot of time preparing baptisms, our ward had 2 this week which was pretty neat. It was two kids 8 and 9 years old. The ward mission leader was supposed to plan them, but he´s a young dude preparing for his mission so he didn´t really know what to do, so it basically all got dumped on me. At least the baptisms turned out well.

This week I had some really good studies. One helped me to better understand the importance of prayer, and the other helped me understand way better the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the Plan of Salvation. First of all, it´s important that when we pray, we actually talk with God. It shouldn´t just be your shopping list of blessings you want. A lot of times we feel like he isn´t listening because we don´t recognize answers, well if you want Him to talk you have to make it a conversation. Telling Him a list of things you need just leaves room for Him to say "That´s great." or something like that. But if we try harder to make our prayers conversations, that´s something between two people, and I know that He´ll be more likely to respond more openly. Prayer requires an effort, and brings some of the greatest blessings. Actually my studies on Prayer led me to give better prayers and receive more revelation in my studies. And for that I´ve come to understand better the Atonement and Plan of Salvation, and let me just say, I´m not great at explaining things but I can testify that Jesus Christ is our Savior, that He is full of mercy and grace, and that He has given us so many gifts and our lives to learn and improve and change. God´s plan is perfect, and I invite everyone to learn more about it. For me, one of my favorite chapters in the scriptures is in the Book of Mormon; 2 Nephi 2. It´s amazing.

Anyways, the work is hard but worth it, I hope that everyone is doing well!

Jack - August 13

Alright! ¿Quien quiere conocer mi hijo?

For those of you who are confused, there`s some missionary slang that if you`re training someone, they`re your son.

Transfers all went really well. Right before receiving our new companions I got to spend the day with my old comp, Elder B, in his sector because he`ll be training too. So that was a lot of fun, we got to catch up on some stuff, remember some funny stuff that happened, and prepare to be trainers. 

Right before we got out trainees, Presidente Romeu gave a capacitacion with the Assistants about training and it was really cool, one, because I´ve always wanted to train, it`s such a cool experience in the mission, and two, because my trainer was there too, hahaha. 

Then we had an awesome and exciting meeting where each new elder got assigned an area and their companion, and everyone was cheering and really excited the whole time. It was great. I was the first to receive a new companion, and he`s awesome. His name is Elder C. He`s from Las Vegas, and he`s super excited to be in the mission. We`ve had a great first week. 

I`m not going to lie, I`m pretty stressed, I obviously want to do a good job, and know I have a lot of weaknesses. But I`m really excited for this transfer. The only part that might be sad would be the end. I`ll have been in Quintero for 6 months, so it`s likely I`ll be transferred in the middle of Elder C`s training. But I`d like to stay, Quintero is a good sector, and Elder C seems like a great guy.

The other day we contacted a drunk guy in the street, and it was actually a good contact, or well, we did everything really well, the dude was kinda weird. But what was really funny is that he kept saying that all the missionaries are spies for the United States, here to see how they live. Which was funny enough, but then after the contact my companion looked at me confused and asked me what he was saying, and so I explained that he thought we were spies and my companion just started to laugh. "Oh...I thought he was saying we were feet!" "That all gringos were feet!" Hahahaha it was really funny, to be fair the two words do sound similar.

Anyways that`s it for this week, I hope everyone has an awesome week!

A couple pictures of our 'family history' work

Jack - August 6

TRANSFERS!

ALRIGHTY THEN, who wants to know what´s up?

I am actually really excited. I´m not gonna lie this last transfer was really tough for me. So I´m just looking forward to the best transfer this next transfer.

I will be... staying. My companion is getting transferred after only 1 transfer here in Quintero, which is weird. But I´ll be staying as District Leader, only now, I´ll be training!!! I´m really excited, I´ve always wanted to train, I had a great experience with my trainer, so I just hope training is just as awesome. Also. Speaking of my trainer... He´s the new Assistant to the President!!! Which is awesome, because that means he´s now in my district, and he´ll get to see me train. This is going to be so much fun. I´m really excited. I just won´t know who my companion is until wednesday, but this´ll be fun.

Other than that, not a ton of news. This week was pretty good because I wasn´t that sick and I got to do 3 Baptismal interviews which were awesome.

I hope everyone has a great week! I can´t wait to hear from you guys.

Parker - August 8

h o m e