Jack - September 20

This week FLEW by, after that first week time has been flying so fast. A lot happened this week but at the same time it´s hard to remember all of it. Last wednesday after emailing we did a session at the santiago temple (which is right next to the MTC) and it was awesome, we get to do it every pday. I love the reverent peace of the temple, it´s the best place to pray to God with any questions or concerns you have. A bit later last week my companion and I had a big argument, so I´m still having trouble with this companionship, some days are better than others. Monday and Tuesday were actually national holidays so it was really cool and lucky that I was in the MTC because we celebrated all of Monday. We ate a ton of good food, learned a lot about some of the dancing they do in Chile (with ponchos and hats and boots with spurs it was sweet) we also played some field games in teams for most of the day, for some reason i was a team leader for my team so they´d explain the rules of each game to the team leaders but both the team leaders for my team were gringos haha and they were explaining in spanish. That night we had a devotional with the MTC president, he taught us more about the holiday and the history of Chile. Monday was their independence day. Tuesday was a holiday celebrating all their branches of their military so we got to leave class to go watch some parades, I didn´t get any pictures though unfortunately. This sunday we had some really good devotionals. We watched a talk from Elder Bednar about the Character of Christ and trying to be more like Him. One of the best ways to do that is to always think about others before yourself. Something he shared that I really liked were his thoughts on faith and the story of the brother of Jared in the Book of Mormon. The brother of Jared presents his plan to light the boats to God, which was to have God touch the stones so that they could be illuminated. In the verse where it talks about the brother of Jared seeing the finger of God, Elder Bednar points out and speculates about the fact that there´s a period between the sentence where God lights the stones and the brother of Jared sees the finger of God. So Elder Bednar pointed out that maybe God started lighting the stones and the first few all the brother of Jared saw were the stones lighting up, but he had to believe that God was touching them before he would be able to see God´s finger, because faith is a hope for things which are not seen which are true. Ether 3:6 ¨And it came to pass that when the brother of Jared had said these words, behold, the Lord stretched forth his hand and touched the stones one by one with his finger. And the veil was taken from off the eyes of the brother of Jared, and he saw the finger of the Lord...¨ This reminded me of another scripture about faith that says ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith. So if you desire something of the Lord, go to Him with a plan and faith that you will receive just like the brother of Jared. This was really important to me because it is exactly what it felt like after my argument with my companion, before I was comforted and assured by the Lord that I was doing what was right I had to prove that I would stand by what was right. I hope you are all doing great! I love it here and I can´t wait to be able to tell you more. Until next week.

Elder Blaylock