"No Man Can Serve Two Masters"

April 28, 2014

Dear Family,

Looks like you guys have been having a good ol' time down in Cali! Is Luke just as tall as you now mom? He is growing like a bean stalk! Send my love to Sarah and John for me! 

Something that I want to remind you guys about is found in Matthew 6:24....."No man can serve 2 masters". Basically what I have learned from this scripture is that we can not cheer for the Giants and then go to a Dodgers game. I invite all of you to repent and change your ways.......jk jk  I bet it was fun to go watch an MLB game even though it was the wrong team playing.

It has been a really good week down here in Uruguay though. My new comp Elder Bastidas and I have been working really hard and we are seeing a lot of good things happening in our area and in the zone. Elder Bastidas is from Peru and he was baptized when he was 11 with his whole family. He is a super awesome guy! He is a little direct with the missionaries but it is a good thing. He wants to help all of the missionaries here reach their potential. Its funny because in almost every zone there is a zone leader that likes to "drop cane" (tells the missionaries how it is) and there is a zone leader who likes to love the missionaries. That way the 2 zone leaders work together to help everyone feel the urgency that they need to have but still feel God's love for them.  I think I will have to be the "Lover" a little bit more this change which is good. I think we will be able to work well together to help every one here in the zone. 

But other than changes it has been pretty tranquilo around here. We are working hard everyday and studying hard too. I love studying in Chapter 6 in PMG! I feel like it is our job here on earth to do everything possible to get these attributes. It is through the attributes of Christ that we become perfected and in order to apply the attributes in our lives we have to read the scriptures daily, pray for help from God, and take the sacrament every week. It is crazy how important those 3 things are. If we stop doing one of them for an extended period of time we will fall. It happened recently here in our area. A recent convert here stopped reading his scriptures and he fell pretty hard. Now we are trying to help him come back but it is pretty difficult for him and it all started because he stopped reading his scriptures everyday. READ YOUR SCRIPS.

Well, I am really grateful for the opportunity that my comp and I have to go clean out a house in Vergara during our P day. Vergara got closed last change and they left their house a wreck so we get the opportunity to go clean it out :) "and if we die before our Journeys through, no P day Day, All is well". haha! It will be a good time. Another opportunity that I have had to serve recently is that my comp didn't have a single peso when he got here. I guess he got 1000 pesos stolen from him somehow so he doesn't have anything left. So I have shared my food with him and I have to buy our bus tickets to Montevideo tomorrow because we have concilio and they are a bit expensive so I think I will have to go take out some personal money soon. Sorry! But my comp is a boss and I love him so it is all good. We should be getting our monthly money pretty soon.

The mission is the best!

Have a good time in Cali! I love all of you!

Elder Lacey

Elder Lacey and Elder Vorwaller

Elder Bastidas

Easter Baptism

April 22, 2014

Dear Family,

That is so awesome that you got to have "Elder Walker" and "Elder Morrow" over for Easter. They are such great guys. They both have helped me out a ton in my life and I am really grateful for both of them. 

Easter down here was pretty different. Basically it doesn't really exist! I didn't even know when it was. But not having any celebrations or anything didn't keep me from thinking about the Atonement of Jesus Christ all week.

This week was a pretty crazy one. First off, we had a baptism! Beatriz finally made the commitment to be baptized! We have been working with her for quite awhile and she was completely ready to get baptized but something kept holding her back. We weren't planning on her being baptized anytime soon but on Saturday we were walking over to have a charla with her and we had the impression to invite her to get baptized the next day and she accepted! I will send you some pictures of her. Her daughter is already a member. They are both super awesome! The baptism was a really spiritual experience too! By the end of it she couldn't stop crying which is always a good sign. We were all really excited.

So, changes came in! It was super exciting as a zone leader because all of the changes effect your zone. My new comp will be Elder Bastidas from Peru. He is a new zone leader so I will have to train him a little bit on what to do. He is also my first Latino comp! Por Fin! (Finally!) I can learn spanish now haha I am really looking forward to working with him. This change I really want to help everyone in my zone work with the spirit 100% of the time. Elder Vorwaller and I were talking about how our mission is super obedient and we all work really hard but sometimes I think we all forget that as missionaries we are promised with the help of the holy ghost at all times. We need to work as hard as we can with the spirit. That means focusing on Jesus Christ and the Atonement to help us be worthy at all times to receive the help from the Lord. If we work with the spirit then we are working with the Lord.

The food here is good. They have a lot of fruit and stuff so I am happy! But I am so pumped for Brian! Send him my saludos!

The mission is the best. I am sad to see Elder Vorwaller go but I am excited for all of the opportunities that he will have up there. We had a super awesome change together and I hope that you will be able to meet him too. 

I love you guys!

Elder Lacey

PS I got some letters from Amy! Her kids are hilarious! Send them my love

Moms Have Superhuman Strength

April 14, 2014

Dear Family,

First off, you guys are the best! I love my family so much! I receive so much support from all of you guys and I just feel blessed to have the 2 best parents in the world and the 9 best siblings in the world (including the adopted brothers and sisters in laws) I am a lucky guy to have so many good people in my life.

This week went by quicker than ever! We had a zone conference with President on Wednesday and Elder Vorwaller and I had to spend a lot of time setting everything up for that. Mom, how the heck do you do it? I didn't realize how hard it is to get food for everyone! We had to feed 25 people lunch on Wednesday and I think it was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life! haha But it turned out pretty dang good and we only spent 100 bucks for everything.... not to shabby. But seriously, I really appreciate the work of a mother. Making sure everyone has food everyday takes superhuman strength, knowledge, and skill. Moms are the best.

President Cook is awesome! He is a really funny guy and he is also really spiritual. I got to talk with him and his wife for a good amount of time and I am really excited to work with them here in the mission. We have had some difficulties here in our own area of work but things are looking up. Lately we have had a couple of really good investigators fall through such as Horacio. It is really sad because we feel like we had really good charlas and he had a lot of opportunities to feel the spirit but for some reason he didn't recognize it. He even went to General Conference! I don't know how you can go to General Conference and not get baptized afterwards! But we have found some really good families recently so we will see how it all goes. 

One thing that caught my attention when I was talking with President is that we were almost talking about the mission like it was a war. We were talking about some of the areas in our zone and I felt like I was talking strategy on the battlefield. It was interesting to me because we really are in a war. We are fighting against Satan in a battle for everyones souls. That is why missionaries have to put there whole heart, might, mind, and strength into the mission because you can't go play around on the battlefield. The difference is that our bullets are made out of love instead of metal haha Anyway, just a thought.

Yesterday we were sitting in church listening to Fast and Testimony meeting. This older lady went up and talked about how there is so much evil in the world and how bad everything is. The next person who went up was a lady in her 20's and she shared her testimony on the Atonement. The difference between the 2 testimonies was interesting. Sometimes I like to focus on how wicked the world is getting, but we really should be focused on how much light this gospel can bring to us. Our message is a message of hope and light. Through the Atonement everyone can be healed. Everyone can be saved. It doesn't matter how many people are going down a wrong path or how much evil is going on around us. We can rise up above it all if we just follow the example of Jesus Christ and use the Atonement in our lives. Now that is an awesome message! 

I hope everyone is doing well. Things have been pretty busy around here but I will try to get some letters out to you guys. I love you all!

abrazos!

Elder Lacey

PS to answer your question from last time, I don't take the money to the bank. The councilors do that for the tithing

The Birthday Banner we sent Elder Lacey

General Conference for Life!

April 7, 2014

Dear Family,

General Conference for Life! 

That’s what I wish we had. General Conference is the best and I am really sad that it is over. I learned a ton of things that I want to start applying right now on the mission. I hope everyone else was able to hear the council that God has for us.

So this week has been pretty crazy. On Tuesday Elder Vorwaller and I went down to Montevideo for "Concilio". It is a meeting for all of the zone leaders and President. President Cook is Awesome! I am grateful to have been in contact with so many great leaders. We talked a lot about what we can do to help all of our zones and the biggest thing that I have been learning is that we just need to go to work with the spirit. There aren't any secrets in the mission, if we have a desire to serve God we are called to go to WORK and serve him with all of our heart, might, mind, and strength. Now I am just trying to help other missionaries learn how to apply this concept. Hopefully General Conference will help all of the missionaries here have the desire to give everything to the Lord. We also had a zone conference this past week where we talked about this concept. We shared an example of a Doctor. If Someone comes into the hospital bleeding to death the doctor is going to do everything he can to save this person. It doesn't matter if the doctor is hungry, hot, thirsty, if he doesn't like the hospital, or if nobody is helping him. He will give everything to save this person. We as missionaries are doing something a lot more important than saving someones mortal life. We are saving peoples souls, o sea, we are saving their lives for the eternities. We HAVE to give our all to save these people.

Some other crazy things that have happened this week is that we are closing one of the areas in our zone. They weren't getting much work done at all and they were having some obedience problems so President and the AP's decided to close it.

I want to close with what our prophet told us in one of his talks "Needed is a Daniel" :) haha I enjoyed that

Love 

Elder Lacey