Monday, August 4, 2014

This week and last week

(Sorry I forgot to post his letter from last week so you get two this week)


July 28, 2014
Dear Family,

Just another wonderful day in the neighborhood! Wood Badge sounds like a blast. I hope you guys weren’t to uncomfortable in that trailer! 

Interestingly enough, the other day we were talking with a less active 15 year old girl the other day and she was talking about how before the church always had a bunch of activities that were awesome and how she wanted to go to the activities. Then she said she had an awesome idea! When she was younger she went to this other church that had a small program of scouts and she was wondering why our church didn't do scouts! It was funny to me because up there in the USA the church basically runs the scout program but here the church doesn't work much with it...Anyway, count your blessings because there are kids down here that would love to go do a wood badge camp out thing but they don't have the opportunity. So keep on keepin on!

I really like what you shared about the difference between leadership and management. Here in Melo we have some new District Leaders and so sometimes it is a little bit frustrating when everything doesn't go right. Our District Leaders are awesome but it is hard to know how to do everything when you are a new district leader. But I am going to apply what you taught me in my work with the District Leaders. I get along really well with all of them and we all work well together but I will change my attitude a little bit. I am going to help them learn and grow so that they can potentially take my spot in the future. Guiding people instead of telling them what to do. I like it.

We had a killer week here in the zone. Last week the missionaries weren't working super well and so we put some plans and we absolutely exploded this week. We didn't have any baptisms but that is because we weren't working well in the past couple weeks. This week a lot of missionaries were able to find a lot of really good people. I did an intercambio with Elder Oliveira in his area. He is from Sao Paulo Brazil and we found 3 people who are really prepared! He also taught me a little bit of Portuguese so watch out Mikey! Anyway, Elder Contreras and I are really happy because the missionaries here are applying all of the plans and stuff really well. 

The family that we found last week are having a few problems so they didn't come to church this week which is dumb because when you have problems the first place that you should go is the church. But we will see what happens with them. Julia is the mom and she is really awesome. She wants to help her family a ton. The Dad is cool and we thought everything was going well, we even played soccer with him at the church for an activity. But one day he just decided that he doesn't want anything to do with us. We still haven't been able to talk to him about it. We recently have found some other really good people though so we are looking forward to this upcoming month.

I gave a talk in church yesterday and I obviously talked about the obra misional, but I talked a lot about service too. The best service that we can give someone is spiritual service. We definitely need to give fisical service but if we really love someone we will try to help them spiritually. I talked a little bit about what we can do if we have family members or friends who are not members or who are less active. Everything that we do should be out of love. If they don't feel our love for them as we invite them to come to church or an activity then we did it wrong. If these people know that we love them and that we want what is best for them then they will open up their hearts to our testimonies and they will be able to feel the spirit. It all starts with a prayer and it should end with a hug. and if you are in Uruguay a beso.

I love you guys!

Elder Lacey

Dear Dad,

That video is so powerful! We have used it a lot and when used in the right setting it is guaranteed that at least 1 person will shed tears. The most powerful thing for me is when it shows the baby and says that he lived and then it shows the graves and it says he died. When i watched that I was really able to understand that Jesus was born and lived a human life! It just blows my mind that A God would come down and be born and suffer for all of our pains. And then he resurrected. I love that video.

Teach Luke the ways of Football!

Y ahora.... Vaya y Bañarse :)

LOVE

Elder Lacey



August 4, 2014

Dear Family,

Thanks for the activities! I just barely sent you an email asking for them but you already read my mind. We want to have a really good zone conference tomorrow so we are thinking of doing some sort of activity to build unity. We will see how it turns out!

This week was awesome. We had Concilio (Mission Conference) on Friday.....We woke up at 12:45 at night to get on the bus so we could get there by 9 a.m. haha! It's even better than when I was in 33! But Concilio was really spiritual. It is so awesome to be with so many strong missionaries and President Cook and is wife. It is always pretty long but we receive a lot of instruction and revelation when we are there. I have been learning a lot about learning by faith. There is a talk by Elder Bednar given to the CES (or something like that) that is called Seek Learning by Faith. We all focus on teaching by the spirit but something that is even more important is learning by the spirit. It really opened my eyes. It doesn't matter if someone is completely full of the spirit if they are teaching someone who is completely closed off to the spirit. As missionaries we need to help investigators become their own fishers instead of giving them fish. If the investigators learn how to LEARN BY FAITH then our job is easy. We are not the teachers, the spirit is the teacher. There are a lot of missionaries that like to teach like they are giving a talk. They just kind of run through the lesson. They teach really well and they teach all of the points but they miss the purpose. Our purpose is to help people feel the spirit so that they will have the desire to change and be baptized. Their hearts are opened when they are invited to do something, such as read in the scriptures or pray, and then they exercise their agency and do it. It is a principal that applies to everyone. To learn we have to exercise our agency and actually do something. We cannot sit back and just hope to learn by the spirit. We have to exert ourselves spiritually, mentally, and physically and then we will have open hearts to receive the spirit. I invite you guys to read that talk because it is just dandy.

Melo is such an interesting place. We have found so many people that are super prepared but for some reason or another they fall through....but we keep finding more people! For example, we were hoping for about 3 solid investigadores to come to church yesterday. We worked a ton to help them come. We even went out and looked from them on Sunday morning. None of them came! We were praying and fasting to have people in church and we had really tried our best so we were a little bit disappointed walking back to church alone but we never lost our Fe (faith). Well, the day before, on Saturday we had a Capilla Abierta (Open House at church) and a member brought one of his neighbors. Turns out that his neighbor loved it so he showed up to church! Then a less active family that we are working with all came to church and the girlfriend of one of the sons came with them and now she is interested. And then to top it all off 3 jovenes (young boys) that play soccer at the church showed up! It was a testimony builder because Elder Contreras and I had given our all to at least have 4 investigadores in the church and the people that we thought were the most firm fell through but then we ended up with 5 at church! We felt like we had just won a football game haha! Hopefully we will be able to help these 5 progress to their baptisms. 

Have fun at Bear Lake! And tell Mikey and Ali to stop having to much fun haha! 

Love

Elder Lacey

Dear Dad,

I love those scriptures. I think it talks a little bit about those scriptures in the talk that I mentioned in my email to the family. Something interesting is that when we talk with the power of the holy ghost it carries it unto but not necessarily into the hearts of others. It is an interesting topic that Elder Bednar brings up in his talk. but it is definitely true that we need to be a worthy instrument so that the Holy Ghost can be carried to the hearts of others so that they can accept it or not.

Tiene que Bañarse. No hay otra. Pero por favor cuídese. Está bravo el piso. 

You're crazy! haha You probably have bones made of steel. I can see you rolling down the mountain at high speeds just laughing your head off. No pain no gain I guess. :)

Love,

Elder Lacey

No comments:

Post a Comment