September
8, 2014
Saludos
de (greetings from) Chile,
This
week was another great week. We have been really liking the new house, it
now has heated water (those 3 days of cold water were, well, um, 3 days of
really cold showers). We just need to put a shower curtain up and we will
be golden. I have been eating well, a little too well. There is a
french fry stand really close to the house, and they are cheap, and I think we
will stop going there on a near daily basis. Also, I eat either buttered
toast or jammed toast for breakfast and dinner, so I will be looking for a way
to eat less bread. I have been doing a lot better about getting my
exercise in, and I usually do 50 pushups every morning. When it gets
warmer and less rainy we might go out for runs in the morning.
One
of my favorite things to do is to knock doors. I have discovered that I
really like it. Last week started out looking not so peachy, but
yesterday when we were knocking doors we entered 3 homes. We had a young
man accompanying us, and as we were waiting for someone to come to the door
that we were knocking, he said that in all his many times of going out to work
with the missionaries over a period of several years, he said that he had never
entered a single home while knocking doors. I thought that odd, and then
at that same house, an older man with bad hearing came to the door. He
said he couldn’t hear us well, so he went back in and told his wife to talk
with us. She came out, and we told her that we’d like to offer a prayer
in their home and leave them with something to read. She let us in, we
talked about their family, that God loves them, and left them with a pamphlet
of the Restoration, telling them to read and pray about it. We are going
back to that older couple on Saturday. I thought it was funny that
we got into a house just as he said that he had never before gotten into a
house by knocking doors.
This
past week, the mission President called me asking me to talk with an Elder in
our house who was having problems with obedience and working hard. He
asked me to find out why he doesn’t want to be a missionary and to help him get
his focus again. As I talked with the Elder I really felt the spirit.
We used Preach My Gospel chapter 8, in the back where it asks really
heart searching questions and he then set goals and plans to improve. He said
that what holds him back is that he doesn’t believe he is capable of doing the
work, and a fear of failure, coming from times when he and his companions had
taught someone, and then return for a second visit and the investigators don’t receive
them for a second time. He said because of such experiences he doubts his
teaching ability, and if he has the spirit. I told him that those are
lies from Satan, that if you are worthy to enter a temple you are worthy to
serve a mission and that if you are living the gospel it is impossible to not
have the spirit. At the end I tried to make him happy, laugh a little,
and I really think he has a different attitude now (he woke up on time even
though it is P day). I told him that as a missionary you are a ship
captain on a wide open sea. In this big ocean there are lots of people
drowning, and this ship that we are taking everywhere, which is the gospel of
Jesus Christ, is the only thing that can save them. We can extend a hand,
and lift people into the ship, but they have to take our hand. If they
want to drown, that is their choice. I felt really blessed to have had
the opportunity to talk one on one with him, and help a struggling missionary.
I think he can be a great missionary, and he still has a year and half of
his mission to work hard.
Well,
I know this letter went into a lot of detail about what may or may not be
interesting to read but they really were highlights of my week. I am so
grateful to be a full time missionary. I love my calling. I wish
you all a great week, may you have success in whatever it is that you put your
minds to.
I
love you all more than the number of wood chips it would take to make 3
bonfires big enough to have a 2 way smoke signal communication system between
Argentina, Chile, and Idaho.
Have
a great week!
-Elder
Withers
Dear
Family,
This
was a great week for us here in Beltran. Lots of teaching opportunities
and lots of contacting.......all work continues on as usual. I have met
literally hundreds of people on my mission, and I have several hundreds more to
go....and I wish I could have a way of bunching them all together in 10-15
years to see where they are or how they have changed or if they have finally
made it to the church. It would be cool to see, and I am sure that there
would be lots of incredible and miraculous stories. Wishful thinking, but
it would be amazing. Every person has a story, and as missionaries we
usually only get to see bits and pieces of each story, we never get to find out
how it all ended! It’s okay though, I still like being a missionary. :)
This
week we had a general authority come, and.........it was Elder Zeballos from
Chile. And when he said where he was from, it made me remember that Chad
is serving in a big ward where a General Authority is from, and I didn’t get a chance to talk to him
afterward because everyone swarmed him and I didn’t want to contribute to the
issue....and then he left. Darn. It was an incredible conference,
and I took lots and lots of notes. His wife shared a cool object lesson.
When looking at the outside of an apple, it’s impossible to know, or even
guess how many seeds are on the inside. But if you cut the apple in half,
you can count each seed......but still, there is even more to the apple still
undiscovered. Because it’s impossible to know how many apples will come
from each new seed.....in other words, each person is an apple, but we will never
know how many seeds will come from their descendents and the forthcoming
generations. One apple leads to hundreds and thousands and eventually
millions. Cool to think about.
This
has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but the other day I learned that
you have to be Catholic to be President of Argentina, so that’s tragic and
borderline communism, but interesting to know. You can just log it into
the part of your brain where all the useless information goes, ha that’s what I
did too :)
I
really in all honesty don’t know what to write about, I feel like I have
written all there is to share about Argentina and have told all my
stories.......more than anything I am in the stage of my mission where I am
able to enjoy it. I’m not in culture shock, I know my way around and how
to not get lost in new places, the language isn’t so much of a problem anymore
(although I am still learning) I am healthy, and happy, know who I am, and have
an understanding of the gospel. I am part of an eternal family, I have
amazing parents and out of this world awesome siblings, I was born in a free
country, I have opportunities to study and get an education, and really my life
is just so so blessed. I feel so grateful.
We
live in an incredible generation, the last dispensation.....this is it.
Christ is coming after this one, and if we are obedient we have all we need
to be ready. It’s exciting!
I
hope you know how much I love you! I will love you a long time, to the
moon and back.
Hermana
Withers
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