Brisas - Week 19

Hola,

Well, another week in mission life!

One highlight, on Saturday we had a stake activity called "A day in the mission." All the young men, young women and missionaries met at the stake center at 7am and we had breakfast and a couple little "MTC" classes. Around 11am the president and his assistants came and talked about the hard parts of a mission and told everyone how they could get ready right now to face all those challenges.  It’s funny that really the hardest things for missionaries after the initial shock of getting here is just being tired, hungry (mostly the elders), and being outside in the sun all day. They really emphasized exercise with all the youth and said how that really prepares you before and during your mission.

The president also talked about addictions to things like TV or your phone and how you have to find a different outlet than that, because you won't have it on the mission! He also talked about addictions to porn and masturbation, which is always uncomfortable for everyone a little, but he had really good things to say about it. I think a lot of times no one wants to talk about it because its awkard, but its really a serious thing and a powerful tool Satan uses. Its crazy how many people face those problems too! One thing the president said it that a porn addiction, if left untreated, eventually turns into criminal activity in later phases of the addiction. He also said that masturbation addictions often lead to homosexuality. It was also interesting because he said that these addictions affect our capacity to love others, especially a spouse. Usually, the worse the addiction, the less ability you have to sincerely love others. When you understand the plan of salvation and the importance of marriage, having your ability to love diminished not only ruins a marriage, but consequently, exaltation! Satan is just so smart when he gets us hooked with addictions. The president also explained that we need to be careful of all kinds of addictions. He explained an addiction to be anything that the body selfishly wants, but that the spirit knows isn't good. Whenever our body starts to control our spirt, we should be careful! Before coming to the earth, we probably had no idea what having a body would be like,  but now we're here and we have to really learn to let our spirits be our guides,  not our bodies.

After that message from the president, all of us got together as a ward and between the missionaries and RMs in the ward, all the kids got split up with a list of names of people to visit. They were mostly less actives and recent converts. Since my companion still doesn't feel completely sure of the language and area yet, her and I stayed together and were given 3 girls. I showed my companion where to go once we got back to our area and sent her with one of the girls to go all by themselves. I think my companion learned a lot that day haha! It turned out to be a really fun activity though. I loved seeing how excited the girls got. We lucked out right at the beginning when the 5 of us were still together, because we found a new investigator that genuinely seemed interested in what we had to say. We gave her a Book of Mormon and went through the restoration really fast and she seemed excited to see what the Book of Mormon had to say. After the activity, we had a testimony meeting and all of the kids had really great experiences it seemed like.

I laughed because one kid got up and said he thought missionary work was just all fun, food, and teaching people who wanted to be baptized. He got out into "the mission" though and said it was just hot and not that many people wanted to listen. That's how it is a lot of days! Its funny, because you really just don't know what its like until you're out here!

On Sunday, at church, it was pretty sad because all week we thought we were getting switched back to our normal church building (they've been remodeling and we've been going to a church a lot farther away), but Saturday night we found out that the church wasn't getting switched back. Between that, and investigators not being there when people went by to pick them up (we had no investigators at church) it was a frustrating day :(   That's a really frustrating part about being a missionary...coordinating so many peoples schedules and making all these plans, only to have something change and ruin everything. I guess its life though.

Con Amor, Hermana Harper