Kind of a tough week, but I made it to Pday and was able to talk it out with some great Elders. One big part of serving a mission for me is building mental muscles. Just like with physical muscles, your mental muscles go through exercise, working out how to solve problems, deal with stress, talk to a wide variety of people and building a huge pool of doctrinal information that the Spirit can pull from at the exact moment you need it when someone asks you a tough question. It definately exhausts your brain, which is why I need eight hours of sleep every night. But, I believe that one of the reasons the Church chooses younger members to be missionaries is to build the testimonies, because this is the truth. All of the answers are there, one just has to need it, needs to be pushed a bit to be strengthened. Just know that the Church is awesome.
More frequently, we have been going to lessons with a recent convert of about eight months named Lupita. Super strong in her testimony and doesn't have a lot of fear of bearing her personal testimony in front of strangers. She wants to serve a mission as well and I'm pretty confident she will be a pretty good one. We have talked to her recently about getting her patriarchal blessing and a temple recommend apart from getting her mission papers in. Also, this last Sunday, Arturo came to the Gospel Principles class and bore his testimony at the end to the three investigators that were there about how happy he has become in these last few months after being baptized without even being asked. He fully takes on his new responsibility as a Melchizedek Priesthood holder with scripture study, activity in the church, missionary work and personal dignity. It's so rewarding to see the progress of converts' testimonies.
The new church video for Christmas came out and I invite you to watch it if you haven't already and then share it with a friend. The Church is putting a big emphasis on referrals this year to help us missionaries out. I like to think about how we can find more people like Lupita and Arturo, but who are just waiting for someone to give them a little push start. One thing I read about in a talk named 'the consecrated missionary' (or something like that) is that this work is changing lives, changing the world. If we want to have a result like that, there has to be a price.
Love you all!
-Elder Allgaier
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| me with a machete |
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after we made the elote stand
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