Happy Birthday last week to Jeff, and then to Sophie mañana!
How´s
everyone doing this bright, beautiful, hot day in April? The humidity
is still goin' strong down here in Santa Cruz, and yes, it´s actually
starting to cool down for once! Well, actually it started to cool down,
then this week it was super hot again, or at least it was cold in the
morning, super hot later, and then coldish again en la noche. So it´s a
nice change for once, and supposedly we´re gonna be really cold again onThursday so I´m excited for that.
Well, on the more interesting side of the conversation, Elder
Bednar came to Santa Cruz on Saturday! (ya, i´ve actually known that
this was going to happen for the past month or so, but completely forgot
to mention it before haha!) Anyway, Elder Bednar came and spoke to most
of the members here in Santa Cruz throughout the day on Saturday, so
all the missionaries here got to have our own little private conference
with him in the morning for several hours. It was awesome! He talked a
lot about learning by faith and teaching others by faith as well. One of
the things that I really liked is that he talked about treating others
as ´agents´ and not ´objects´. We can talk forever to people about
anything we want to, but we can´t force anything to enter their heart.
The only way that anything will ever penetrate their heart is when they
allow it to enter in themselves. So the best we can do is to invite them
to exercise their faith, then do all that we can to help them do it. He
used an example of when Peter heals a man who has never walked in his
life. Peter heals him, then instead of walking away, the first thing he
does is take the man by the hand and he lifts him up so that he can take
his first steps with the support that is absolutely necessary to give
this man the ability to do so. So when we´re teaching others, we can´t
treat them as objects and do everything for them, we need to let them
become agents as they use their agency to choose what to do and then
later learn from their own experiences. It was all really powerful and I
learned a lot. This all applies to ourselves too as learners.
And then
after, we got to shake hands with Elder Bednar, his wife, 3 seventies
and their wives (including one seventy who was the stake president of
Elder V who set him apart before his mission haha) and,
siempre, Presidente y Hermana Calderón, who is about to be a seventy
himself (again, I think). All of the general authorities that were there
took part in teaching us, and it was never just talks like in general
conference. They asked us questions, then we got to ask them a bunch of
questions, then we had a discussion about the things we learned. It
really was a cool experience with that many general authorities in one
room with such a small group of missionaries.
And F left this week for up by Oruro or Potosí, I
don´t remember which one, but he won´t be coming back until August, so
we had our last lesson with him this week. It was really sad, but really
good. I have no doubt that he´ll continue strong in the church wherever
he goes. It won´t be the last time we meet.
Other than all of that good stuff, life´s good here in Bolivia!
There´s a transfer this week and I´m pretty sure I´m leaving.... We´ll
see what happens..
¡Tenga un buen día!
Amor,
Élder Groneman
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