Thanksgiving was a normal day, but the week most definitely wasn´t normal. There were several Elders that received their Visas for Venezuela so we were helping them with everything with that and then some left this morning at 2 in the morning and others are leaving tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. All at 3 in the morning. Awesome. I didn´t get any sleep last night because I had to wake up so much with Elders that all had to leave at different times because there´s an Elder that´s sick and has been with us for a couple days and also another Elder that´s brand new and headed out for the mission field, but he´s from Cobija, which is a district so he had to be set apart by Pdte Zambrano. But basically, the entire week has been tons of emergency stuff at the last minute that I had to change plans for everything and it was crazy but everything worked out in the end. It´s different seeing the Spirit work here in the mission, not only while we´re teaching, but how He guides us in running the mission too. It´s really interesting that, and something that I really didn´t understand until now. But just know that yes, Heavenly Father answers prayers.
So we switched insurance companies too as of yesterday, but we´ll
see how that goes because I´m currently the only one who knows how it
actually works, and it´s completely different from what we had before,
so we´ll see how that goes. But the government also withheld our package
with all of the insurance cards and so we´ve had to do lots of stuff
with that to be able to receive the thing. So that was our entire day in
Wednesday so that we´d be able to have the insurance cards on
Friday..... and in the end, on Friday the lady that had to give us the
package left on vacation. Awesome. But we should be getting it today.
We´ll see what happens.
Well, on the other end amidst all of the chaos, we had an awesome
lesson yesterday with a less active that had his papers ready and
everything to leave on a mission, but because of some things that
happened, slowly became inactive and now hasn´t gone for almost 5 years,
But the lesson was really really good yesterday and it really makes you
realize how much we really do have when we live the gospel. He was
talking about how his whole life has been completely different since he
left the church. It hasn´t been bad, but he doesn´t feel complete. He´s
had some really good opportunities to work and everything since he went
inactive, but after we said the opening prayer with him, he just said,
¨I always pray whenever I leave in the morning to go to work or the
university; something short. But it´s been a long time since I really
felt it.¨ Ah! The Spirit was so strong and I was just thinking about how
there are so many people who are happy with their lives and who aren´t
living the gospel like Christ would like us to. It´s good that they´re
happy, but they just don´t realize how much happier they could be
if they just followed our Father´s counsel. Heavenly Father loves us
all, and if we´re good people with good hearts and desire to do good
with our lives, he´s going to bless us in ways we can´t even imagine.
But don´t you think that we´ll receive even more if we actually do what
he says? With that in mind, we´ve probably heard so many times before of
how happy people are in their lives and they don´t follow Christ´s
teachings. But what is this happiness that we always talk about? How do
we know that it´s real? We´ve all felt it because we´ve searched for it,
and found it in our prayers, at church, and in the scriptures,
including the Book of Mormon. It´s a little hard to explain how much
better something is than something that´s already awesome. Better
blessings when we already have blessings. Ice cream cake when we have
the ice cream-less cake that still has really good frosting. The ice
cream is there and it makes the cake 50 times better, but you can´t see
the ice cream just looking from the outside in. You´ve got to give it a
shot and look for that ice cream because someone told you that it´s
there and you´re there to see it for yourself, and not only to see it,
but after you find it, you´ve got to eat it to know that it´s actually
ice cream instead of the frosting that might appear the same but it´s
not even close. Well, hope that makes sense. The invitation is to search
the ice cream because I´m tellin you that it´s there, and it´s real,
and there´s nothing better than the cake that has the ice cream. There´s
nothing better than living THE GOSPEL of Jesus Christ and receiving the
higher blessings (bigger blessings or however you want to say it) than
just living a good life and not accepting the gospel and all of its
teachings. And if you´re the one who´s found the ice cream, what are you
doing? That person next to you is looking at that ice cream saying that
it just looks like frosting. Invite them to know that it´s the ice
cream that has to be in the middle, and is there and always will be for
everyone who wants it.
And if you don´t like ice cream cake, sorry. Just
pretend that this chapter´s been about brownies or something. I
personally ate an ice cream cake the other day and it was awesome. Oh
ya, that was at a baptism we had in the ward on Saturday. I´ll send some
pictures of that. She wasn´t our investigator, the sisters here were
teaching her, but she asked me to baptize her, so that was a really
great opportunity.
And yes, I´ll try to send pictures. I don´t have to the password
for the wifi here because for some reason no one ever asked what it was
and no one knows, but I´ll just hook up my camera this week so you can
still have some pictures.
Amor a todos [Love to all],
Have a great week,
Elder Groneman
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| Baptism on Saturday with the ward mission leader, Elder C**, my companion, and the sister missionaries in the ward. |
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| Baptism on Saturday |
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| My life everyday. The phone. The computer. Lots of papers and sticky notes. I thought mom would like this photo to show what I do and see that it´s a very sad life haha. |
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| And we went bowling haha. |
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| Two weeks in a row. |
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