February 23, 2015

Ok, here goes. Hope you all are ready for a ton of photos. Big things for this week:

This is coming back from LaCeiba - The Island you see is Roatan

This is in La Ceiba - Scott loves this city

Elder Sandoval - Scott loves this guy! He is holding a bag if pepsi??

Tony's baptism



Scott said this is the white house of Honduras

School of Tarpon behind

Baggy!

 

The church is growing here. We are baptizing. People are recieving the priesthood. Inactives are coming back to church. We started a seminary program. People are having babies. It's exciting. Our little branch is about to send out 3 missionaries at the same time and there are already 3 out. At one point in the near future there will be 6 missionaries from a branch of around 120 people. It's so exciting and some days you can just feel the excitement. 

And, other days, no one does anything and I want to wring their necks. For example, for Tony's baptism, no one showed up on time, and the branch president showed up an hour late cause he was hanging out on the beach. I just have to remember that I'm in Honduras and no one really cares. Expectations are super low so it really doesn't matter if church starts late or no one shows up to give their talks or the singing sounds terrible, most people's church's here are like 12 people in a warehouse, so I've gotten real good at just rolling with it. 

This emails gonna be short on details cause I'm including a ton of photos and my little spiritual thought, so forgive me. 

However, I do want to tell you how cheap I am. For example, I usually buy a big bag of knock of frosted flakes. Then, I buy a big bag of cornflakes, which cost about 50 cents, and mix them in with the frosted flakes. Twice the cereal and you cant taste the difference. Also I buy whole milk, drink half, and then fill it up again with water. skim milk. Someone gave me a decorative mug for my birthday (It's a honduran thing) and I was super excited because I finally didn't have to eat, drink, shave, and brush my teeth from the same cup. Just to give you an idea. 

Also, are you serious about returning here to Roatan with the family after my mission? I think it would be sweet. And outside of travel, super cheap. 

So, my spiritual thought. I'll give the basic outline cause time is short.

Ok. Let's go to 2nd Nephi 28:30. We recieve our knowledge line upon line. The book of Mormon contains the fullness of the gospel of christ, but says little about temples, temple marriage, parts of the plan of salvation, etc. What gives? Why is this not included?

Let's go to 3rd Nephi 26. Verse 6 says that this book couldn't contain even a fraction of the things Jesus taught. v. 12 says that Mormon uncludes the things that he was commanded to include-the basics, what we need most, our building blocks. 

So, just like 2 nephi 28 says, if we are faithful to the first principles, we will recieve more. The book of Mormon is full of examples that show us, that, really, there is more (3rd Nephi 26:9) And, interestingly, 3 Nephi 26:11 says that Nephi was forbidden to write more so that we could be tried. 

Ether 4 says the same thing. If we are faithful in recieving, and being obeient to the basics, we recieve more. Ehter 4:7 talks about how The brother of Jared saw and knew everything but was forbidden to reveal it until our faith and spiritual strength was sufficiently strong.We have to start off with faith in the basics to recieve "all of my revelations".

So, all of the modern revelation we have recieved are like "rewards" for faith and obedience to the first principals of the gospel, i.e, faith, repentance, baptism, etc as found in the book of mormon and bible. 

 So why is it the way it is? What's the reason God didn't just tell us everything from the get go? For example, D&C 19. This section treats the nature of hell and how eternal punishment isn't really eternal (remember that the book of mormon is full of refernces to hell, lakes of fire and brimstone, etc) But in v. 21 the prophet is commanded to not show this unto the world, and preach nothing but repentance. Why? V.22 says that it is for our good. Our protection. The world needs milk before meat. The last line is interesting, and it says "They must not know these things lest they should perish". It's only human nature. If we knew that we'll have opportunities in the next life or that even the worst people will still recieve a degree of glory, its human nature to sell ourselves short, and say, good enough, I'll do what I want here and still have a reward in the end. 

So, much of the language in the BoM is tough love from a fatherly heavenly father. D&C 19:7 says that it is written this way to "work upon the hearts of men", in other words, to spur us to repentance. When we are rebellious, God gives us strong words to spur us to action. And when We are righteous, god gives us soothing words and increases our light and understanding because of our faith and obedience. 

However, we always have to focus on the basics. As we read in Jacob 4:14, don't look beyond the mark. Don't get caught up in deep doctrine and trivialities. The basics of the gospel, as explained in 3 Nephi 11:33-40, are simple and should always be the center of our spiritual foundations.

Hope that made sense, I wrote that at a mile a minute. 

Right on, Dad, texting and driving. And taking selfies. You didn't even have any errors, impressive.  And no way, I'm never bored. There is so much to do. After we get home we still have to cook, clean, wash clothes, plan tomorrow, update our area book, call people, it never ends. I fall asleep praying half the time and if not I'm asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. 

I have no time so I'm just gonna respond to bits and pieces, sorry! But I always love reading the details and the pictures are stellar, as always. 

But yes, I wrote grammie a letter. And I'm emailing the mesa grandparents. 

I'm super excited Lars is engaged, I was talking to him last week and he didn't say a thing! And last month he didn't even have a girlfriend! But yeah, she's cute. 

And that's a cool picture of Sarah on the beach. I'm just gonna set her up with missionaries I know, they all want to marry her. 

How's Kate doing? She's the only one I haven't heard much about. Still a socialite?

Made me laugh about the old lady. I bet she was from New York. 

But yeah, turned 6 months! Sometimes it feels like forever, sometimes it feels like time's already running out. Also, I don't want to get transfered, ever. We have sooo many baptisms coming up. We have found a ton of people that are already prepared and our long term ones have all left their fornication partners and are ready to go. If everything goes as planned we'll have up to 5 baptisms in march. We went so long without a single baptism on the island and now we're baptizing every weekend between the 3 companionships. Also, funny story, we keep forgetting to change the water in the font...So right before each baptism I would tell the person and be like "hey, you know that like 3 other people have been baptized in this same water right? This water is fullll of sin. Good luck". It's funny in spanish. The humor here is so dumb. 

That's all I got, love you all, photos are coming! Also I'm going fishing with a family we're reactivating (and about to baptize their cousin) this afternoon, wish me luck.