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.
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