I have had in my head that Alex is struggling a bit. Is it Mother's intuition or just that I know him? I want him to get all he can out of his mission and hope that he does. I do believe he just needs to get out of his own way. He does all that he can, knows how to do, loves doing, etc. I think the mission field is harder on the missionaries than they really let on. I know he loves it but I also know he likes doing more stuff than what he is doing. It has to be a huge adjustment even when he has been out for 7 months. Keep the Faith Alex, We love you!
I haven´t the slightest idea what to put. This week has been like three hours long. And it´s week five now. I´ve been in Melipilla for a month. That doesn´t seem possible.
We had another baptism on Saturday. He wanted a small service, so we made it small. I forgot my camera that day, so I´ll get to those pictures later.
I´m sorry, I´ve just got the "stupor of thought" today, it seems.
We found a great investigator the other day. She made it to Church this Sunday, having know us only four or five days. I´d say that's pretty good. She still lives with her ex-husband, who, after she paid for operations that saved his life, minimizes and demeans her all day. In Chile, if no one can pay, the person dies, by the way. She's since developed a little alcohol problem to compensate. But the words of Alma 7:11-13 really got to her. It´s hard for her to imagine God planned things the way He did in her life, because to her it´s almost unbearably depressing. Remember that conference talk? - "Who's the gardener here?"
I had to teach the Gospel Principles class, which would have been fine, except for it being a zero-preparation improv jam session. I though the class was half as long as it was, so I did a short thing about the mission of Jesus Christ, 1 Start the Church, 2 Teach the New Law, 3 Effect the Atonement. It went fine, but when I go to the end, I asked Elder Silva how much time remained to see how long the testimony could be - 20 minutes. I stood there for an agonizing twenty seconds, then looked at Elder Silva with my eyebrows raised. Luckily, we occasionally work together, he and I, and he got the message - "I´m out." Without things looking too awkward, we made it look like we´d planned to each take half, and we just switched places. I did a little Kip "Yesssss," and he went on to an oddly polished portion about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is to say, what we need to do to merit his mercy.
Mónica is going to be baptized the sixteenth. That´s in five days, I think, on a Saturday. I don´t know what happened, but it´s going to happen now. She was supposed to write to me and Elder Silva like two weeks ago. I told her I was going to write angrily if she didn´t. Maybe I´ll just do a Billy Mays ALL CAPITAL LETTERS letter.
I´m starting to see another form of trial we face in life. It says "Love your neighbor as thyself." - not less, which is usually the problem, but also not more. It seems to me at times that everyone and their dog is doing better than I did or am doing. The answer probably lies in the forgetting of one´s self, but like the Chileans say, "Me cuesta" - it costs me. I´ve spent too much time in my own head in my life, and it´s a hard change to make. If there was anything I´d tell people to do to be ready for missions, I would give them two things: learn to follow the Spirit before the mission, and learn to think about others - before the mission. Ideally the mission would be almost 100% useful time, so anything you can not have to learn here helps. The gospel you probably know already. Being audacious with people comes more from caring about them than from some training camp you can go to to learn how to contact and teach. I´ve had to come from almost nothing to where I am, which is still not satisfactory.
It's becoming increasingly obvious to me how much we need Jesus. I think of a toaster popping up when I consider trying to go to heaven without Him. "Plink!" Toast. I´ve gotten to the point a few times where I say, "I don´t know why You´d forgive me for this, but could You one more time?" And he takes it right there. I love when Mormon says he "tasted and knew of the goodness of Jesus." I´m getting to that understanding.
I´m sure I´ll read this after the mission, or even in my next sector and mark it as one of the more depressed times of the mission, and that it all got better from there. President Hinckley made a covenant with the Lord to forget himself and work, and said his life hinged upon that descision ever after. There´s a big discovery I need to make somewhere. It´s frustrating, but hey, "Who´s the Gardener here, right?"
Maybe you should invent your own Elder Crist letters to publish. Mine are lame.
See you in May. Look forward to packages. I´ll probably send it after the call in May. I´m starting to look into scripture cases, more information next week.
A friend of mine records his voice with his camera on voice memo mode and sends that as a supplement. Look forward to that next week, for I will give it a try. See if I have an accent and stuff.
Rely on each other, and on Jesus.
Elder A. Conrad Crist
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