Mother's Day #1

I had the best skype with Alex! He looks great and I am totally amazed how well he speaks Spanish! He is totally fluent and has been there only 8 months. God certainly helps these missionaries out with language, the spirit, testimony and so many other things. He also helps out the families of missionaries more than we could even begin to comprehend. I like having a missionary out but at the same time, I don't really! I miss being able to talk to him any time I want and he was very helpful in so many ways. One third of the Mission done and that is amazing. He will be home in no time.



After recovering from being trunky, it´s back to work. With my five investigators. Fetch. We are going to knock a lot this week.

What you say about the Spirit is really key (I was going to record this but I didn´t have time. You could do a podcast! How cool would that be? Anyway--). One of the most illustrative examples of that is Nephi. It says in 1 Nephi 4ish that he "was guided by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand what {he} would do." This is him - imagine it nowdays - going up against the house of a big drug dealer to get a Bible with your genealogy written in it. He went up to the house not knowing what he would do. He found the boss stoned on the ground outside the house. And the rest is history.

Spritual guidance is a tricky thing. One of my thoughts has always been, "How do I know it´s not just something wierd I thought of?" I still don´t totally know. I don´t even think I half-know. I have a whole color in the scriptures for it. I think the main keys are found between three scriptures: D&C 8:2-3, Alma 5:45-46, and John 14:26. Even so, Elder Scott said in the MTC that there´s a reason the Prophet is older - he´s had to learn to follow the Spirit his whole life. I read an article by Orson Scott Card in which he said inspiration usually comes like normal thoughts in kind of a fountain of ideas, and that it comes in information intended to accomplish the next step only. It kind of reminds me of a game I played once called BioShock - you have no idea why you´re doing things until the end, but you know you have to do the thing you are told to do. The secret - Do it. One more thing - Elder Scott also said that one´s mind has the power to amplify and destroy impressions. Think of the implications of that.

Something I´ve learned about the Scriptures, now that you mention it. It is extremely valuable to study by topic too. You don´t have to read the whole thing over and over again to learn the gospel. The gospel principles book is very good for that. I don´t know what you guys do exactly, but having one person teach/present some stuff he´s learned is good for everybody. Ideally you´d each have your own study, and after each would talk about his or her studying. (This helps because if you can´t talk about it, you know you didn´t study enough.) I hated doing more than ten minutes at a time, but now I can´t imagine studying for less than a half an hour every day. Start now and you´ll be a lot better than I.

Love each other. Like I said, being able to talk to hundreds of people about their happiness has brought to me the conclusion that it exists in family, and in God, which is family.

Elder A Conrad Crist

One thing - the stickers you sent me are chronological - do they have scripture mastery ones? I really would like those. I think you can find them for the Bible and everything. Thanks for these, though.

Reciepe... type "receta" into google translator spanish-to-english. I can´t spell it .. for Banana Bread

Pictures!! For example, you guys with a cake. That kind of cake just doesn´t exist here.

CDs:
Inside Out
Someone find my O Magnum Mysterium
Any "Beautiful Savior - Crusader´s Hymn" you can find

I´m looking for stuff to send you. Hang on. Mother´s Day, Christmas... eventually it´ll get there.

Do you talk about me in Church and stuff? Don´t know, just curious.