I wonder if many people know about letting themselves go and just doing what you are inspired to do? I LOVE that Alex is getting a first hand knowledge of that. It will serve him his whole life through and he will always be able to recenter himself on that and make his life an inspired one through his choices. Good job son of mine! You are learning exactly what you should be learning! Letters like this make it all worth it. A double-happiness thing!



I just wrote Riley using my weird acquired Chilean ghetto accent. I guess we´ll see if he gets anything. He wrote me pretty good.

Oh, and also I asked President King about writing some friends, because my companion said I could. Turns out it wasn´t actually that way, so I am going to have to inform those I would have liked to have written to that I will not be able to do such. Flip, Kip. I got excited there.

This week we just slogged it out all day and things just didn´t go anywhere. We set three times with the same lady and she wasn´t there all three times. We did also a ton of contacts and had no success. We could barely move Sunday night in terms of being depressed, if you will.

But like these things happen, we usually win a little too. We went to a super old investigator who´s not seen the missionaries in over six months. He came from simply not believing in God to being ready to baptism in a pretty eventful year. In the end, unfortunately, he didn´t want to just get married. He wanted to get all his debts figured out and stuff - something I guess I get. It seems, though, that these things will take a while.

It hurt to see him stuck, with his 5-year-old son, and his wife, who´s inactive, in that place. One can only progress so far without the Holy Ghost. So I went in to teach him having no idea what I could say that others haven´t said.

We read Alma 34 to start off, talking about not putting off repentence. As we finished it, talking about mercy and justice, I started thinking of that all-powerful D&C 82:10 - the first scripture I memorized in Spanish -

porque yo, el Señor, estoy obligado cuando hacéis lo que os digo - pero cuando no hacéis lo que os digo, ninguna promesa tenéis.

or, in other words, something like

I, the Lord, am bound when you do what I say - but when you do not what I say, you have no promise.

After I read that, I used that classic tool of mine - silence. Using something I had once heard Dad talk about, I said something like, "I´m not one to tell you how to live your life - and you won´t offend me by saying you won´t - but I think this says if you comply with the Lord He´ll give you what you need - and more."

I can´t tell you they commited to change anything - but I felt something shift in the both of them. Let me tell you, if we even hurried them up I don´t really care about an otherwise lame week. I love this guy - he´s so like me. Just in a more complicated situation. He wasn´t give the gift of faith like some are - he found it all by himself - like me. He found it himself. He just needs to trust God. Well, so do I, right?

I´m making a lot of progress on that front. I read a talk called The Fourth Missionary that talks about four kinds of people. The first is outrageously disobedient and gets sent home. The second is disobedient but is hypocritical enough to stay on the mission. The third is obedient, but allows himself to fight with what he knows is right - so even though he helps others, his personal development doesn´t go very fast, because he doesn´t let himself be run by He who knows - rather he forces himself into the rules without letting himself be improved. The Fourth doesn´t fight against God´s will. He just does it and trusts that God knows better than he what he wants, and will form him accordingly.

That said, that´s what I´ve been trying to do this last while. It seems like it would be harder. What´s interesting, though, is that it isn´t harder. I feel like I have much lower blood pressure, as it is said, when I let myself go as such. The question is singular - what does God want me to do? And there´s no more than that. And he´ll never lead you wrongly.

I used to think that a lot of what God did was actually imposed sacrifice - if you will, you actually will do less cool things and it will be counted by God for your benefit. Wrong. Absolutely na´ que ver, po! Not even right. God knows you exactly right, and has the benefit of seeing all people in all their lives at once - so he knows what you need to do to have the best possible time, and to enjoy your life the most. It isn´t misery here in exchange for happiness after this life. It´s kind of a double-happiness deal.

I was once morbidly afraid that the career that I wanted would keep me from having a family. But here´s the thing, though - God knows what I want, and since they´re both reasonable, and in the plan, I´ll get them both. Not only that, it´ll be better than I think is possible now. (1 Cor 2:9)

Thanks for that piano recording - someone should probably make an album of those. I had half a cyber café listening to it after a while.

Love,
Elder A Conrad Crist




Someone tell Kelsey I can´t use the file format she gave me "Each Life" in - mp3 please - the computers here are not terribly new nor Apple.

Please email me songs anyone. I would like to make a CD here but it won´t be worth it until I have a few. I just noticed a band called The Lower LIghts that´s also good. You are still looking for Josh Wright and Josh Groban too, right? EMail them.