August 6, 2012

The picture is proof of my new 3rd and 4th chins.

I just got finished watching Cars 2 with the rest of the zone. Twas sweet. My thoughts after watching the movie have been focused on trying to figure out why I liked the movie so much. Was it really that good? Is any movie going to be fantastic when you only watch 1 movie every six weeks? I think its a little bit of both.

This week was real real good. In our mission right now, there is a big focus on having the members be more involved in sharing the gospel. The ideal situation is that the members find and fellowship all the investigators/new members and the missionaries only teach and baptize. Missionaries helping members. But, almost always, its the other way around; members helping missionaries. The missionaries find, teach, and baptize, and the members fellowship. So, this past week, Elder Ruvalcaba and I did our best to get to know every one of the members a little better, and help them with their personal missionary work. It was real good. There is always a difference in the way you feel when you are talking to a church member, and someone who knows nothing of the church. I will get to that a little later in my email.

Lately, we have been teaching a 15 year old girl named Malena. She lives in front of the church and is a friend of a lot of the member girls. We met her when she came to church alone one day. We invited her to seminary, and since then, she has 200% attendance. 200% attendance because she goes to both wards seminaries. (There are two wards that use the same chapel.) It wasn't hard for her to decide to be baptized. We were planning on having her baptism for last Sunday (yesterday). But, Malena was sick and couldn't come to church. After church, we went to her house to give her a blessing of health. There, we talked to her Mom who told us that she and her husband was leaving the country for 20 days to work. (They are professional tango dancers and perform all over the world. Who knew, right?) Malenas Mom wants to be present for the baptism, so we are going to have to delay the baptism 20 days. Usually, I wouldn't be too worried for a 20 day wait, but Elder Ruvalcabab and I are worried because when the parents leave, they are leaving Malena and the house in the care of their 18 year old son who is always drunk and having huge parties at his house. A rager is not exactly the best environment to prepare to be baptized. haha But, the Mom asked us to go to the house once a day to make sure that the house stays intact and no one dies. She also gave her her phone number and keys to the house. It's strange how much trust can be one just be being a missionary. But, we will be working especially hard to help Malena be ready for her September baptism.

This coming week, Elder Ruvalcaba and i will be tour guides for the temple Open house on Friday and Saturday. I'm a little nervous, and still feel a little unprepared, but I'm sure it will be real good. 

Every Thursday night in the church, Elder Ruvalcaba and I host a movie night where we show different church movies like "The Testaments" and "Joseph Smith:Prophet of the Restoration". It has been really successful; usually 50-80 people come. We have a big sign outside the chapel advertising the movie night, and usually 2 or 3 people come just out of curiosity. This week we showed "The Other Side of Heaven". The whole movie was really good, but I liked one part especially. When Elder Groberg is "dying" of starvation, he writes a letter to his girlfriend. In his letter he says this, "There is a connection between heaven and earth. Finding that connection makes everything meaningful, including death. Missing it makes everything meaningless, including life." I love that quote. the difference between those who have a connection to heaven and those who don't is that those who do have this connection also have purpose. When you meet someone, it is easy , even in the first seconds, to see if the person has meaning in their life or not. I think everyone of us must spend all our time and energy trying to access this connection.