Tuesday, April 1, 2014

March 30, 2014

Família!!!

I can´t believe Eric is home!!!  Or on his way at least.  What an incredible week to be home for conference!  It really has been a journey, but it´s finally come to an end and now life is about to begin.  At least for me, my mission is just training on how to be a human being.  The principles of the gospel need to be actively exersized in every part of life, no matter how safe or how smart we think we are.  When the wind and tempests come to tear us down, we need to make sure we´re built upon the rock of our redeemer (Helaman 5)

This was a harder week.  We both were sick, but not at the same time so we had to stay in almost the whole week.  But the Lord really did keep blessing us and we ALMOST baptized and we ALMOST had someone at church haha...

We´re a little bit frustrated with the world right now, our investigators but even more so the members.  I read this morning in Mosiah 26 about how Alma didn´t want to deal with their members who were sinning so he took them to Mosiah like `´Hey Mosiah, these are YOUR people, what are you going to do with them?`` and Mosiah´s like ``I gave YOU responsibilty over the church, YOU have to deal with them´´  and Alma´s like ``Fine... I´ll go ask the Lord what to do´´.  I paraphrased just a little.  So we just need to try new things to get our ward to help so we´re just going to visit all of them this week and teach them how to prepare for conference.  You guys can do the same!  

First of all, we need to make sure people are reading the scriptures, praying and having family night.  The kids also need to listen to conference and they need to understand what it means that the prophet will talk to us.  Then individually everyone needs to pray and even fast to be able to receive revelation during conference for the things they need.  We can make lists of things we want answers to during conference.  Then we need to listen to our feelings and take notes.  We need to sacrifice everything else we would be doing to hear all four session.  I also want everyone to read Elder Hales´talk at the beginning of last conference in the Ensign.  

After I made this list that we´re going to challenge all of our members to do, I realized it´s just everything you´ve always taught me.  I know I always complained about reading scriptures basically my whole life, but I´m glad you never gave up.  I do remember when I was probably only 8 years old, one of you asked if I would give up all of my toys to follow to prophet, like when Lehi and his family left Jerusalem.  I realized how that still had an impact on me.  Just the very first part of the Book of Mormon.  I wasn´t sure if I could do that because my life was just the things I had, my toys and my house and my TV.  Parents need to teach their kids the gospel, and I´m so glad you did that with me.  Even though kids are so annoying and I´m not sure if I want any. 

I don´t want to be negative, but we just really need to Lord´s help to get our ward to help us. We have some big problems with retention and it starts with just the basic things the members are doing.  I won´t go off about the things they aren´t doing right, but it´s been a huge lesson to me about the things I haven´t been doing right my whole life.  It really is important to magnify your calling, support everything in the church and to fellowship others.  It is a commandment.  We have never had a problem before with investigators going to church and not really being impressed.  But it´s just a challenge that the Lord has given us and he trusts us to do our part to help change things here.  Our members are great and they want to do the right things, they just need to know how they can help.  

I know that God does everything for a reason and in His own time.  His thoughts are not our thoughts.  We didn´t baptize, but our district leader who´s ward is in the same chapel as us baptized two people and he´s been struggling so much.  We considered it just another way of God answering our prayers.  Everyone in our district baptized at least once this month and our mission getting better.  I don´t think Carnaval has anything to do it, but just the worthiness and hard work of the missionaries AND the members.  

That was a really cool statement about Zion and your mission in Boston.  We are trying to do just that here.  Thank you so much for raising me in this Gospel and doing all of the simple things to make sure I grew up with an understanding of Christ.  The church is still true and I love you all so much!  I hope I get to see Eric and Myles in the Ensign or on the screen!  Sister Johnson and some people from my last area in Prossind are also going to be there.  

Muito amor,

Sister Moore

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