The WHY

 

Hey everyone!!! So this week was really good and flew by!! It seems like every week just goes faster and faster!!! It is CRAZY!!! I only have 7 months left on the mission... And this week I realized that I don’t think I am ready to come home ha ha... I tried to do what the Mission presidents have counseled us to do and that is to make goals and start thinking about what you want to do for the rest of your life.... Well the "My Goals" paper is sitting on my desk with 1 HUGE goal on it.. " #1... MAKE GOALS!!" Well I have a lot of things that I want to do but it isn’t until I can figure out what I really want to do to figure out the rest of the goals haha. Well I came to the conclusion this week that "HEY you still have time!" So I will take advantage of that.

This week was really good! For the past few weeks a little old lady, Nair, has been going to church with her son that was recently baptized but the old missionaries who had taught and had baptized the son thought that the mom was a little crazy and really didn’t have her head all the way screwed on so they never really taught her. But this week we went and visited with her and we invited her to be baptized and she accepted!!!!! She is a 75 year old lady and is super sweet! This week we are going to help her prepare for this amazing ordinance of baptism!!

We have received more changes that are happening in the mission right now. It will be really good to see the mission change! People will be more prepared now and will hopefully be able to stay strong in the church!! I am really excited to be able to really help people more! 
 

We are still giving the temple prep classes to Maria Fransisca which is awesome!! We also have been helping by taking the sacrament to her every Sunday that she is not able to attend church! We love this lady so much and she takes great care of the missionaries!!!! She always has food for us. She is super funny!

We have also been teaching Jéssica! The biggest problem with her is that she needs to get married first and she needs to go to church!!!! GAHHH!!!! God has given us such an amazing gift, Agency, but everyone, at one time or another, will use this gift wrongly.... And we can see that a lot! But it is such a great feeling to see the atonement work in your own life and the life of your investigators! It is amazing to see the mercy and justice of God in our lives so that we can have more and more blessings from the Father.

That is about it with the firm people we are teaching right now but we will have more this next week!!! This week, with all of the changes that the mission president has implemented, a lot of the missionaries have been against what he is trying to do. But something that I have learned this week is the WHY for everything. In life we have 3 important questions that go with every question but many people get the order of the 3 mixed up. It is WHY, HOW, and WHAT. Many times we are more worried about the WHAT than with the

WHY. If we look at a job we can think "Well this job is going to get me a lot of money" But then we forget WHY we are really doing what we are doing. The WHY should be more of a passion or a desire than something that could be an end result. In the Gospel of Jesus Christ we need to think more about the WHY. Here in our mission we can see that many of the missionaries are more worried about the NUMBER or things and what they think they will get if they get high numbers rather than WHY are we here doing what we are doing. WHY do we go on missions? Because we need to help others come unto Christ. The WHY is not baptize. That is one of the what's. I have been doing more studying about the whys and not so much of the what's just as we can see that the First Presidency, Mission President, and the Lord are looking at things. People need what we have so that they can have eternal life!!! I am grateful for the understanding  the Lord has helped me with!!  I invite all of you to try to look at the WHY more that the WHAT in our everyday lives with whatever we do!!!!:)

LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!
GRANDE ABRAÇO!!!
Elder Stilson