Hey everyone! I can't believe I've been in the field for a month! And I've been set apart as a missionary for over 2 months now! It's so crazy. I'm not gonna lie time moves so weird here and everything just blends together. Sorry this email is coming late my P day is so messed up this week because we had a mission tour conference. So I don't remember what I wrote about last week and what I did this week so hopefully its different stuff haha.
So this week we had Stake Conference and they asked me and Elder Alvey to translate it. So I was pretty nervous and I said some prayers and fasted before. They gave me two full talks to translate which was stressful but I was ready and getting pumped up. So they sit me in this chair in the back of the Chapel and I've got a headset on with a microphone in front of me and it's a little intimidating but I'm pumped I'm ready to go. I look into the crowd before me and see a bunch of people with headphones waiting to hear some Spanish. So my guy steps up to speak and I'm nervous but hey I've got the Lord with me right? What could go wrong? Well...this guy stands up and had the audacity to say something along these lines "in the 1800s Johnsons Army went to war and something about the Mormon Battalion and Johnson was fed up with the army and he went rogue and enacted a treaty and was captured" and all this stuff as my chin literally dropped to the floor. So I'm sitting there saying zero words because I have no idea what to say and all the sudden all the people wearing headsets start turning around and looking at me like is this dude gonna start speaking yet? Well so I ripped the headset off and turned and said here take the headphones because I was done haha.
So that experience actually made me think because I wondered why would God let me fail so miserably when I had so much confidence and faith. Well then I thought of Abraham and how he was literally ready to kill his son and and God stopped him. It was more of a test of faith. I like to think of my experience as similar to an Abraham experience because both God and I knew my Spanish is no where near ready to translate haha but I stepped up and swung anyway. I missed SO incredibly bad but hey ya live and ya learn haha.
So one night this week me and Elder Alvey kinda disturbed some kind of drug deal or suspicious thing between two guys we don't know what and it was a sketchy situation but we are safe haha. And then later that night we met Mauricio's mom. Mauricio is this super awesome special needs kid we hang out with and he's actually my favorite person I love him. Anyway we were able to help her move in and bless her house and she would like to talk to missionaries more so that's good!
On Saturday we had a car wash and that was lit. We found a lot of new people AND it was one of the closest things to swimming we as missionaries can do.
Oh we also attended a church here called Church on the Move and it's literally just a concert. There was a huge concert and then some bogus sermon and then after when you leave you go to a gift shop haha. It was a joke but we did it because so many people here go there so we wanted to say we did.
So we've been struggling to find new investigators lately and not only that but new investigators who speak Spanish. So we made it a specific point to pray specifically for those people who speak Spanish. And on Monday night I went on exchange with my Zone leader and we two awesome lessons with two different Spanish speakers! It was so great and these guys are so promising. They're very interested, don't know a lot about religion and just wanna know more. So I'm very excited and also it was a great learning experience to teach those lessons in Spanish. My Spanish needs a lot of work for sure but it was cool how the spirit helped me to remember certain things as I was teaching.
This week in our mission tour conference we talked about Matthew 22:37-40 which talks about the two great commandments, love God and love thy neighbor. They're so basic and we always talk about them but they're so important. Any problem we have in life we can root it back to Love God, and if you love him you'll follow him and his commandments. Any problem you have can be solved by increasing your love for God!
Well sorry this email was so long but I love you all! Talk to ya next week.
Love, Elder Ryan
No comments:
Post a Comment