Hey Family,
This last week went really well, it was our last full week of work before the changes.
First off I will talk about the area. We went to the temple with Liseth and Reginaldo on Saturday, they had a great experience while they were there and are excited to keep progressing. Liseth is almost completely ready for her baptism on Sunday. Reginaldo honestly needs more time until he is ready. He told us about some problems that he has with the law of chastity so we are going to be working with him, side by side, so that he can be baptized in a few weeks.
This past week we also found several new people to be able to teach. Two of which went to church with us on Sunday. They are references from the Chang family. The mom’s name is Francesca and her son’s name is Angel. Angel is 19 and has lots of desire to learn more. It is always so refreshing to find a new person and have them go to church on Sunday. I think they have lots of potential but we will see what happens.
BIG NEWS! Elder Bednar will be visiting our mission on Tuesday! It is going to be a meeting with about 500 missionaries, there is a chance that my comp and I will be able to sit on the stand close to him, so that would be really cool. It should be a really great meeting. He has a three hour block in which it will be just him talking and teaching and answering questions. I will be sure to fill you guys in next week on how the visit went.
On Tuesday all of the office elders went to president's house and we had our pre change meeting. We started at about 12:00 and finished doing everything with Pres around 5:00pm. With Elder Bednar coming on Tuesday we are changing the day of changes this time around to Monday. We had to work out the whole schedule and get everything planned for doing the changes and also getting the new missionaries to the mission office and assigned to their new comps. We also have three missionaries from Brazil who will be showing up on Monday night, so my companion and I will be going to pick them up from the airport and take them back to the office to get their comps. This week is going to be crazy with the changes and also trying to do all of the last minute things to get the baptism ready for Liseth.
Today for P-day we went to a place called Cayala. If you look it up online it will give a good idea of what it is. It is basically just a massive rich city. We even saw a red Ferrari. We went and did an escape room that was a lot of fun, we had one hour to find all of the clues to be able to move from one room to the next and at the end disarm the bomb so everybody did not die. It's a good thing that we are awesome and got the bomb disarmed with 10 minutes to spare. We also bowled for half of an hour. I’ll attach some pictures down below.
One of the talks that we are reading to get ready for the visit of Elder Bednar talks a lot about agency and also the faith to learn. It is really interesting to see the different ways that we can apply faith, lots of times to don't think about having the faith to learn. The spirit takes the message unto our heart is what it says in the scriptures. But taking something UNTO our heart is very different then taking something INTO our heart. Really accepting something into our heart is where the faith factor comes into learning by faith. Elder Bednar also talks about how agency is not just the freedom to choose, but that it is also the freedom to act, to be agents and not just objects in which other people act. I am really excited to have the chance to meet Elder Bednar in just a few short days. That means that while on my mission I will have seen Elder Gong (just before he was called to be an apostle), Elder Cook, Elder Bednar, and also the Prophet in person. What a blessing.
I sure love you all! I hope that you each have a great week! Keep doing the little things to be able to be happy.
Love,
Elder Marks
This last week went really well, it was our last full week of work before the changes.
First off I will talk about the area. We went to the temple with Liseth and Reginaldo on Saturday, they had a great experience while they were there and are excited to keep progressing. Liseth is almost completely ready for her baptism on Sunday. Reginaldo honestly needs more time until he is ready. He told us about some problems that he has with the law of chastity so we are going to be working with him, side by side, so that he can be baptized in a few weeks.
This past week we also found several new people to be able to teach. Two of which went to church with us on Sunday. They are references from the Chang family. The mom’s name is Francesca and her son’s name is Angel. Angel is 19 and has lots of desire to learn more. It is always so refreshing to find a new person and have them go to church on Sunday. I think they have lots of potential but we will see what happens.
BIG NEWS! Elder Bednar will be visiting our mission on Tuesday! It is going to be a meeting with about 500 missionaries, there is a chance that my comp and I will be able to sit on the stand close to him, so that would be really cool. It should be a really great meeting. He has a three hour block in which it will be just him talking and teaching and answering questions. I will be sure to fill you guys in next week on how the visit went.
On Tuesday all of the office elders went to president's house and we had our pre change meeting. We started at about 12:00 and finished doing everything with Pres around 5:00pm. With Elder Bednar coming on Tuesday we are changing the day of changes this time around to Monday. We had to work out the whole schedule and get everything planned for doing the changes and also getting the new missionaries to the mission office and assigned to their new comps. We also have three missionaries from Brazil who will be showing up on Monday night, so my companion and I will be going to pick them up from the airport and take them back to the office to get their comps. This week is going to be crazy with the changes and also trying to do all of the last minute things to get the baptism ready for Liseth.
Today for P-day we went to a place called Cayala. If you look it up online it will give a good idea of what it is. It is basically just a massive rich city. We even saw a red Ferrari. We went and did an escape room that was a lot of fun, we had one hour to find all of the clues to be able to move from one room to the next and at the end disarm the bomb so everybody did not die. It's a good thing that we are awesome and got the bomb disarmed with 10 minutes to spare. We also bowled for half of an hour. I’ll attach some pictures down below.
One of the talks that we are reading to get ready for the visit of Elder Bednar talks a lot about agency and also the faith to learn. It is really interesting to see the different ways that we can apply faith, lots of times to don't think about having the faith to learn. The spirit takes the message unto our heart is what it says in the scriptures. But taking something UNTO our heart is very different then taking something INTO our heart. Really accepting something into our heart is where the faith factor comes into learning by faith. Elder Bednar also talks about how agency is not just the freedom to choose, but that it is also the freedom to act, to be agents and not just objects in which other people act. I am really excited to have the chance to meet Elder Bednar in just a few short days. That means that while on my mission I will have seen Elder Gong (just before he was called to be an apostle), Elder Cook, Elder Bednar, and also the Prophet in person. What a blessing.
I sure love you all! I hope that you each have a great week! Keep doing the little things to be able to be happy.
Love,
Elder Marks
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