All is tranquilo.

One of the few things about the temple that I feel here- one learns its value when one can't ever go except under certain conditions. I wish I could just be a Temple Worker, do Family History, everything, but it's not available. There is just no way to enter into the presence of God in the last day without getting familiar with it in this current life. Further, how does the frequency of our temple visits and our attitude that we take there reflect our love for that presence? If we are indifferent to it now, we won't be able to enjoy the Celestial Kingdom. If we prepare, look forward to, and revolve our lives around our temple assistence, rather than adjusting our temple visits to our worldly lives, then we have a much more celestial spirit. We only go as a mission like 2 times a year.

Vaya pues

During exchanges, we talked with a pair of excommunicated Jehovah's Witnesses, and my companion talked with the woman and I with the man, but he's super, super prepared to hear the Gospel. He came to Church, has the Gospel Library downloaded, participates in Church, con todos los poderes (with all the powers). But that's not my area :>

On my side, we found for the second time after a few weeks the Familia V, who have felt a strong spiritual urge to learn about the Restauration. Even though we'd only had one lesson with them over 2 weeks before, they almost came to Church (but the dad's boss called him to work because another worker got sick. Rude). We found them again at night and they're super interested. Another is A A, who is super cool. Reads the Book of Mormon without difficulties, but he'll need to get married and make some changes to come to Church, but allí vamos. We also found some old investigators who had come to Church for 8 months and were married by the help of the missionaries, but never got baptized. Started off on a good foot with a mix of the Plan of Salvation and how the Restauration allows us to know which is the true plan of God.

We visited a place called Nexapa to take out a birth certificate. There's a market owned by the Spanish monarchy there and they have a festival twice a year where they throw balls of fire at each other to celebrate when the original Nexapa was destroyed by a volcanic eruption. Ok.

And I've been thinking that maybe a degree in Math Education would be cool. Something to research in the future!

So yeah, that's the week! Build Zion and look forward to the presence of the Father!

Elder Newman