Weekly Letter 20 July 2015
Hi everyone, hope you've all had a great week.
This week I had the pleasure of attending a multi-zone mission conference with President Crapo and his wife. The conference was centered around the hymn "Rise Up Oh Men of God" and the implementation of a forty day spiritual program. We also had a few different workshops centered on mission goals and how to achieve them. I was honored with the experience to translate for Sister Crapo, the mission president's wife, in one of these workshops. That was a really cool, new thing which I had never done before. Overall the conference was great, filled with inspired counsel and powerful teachings.
This week we've been working a lot with the Mendez Family, the same family I mentioned in my letter last week. The adopted daughter Mariela now has a baptism date for the twelfth of September. They have a lot of trials but are excited to take a greater part in the gospel.
This week I've been thinking a lot about the topic of preparation for heaven. In Guatemala there are a lot of Evangelical Christians who constantly talk about having Jesus in your heart. They say that people cannot choose to change, they must wait until a desire is born within them to change. Many people postpone the day of their repentance, hoping for some miracle to save them from sin and they die before the miracle ever comes. They reject the role of personal agency and obedience, preferring a gospel of salvation IN sin, rather than salvation FROM sin. They emphasize that we are but mere creatures indebted to Christ rather than proclaiming that we are the sons and daughters of God that shall be eternally grateful for and towards Christ.
Brad Wilcox has an interesting story on this principle. He says, "I have born-again Christian friends who say, 'You Mormons are trying to EARN your way to heaven.' I say, 'No, we are not EARNING heaven, we are LEARNING heaven.'...They ask me, 'Well have you been saved by grace?' and I say 'Yes, absolutely, totally, completely, thankfully, yes.' And then I ask them a question that perhaps they have not fully considered: "Have you been CHANGED by grace?'
The Prophet Joseph Smith taught that "Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue that path that leads to it". The Prophet Brigham Young explained that true, eternal, complete happiness is found in the kind of life God lives. Thus, "The whole object of the creation of this world is to exalt the intelligences that are placed upon it, that they may live, endure, and increase for ever and ever". Perfection is an inherent requirement in such exaltation. Again from Joseph Smith: "The nearer man approaches perfection, the clearer are his views, and the greater his enjoyments, till he has overcome the evils of his life and lost every desire for sin; and life the ancients, arrives at that point of faith where he is wrapped in the power and glory of his maker and is caught up to dwell with him. But, "the prophet continued, and this but is very important, "we consider that this is a station to which no man ever arrived in a moment".
I believe that this is such an important truth. We cannot arrive to perfection in a moment. In the same way, we will not likely gain a testimony in an instant. We will not be charitable in an instant, nor patient nor virtuous nor obedient, nor any of the other Christ-like qualities in but a mere moment. Even at death, as we shed the clothing of our mortal tabernacle, we will not suddenly desire to do good nor will we be immediately freed from the baggage of sin and the burden of guilt. Truly the words of Amulek contain an eternal verity: 'this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God".
Again from Brigham Young:
"Some might suppose that it would be a great blessing to be taken and carried directly into heaven and set down there, but in reality that would be no blessing to such persons; they could not reap a full reward, could not enjoy the glory of the kingdom, and could not comprehend and abide the light thereof, but it would be to them a hell intolerable and I suppose it would consume them much quicker than would hell fire. It would be no blessing to be carried into the celestial kingdom, and obliged to stay therein, unless you were prepared to dwell there".
Heaven will not be heaven to those who are not heavenly themselves. I would imagine that if we feel uncomfortable in churches, if we hate reading the scriptures, if we take too much joy in the things of the world then we are not yet prepared to enter into the Celestial Kingdom.
We will not enter in to the Celestial Kingdom by accident. We will also not pray by chance or all of a sudden pay our tithing. Happiness is a choice, both temporally and eternally. We are here not to earn heaven, but to learn it. Earth life is not necessarily about presentation but more about preparation.
I hope that we might all live by celestial laws so that we might become celestial people and prepare for celestial glory. Our heavenly parents have dropped us off at school, and the duration of this earth life is but a single day of preparation and learning, but oh, what a day!
-Elder Dawson
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This is how we have to fill up the font some times. Water here is not like a 24 7 thing, it comes like for two hours a day, sometimes in the middle of the night. So if you don´t catch it and need to use a lot of water you have to call a water truck so thats what Elder Alarcon is doing in this photo.
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