Week 4

Alright, I believe I have to start with the Elder Torgerson quote of the week. So we were all off task just a smidge talking about how it would be really cool to serve in some island like places, bringing up everything we could possibly think of and eventually Elder Torgerson had to remind us that "everywhere is an island eventually."

 

Also, one time while we were doing a practice about the Law of Chastity lesson we had two Hermanas (two sister missionaries) be a practice "couple" and Elder Torgerson was explaining the Law of Chastity very directly, which isn't necessarily bad, but then he got to the no homosexual relationships part and after he explained he just said "Y este es su problema" (and that is your problem) and we all just died for a second. 

 

We got new teachers at the start of these three weeks and one of them, Hermana Barrios is studying to be a psychologist and she had us all write our signatures on the board and she could identify our key personality traits by how we wrote our signatures. I was a little wierded out, but very impressed. 

 

Side note, you know you're very tired and annoyed with Spanish when your entire district can just share quotes from the Office for about half an hour and not be able to breathe. 

 

So this week I had the opportunity to take part in 2 priesthood blessings. One of them was with one of the elders in our room who asked for a blessing of comfort on the second night. I don't know what his concerns were, but I know the Lord did, and this Elder has been doing so good after.  It is crazy to see how much he is loving it now.

 

Second one was for one of the Hermanas (sister missionary) in our district. She had been really sick all morning, and as a great example to me, she was really upset she was sick because she couldn't work as hard as she wanted to! That was a wake up call to me, but anyway, we gave her a blessing too as a district of us 6 elders and she was feeling better and back at studying super hard within a couple hours. 

 

Last night, I'm sad to admit, but I almost cried. ALMOST. We had just finished practicing our lesson teaching practices as a district and then our other teacher, Hermano Yañez, showed us a video about the Atonement. It showed all of the scenes from all the movies, WITH, the best Atonement quotes of Elder Holland and Elder Eyring, WITH Come Thou Fount playing in the background. But in all honesty, I've never before felt so convinced of the Atonement as I was then. Then as a district we decided to sing what I believe is "He Is Risen", but it was in Spanish so I'm not 100% sure. 

 

I think teaching by the Spirit is one of the most interesting things I've ever done. After one lesson with a practice Investigator, Elder James and I were sure we really messed up because we accidentally covered so many things and we were certain we had confused him. Our next lesson though, we went in just to answer questions and bear testimony the entire time, basically just one massive review. Without a set plan, we had no choice but to teach by the spirit, and we felt it so strongly in that lesson, even though we were teaching a member, it felt so real.

 

Lastly, I want to share a quote from President Hansen's talk on Sunday night about the blessings of exact obedience, and a related scripture that he quoted at least 10 times during the lesson. The scripture is D&C 130: 20-21 and the quote is "If we are almost obedient, we almost get the blessings." That was really cool to me to think that there are no partial blessings, either we are obedient or we're not. I know that the blessings of obedience are real (Mosiah 2:41) and that they are greater than we can imagine. I can't wait to get to tell people this for the next 1 Year 10 Months and 2 Weeks, after 2 more weeks of the MTC. I'll have more "practice proselyting" stories after we go out again this Saturday as well to the Bogota North Mission.

 

Hasta Luego

 

-Elder Martin