9 months - Cascadas de Urlanta

Two pics of our cute missionary. Still a bit hard to hear him, the internet cafe he goes to is pretty echo-y. They need carpet.

I asked for a little follow up on his thoughts last weeks email regarding Mosiah 18:30. He told me to study the phrase "Come to a Knowledge of Their Redeemer" from that verse and/or "come to a knowledge of the glory of God" from Mosiah 4:11. He's been reading and cross referencing from those verses and phrases and he said it's awesome. He got me excited! I'm glad to have some homework! Here is his email for this week:
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        Subject: Cascadas de Urlanta                     

Cascadas means waterfalls. I don't know what Urlanta means. But anyways today we woke up early and went to this waterfall place as a zone!! Except that the zone leaders couldn't come so it was even more a zone of the Relief Society! La Zona Soc Soc! But the sisters work really hard and we are grateful for them.

There wasn't a ton of water falling but it was still super cool!!

It took a long time to get there but I love nature so much!! Gods creations are really amazing and really just strengthen my testimony that He does exist and that He loves us because we are His children. This week I also wanted to share with you guys what I've learned about opening our mouth and preaching, being witnesses of God in all times, in all things, and in all places.

This week we went to visit the super pillas references we got like a long time ago that live in a place called Ayarza because they haven't been home and we haven't had time to go al the way out there. So anyways needless to say it was a long, yet slow, bus ride on a bumpy dusty rode climbing up a mountain in Guatemala. On the way up I stuck up a conversation with the guy sitting next to me and turned into a really amazing conversation! We are supposed to talk with someone on every bus ride we take. Most of the time they are 10 minutes or less and so it's just a quick contact usually. And then on the longer bus rides we usually have a little more time to talk which is great if they are actually interested and if they aren't interested then it's a long and quiet bus ride. Well so with this guy he asked where we were from and I said the United States from Utah and then I showed him a picture of the Salt Lake Temple and then started talking about the Book of Mormon and he said that it answered a TON of these questions he has. Such as where the Mayans came from and just a bunch of stuff! The Mayans by the way are the ancient Americans that lived here in Guatemala way back when. Well anyways basically all the questions he had are answered in the Book of Mormon and he asked me if we sold copies of the book and then I gave it to him for free and he promised he would read it and come to conference this weekend to listened to living prophets and apostles. It was so cool!! And then today on the way back from the waterfall place an evangelical guy got on the bus and started preaching. This is normal and actually happens almost every day. People get on and preach to the whole bus. And most of the stuff they share is really good except that they don't have the restored fullness of the gospel to give the needed context. Anyways so today after he preached he sat at the back of the bus and I just really felt like I had to talk to him. I had already contacted someone but it was an undeniable feeling that I needed to go talk to this evangelical guy at the back of the bus. So I picked up my stuff and we talked for the rest of the bus ride (more than 30 minutes) about the "other sheep" in John 10:16 because in his preaching he had read verse 15 and so it was a really good tie in. And anyways we got into a great conversation and gave him a Book of Mormon and got his contact and are gonna visit him and it was awesome! So moral of the story is that we need to open our mouth and help people come to the knowledge of the gospel because we don't know who is out there just waiting to hear what we have been sent to say.

I know that Christ directs His church and that He called Joseph Smith as a prophet to restore His church in these latter-days, that the Book of Mormon is our most powerful conversion tool (for us and for others) because it is TRUE!! Russell M. Nelson is a prophet of God and to get ready for this weekend I'd like to end with a quote by Elder Utchdorf that relates to truth.

"The thing about TRUTH is that it exists beyond belief. It is TRUE even if nobody believes it."

Happy conference weekend!!

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