So I´m done
counting weeks...it takes too much energy and I think getting up in the
week 30´s and such is a little much. So I´m changing it up :) I´ve
almost got 4 months down in my mission. 14 left! Mi compa has 14 now,
and goes home in 4 x3 So she´s starting to get a little trunky. And it´s
making me trunky suuuuper bad. Which is ridiculous. I´ve still got half
my life left to live here :)
So, this week feels like it
lasted a life time, and also no time at all. It´s super super weird. But
it was really good. I went on LOTS of divisions this week. 3, to be
exact. Which is more than I´ve ever had in a single week :) But they
were all good.
I haven´t got a lot of time, so I´ll get to the good stuff.
Soon
I get to get my cedula! Woohoo. Or basically my Nicaraguan ID card,
saying that I´m nica. I had to wait 3 months after I got here, and
that´s in 2 weeks! So, in a couple weeks I won´t be American anymore,
officially. Sorry guys.
This Wednesday
we had an interesting zone activity. We´ve been struggling a little bit
as a zone lately. We had an awesome month in August, baptizing over 30
people. Which is more than we´ve ever done. But because we baptized
everyone in August, we didn´t leave anyone for September ;) So it´s been
a little slow. So President Collado came and talked to us, just saying,
"I know you can be better! We´re going to try something. Right now you
have about 30 investigators with a baptismal date. We´re going to go on
inter-zone divisions, and you and your new companions are going to think
of a goal of faith. How many investigators can you commit to baptism
today?" So that´s what we did, with the main number being 3. So with 10
companionships, we all commited to commit 30 more people to baptism that
day. Something we´ve never done before. But, we did it. As a zone, we
commited 34 people. In one day! It was incredible and inspiring,
honestly. What we can do if we have faith and work toward our worthy
goals.
I´ve been having super good days lately. I´m a naturally shy person, so contacting people makes me super nervous. But
on Friday,
I just kept walking up to everyone and talking to them like it was
nothing, with no fear at all whatsoever. I surprised myself, and then
remembered that it was from the Lord. I for sure didn´t have that
strength before, but when I promised that I´d try harder to get out of
my comfort zone, I was given the strength I needed to get the job done. I
felt so empowered and happy that I was doing all I could to be the
mouthpiece of the Lord and share the gospel with the world.
I
did some good studying on the Atonement. And I´ve never understood
before how exactly Christ suffering and dying for us actually worked as
the atonement. Why did it have to be like that exactly? Why was that the
only way? Why did He have to be perfect? And then I was reading from
the teachings of Joseph Fielding Smith (in Spanish), when a phrase
caught my attention: (I can´t remember exactly how it went, but it was a
letter to his son. It said something like:) "Estaba pensando mucho en
lo que hizo Jesucristo por mí." Which means, "I was thinking a lot about
what Jesus Christ did for me." Now, in English, the word "for" has a
lot of different meanings. But in Spanish, there are two ways to say
"for." "Para," which is used as more of gifts, like you made something
for someone, or it can also mean "in order to." And then there´s "por."
That means, "in place of," "because of." And, all of these definitions
can fit to "for" in English. I always assumed that when we say, "Christ
suffered for my sins." it applied to the first definition. Or, like,
Christ suffered in order to atone for my sins. But that´s not it at all.
Now that I´ve realized it, it´s seems so painfully obvious. Christ
suffered because of my sins, in my place. It had to be done that way. He
had to feel the pain, the weakness, because we were destined to be
weak. He had to die, because we were going to die, too. But because of
his role as the son of God, he could do it all so we couldn´t have to,
so that we could pay our meager sum of money that we had, for Him to pay
the debt in full in the way that He could. Our sins are erased, because
he already paid them. We will be resurrected, because Christ, through
his own power, overcame death first. But as I´m saying and thinking all
this, I´m just thinking, "Duh. That´s what they´ve been telling me this
whole time. Christ is our lawyer and mediator with the Father. In did it
all in place of us." I just never really understood it until that
moment that I took into account the different meanings of "for." I
really love the new insights I receive by reading in Spanish. It´s so
interesting how differently we understand things based on the way it´s
expressed in a different language. I love it.
To conclude, I
read some cool verses in the new testament about both missionary work
and love. In John 15:8-18,26-27. Take a look :)
That´s all for
this week :) Thanks for the prayers and love and support, as always. I´m
so glad I have this opportunity. I really am. I also learned a bit this
week about how little time I really have to have the power and
authority I do as a missionary. I should never take it for granted, or
waste a precious second of the Lord´s time that I´ve been given. I hope I
can apply this to heart during the day as I´m working :)
Have an amazing week!
Love, Hermana Oliphant
P.S. Sorry, no more pictures this week. I really never do anything interesting. I´ll try to get something for next week ;)
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