Week 17

Hola,

This week I've been trying to be like Melchizedek.  

Before I say anything else though, I just want to send a shout out the the primary class of Sister Sorenson and say thanks for the awesome letters.  

As for the mission life, this week has been interesting.  We've taught a lot of people, extended a lot of commitments, and watched them all fall by the way side.  I guess that's just how it goes some weeks though.  The one thing that's interesting is that this may be the last time I'll write from this area.  We have transfers next week, and I've already had two transfers here.  I've heard that some missionaries can stay in one area for as long as four transfers, but I don't think that I'll stay here that long.  I would like to stay here another transfer though.  We have a lot of investigators that are progressing really well and I'd like to see them get baptized.

Also, everyone should learn to make sabiche, my favorite Mexican food after dogos.  They best way to describe it is to think of a mixture of pico de Gallo and sushi, or sometimes beef.  It's normally eaten with tortilla chips or hard tacos.  

As for why I've been trying to be like Melchizedek, I need to explain a little bit more about him from what the standard King James Bible tells us, and go to the Joseph Smith Translation.  For all of my non member friends, who don't understand what I mean by the Joseph Smith Translation(JST), a brief summary is as follows:

The LDS church, and it's members believe the Bible to be the word of God.  However, we believe that given how it is a compilation written originally in Aramaic or Greek and later into Latin before all of it's other languages, we recognize that there are inherent errors in it's translation, or even partial phrases that have been lost over the years.  In other words, think of a two thousand year game of telephone.  another way to remember this is that English has the world's largest vocabulary by about a billion words.  Not every word in English therefore has a direct translation, and several words in other languages have a double meaning in the English language.  For example, in Spanish, the word llave means key.  It also means faucet.  If I don't know the context of the word, I could mistranslated it.  And this mistranslation has a very different impact on what I want to say.  Given that the Bible was translated in several different languages before it was translated into English, we have a relatively large margin of error when it comes to an exact translation.

The JST is a compilation of biblical verses that had lost key phrases or meaning due to an incomplete translation or misinterpretation of the original texts, and helps to clarify the exact intention of what the author originally intended.  This translation was given to the Prophet Joseph Smith after the organization of the Church in 1820.  While we don't have a complete translation of the Bible from Smith, what we do have can help enlighten our understanding of the bible as we currently have it.

The point that I want to focus on today is an excerpt of the JST in the book of Genesis 14.  The text in the KJV says: 

18 And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God.

19 And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth:

20 And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all.

The complete excerpt from JST is much longer than this, and I won't share all of it on the basis that I only want to focus on a small part of it.  If anyone else wants to read the full excerpt, the JST is in the back of every LDS published KJV of the Bible or at LDS.org.  the part that I want to focus on is this:

25 And Melchizedek lifted up his voice and blessed Abram.

26 Now Melchizedek was a man of faith, who wrought righteousness; and when a child he feared God, and stopped the mouths of lions, and quenched the violence of fire.

27 And thus, having been approved of God, he was ordained an high priest after the order of the covenant which God made with Enoch,

28 It being after the order of the Son of God; which order came, not by man, nor the will of man; neither by father nor mother; neither by beginning of days nor end of years; but of God;

29 And it was delivered unto men by the calling of his own voice, according to his own will, unto as many as believed on his name.

30 For God having sworn unto Enoch and unto his seed with an oath by himself; that every one being ordained after this order and calling should have power, by faith, to break mountains, to divide the seas, to dry up waters, to turn them out of their course;

31 To put at defiance the armies of nations, to divide the earth, to break every band, to stand in the presence of God; to do all things according to his will, according to his command, subdue principalities and powers; and this by the will of the Son of God which was from before the foundation of the world.

32 And men having this faith, coming up unto this order of God, were translated and taken up into heaven.

33 And now, Melchizedek was a priest of this order; therefore he obtained peace in Salem, and was called the Prince of peace.

34 And his people wrought righteousness, and obtained heaven, and sought for the city of Enoch which God had before taken, separating it from the earth, having reserved it unto the latter days, or the end of the world;

The thing that I find fascinating is the way that the text emphasizes the power of the priesthood and how every worthy holder has been given the power to work miracles.  It's also caused me to think a lot about the priesthood especially because we had to teach about it in church yesterday.(one of the fun things about a small ward, the missionaries do everything).  But in the lesson manual, it explained how the priesthood has three main functions here on the earth.  The first is that it is by the power of the priesthood that missionary work is done.  The second is that it is used to administer the ordinances of salvation within the church such as baptism.  The third and final thing is that it is used to govern the kingdom of God on the earth.  All priesthood ordinances, blessings, and obligations fall under these three categories.  

What is fascinating, is when we further look into what this all means.  To better explain this, I'll use the offices of the priesthood to better show how and why this is important.

We'll start with the deacons.  When someone is ordained to the office of deacon, they are given the sacred responsibility to pass the sacrament every week as well as collect fast offerings from the congregation.  In other words, Deacons are called to assist in the governing of the kingdom of God.  Admittedly, this is only a small portion of administration, but it is a start of this third part of the offices of the priesthood.  The second office is that of teacher.  As a teacher, young men are assigned a home teaching assignment, and a companion to edify and teach the members of the church to word of god, and carry out the second function of the priesthood.  Then we have the priests, who are given power to both bless the sacrament and administer the ordinance of baptism, or in other words to administer the ordinances of salvation.  Upon the ordination of an Elder in the church, these responsibilities are magnified tenfold.  The title of Elder is given to all male full time missionaries that are actively teaching the gospel.  Elders also, as holders of the Melchizedek have the power to give blessing for the healing of the sick, and perform miracles in proportion to their faith.  Given that God is ruler of both man and all other inhabitants of the earth, every time that an elder uses his priesthood to give a blessing or perform a miracle, he is exercising his right to govern within the kingdom of God according to the power and authority God has given him through faith and obedience.  And finally, in addition to the power to baptize, Elders have the power to work as temple workers and administer the ordinances of salvation found there if they so choose to.  

In short, What I want to point out, is that the power that God gave to Enoch and Melchizedek is here on the earth today in the church.  I also want to point out how the principles that the priesthood are based on can be exercised in every member, not just males ordained to a priesthood office.

Sister missionaries are quite probably the most effective means the lord has for spreading the gospel.  Sorry guys if you felt differently, but it's true.  And the way that they are able to do so is by exercising the priesthood power to teach by the spirit.  Relief Society and young women's presidents have the authority to lead within there respective callings, and in the temple, women as well as men are able to administer in the ordinances of salvation.  

Because I'm running out of time, I'll choose to finish here.  

But before I close I want to invite everyone to do two things.  I want to invite everyone to either look for ways that the priesthood has blessed your life in the following week, or find a way to magnify your priesthood callings.  At the end of the week, I want for you all to write to me to share how this experiment went.  I'll follow through with the same challenge and tell you all how it goes next week

That's all for now

Elder Gooden

Week 16

Hola,

Summer here has ended and everyone is going back to school.  This is great news for us in regards to teaching families with small children, but is terrible for trying to teach our young adult investigators.  This week I've been trying to be like the Prophet Mormon.  I'll explain that though in a little bit as always.  

This week we had Stake conference, which was pretty cool.  The speakers here focused on how parents can help teach their children correct gospel principles so that they can gain a strong testimony of the truths of the Gospel.  The cool part though was that I got to direct the stake choir and congregation.  

Speaking of this, I've learned that planning doesn't mean the same thing here as it does in the states.  This choir that I directed was made entirely of the missionaries in the stake, and we were asked two weeks before.  We didn't know what songs we were going to sing though until one week before, and given the missionary schedule, we only got to practice twice.  Also, during our second/last practice, we were asked to perform an additional number.  Long story short, I learned that the Lord's work does extend to choir rehearsals, when in doubt about how to make a song sound cooler, just repeat the last phrase with a retardando, and tone deafness is a chronic illness that is running rampant in Mexico.  The important thing to focus on though is my first point in that the Lord's hand is in all parts of his gospel, including missionary choirs.  I say this because I really don't have any other idea how we were able to pull this off in such a short time.  

As I said earlier, I've been trying to be like Mormon.  I say its because I just finished my faith edition to my Elder Bednar Library, and have recently been studying his epistle in Moroni 7, which talks about faith, hope and charity.  I've found in my personal experience that many people find this to be a confusing part of the Book of Mormon, given that when trying to analyze all three of these points, people often think that they are all interdependent upon the other, and that one can't have one of these traits without the other two. This assumption of course makes it difficult to utilize this scripture to teach about either three of these traits without leading some one to believe that their faith is inadequate due to a lack of charity - or some other similar problem.  By studying only faith though, it is easy to tell that this isn't the case at all.  Rather, the confusion lies in Moroni's presentation of the epistle.  

In Mormon 7, nearly all of the chapter is dedicated to the topic of faith.  He only briefly mentions hope, more specifically what to hope for, and then talks about the blessings of charity.  Based on this structure, it is easy to see that the main focus of Mormon's epistle is to talk abut faith, and how faith leads us to receive the gift of charity.  

To better explain this, I'll use an example and follow the same train of thought used by Mormon.

Let's say that someone is about to receive a priesthood blessing to be healed from an illness. We all know that for this to work, the recipient must have faith in the healing power of Christ.  This faith is expressed by actions, which could just simply mean to ask for a blessing.  If we have faith, and our faith is properly placed in Christ, then we must have a hope for the power of his resurrection, and the power of his atonement.  After all, Christ has the power to forgive sin and heal infirmities through the power of his infinite atonement, which without we would all be a lost and fallen race, subject to the whims of the devil for all eternity.  But through the power of Christ, we can have a hope for a better life, free from sin in the presence of God.  

Now, what Mormon fails to talk about in this chapter is that our faith in Christ, and hope for his atonement will lead us to repentance and baptism to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.  However, this part of the doctrine could be explained in his need to be meek.  Or in other words, to rely wholly on the merits of Christ as taught by Paul.  

The power of repentance, will eventually change us from a carnal and devilish person, the natural man, into someone that seeks after the things of righteousness, or in other words, a disciple of Christ.  In other words, what Mormon is stressing here is that true discipleship will lead to a change of heart and charity, which is the pure love of Christ.

In other words, to call ourselves disciples of Christ, we must have faith in his power and hope in his atonement.  These will lead to a true conversion in Christ which will lead to the development of Christ like attributes including charity, which is the greatest of all.  If we aren't exercising our faith unto hope and repentance so as to develop Christ like attributes, we can't call ourselves by His name.

That's all for now

Elder Gooden

Week 15

Hola

So this week I've been trying to be like Jesus as always though, I'll cover that in the later end of my email.  

This week has been amazing!  I had my first baptism on Saturday which was awesome.  It was a nine year old kid named Rayez.  It was awesome to be able to do such a cool thing like that, and I learned a lot about the nature of the ordinance from having to memorize it for a second time in Spanish.

In other news, the ward that I'm in has nearly doubled its attendance since I arrived here (though this isn't hard to do when membership is as low as fifty people)!  The people here have been so friendly and welcoming that it's been easy to talk to less active members here about the importance of attending church.  It's also been interesting to see how my companion and I work together.  In a lot of ways, we are very similar.  We both like to study and read the Book of Mormon, and have each read it several times.  We both tend to lose track of small things that end up being important further down the road.  So it's been an interesting learning experience to basically see myself through a mirror.

As for why I've been trying to be like Jesus, I've been thinking a lot about why I'm here on my mission.  One of the things that I've learned here is that my mission is about the last place that Satan wants me to be.  And because of that, I've learned a lot about how he tries to tempt missionaries.  One of the most common things that he likes to do, at least with me, is when it's been a rough day with the language or when all of our appointment fall, he likes to ask the question, why are you here?  If you are truly a missionary, why don't you have the gift of tongues; why don't your investigators keep their appointments; one of your investigators is sick, if you have the priesthood, why don't you heal them?  In other words, he tries to get us to believe that there is no power in our calling, and challenges the legitimacy of the message of the gospel.  

But I also remember a talk that Jeffery R Holland gave at an MTC devotional, when he asked the same question of why isn't salvation easy.  His response was: salvation doesn't come easy.  It was never easy for him [Jesus Christ] why should it be easy for you?  and then I remembered a scripture in Mosiah 14: He is despised and rejected of men.  A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.  And we hid as if it were our faces from him, he was despised and we esteemed him not.  Surely he hath born our griefs, and carried our sorrows.  But we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted.

I also remembered that it's his name that I am wearing on my chest, and that I've been called to be his representative while here on the earth.  And so, this scripture has a very true message for missionaries as well.

We are despised and rejected of men; more often than not, people don't want anything to do with our message, some people even have anti-Mormon feelings.  We are men of sorrows and acquainted with grief; it's always sad when an investigator decides to stop progressing, because we know how much this message can help them.  And they hide as if it were, their faces from us; it's always a little annoying whenever we can hear the TV on inside a house but no one wants to answer the door.  We are despised and they esteem us not.  

Surely we have bore the griefs our our investigators and carried their sorrows; we have spent countless hours in fasting and prayer over the well being of our investigators.  

And so, I've learned that being a representative of Christ means taking the good and the bad.  But just like the bad parts are rough, the good parts are really great.  Take for example the ordinance of baptism.  One of the things that makes baptism so unique, is that it is the only ordinance that I can think of that is done in the name of God and Christ.  All of the other ordinances that are performed in the Church are done in the name of only Christ.  Everything from prayer to priesthood blessing, to temple ordinances is done in the name of Christ.  But baptism is done in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  The only other time within all of the scriptures that this is done, is when Christ atoned for all of our sins and died on the cross.  And just like the atonement makes of free from sin, baptism symbolically cleanses us from sin.  And so I thought that that was a pretty neat comparison.

The last thing that I want to talk about is the Abrahamic covenant.  For those of you who don't know or remember, we read in the Bible that God covenanted with Abraham, and that one of the signs of the last days is that this covenant will be fulfilled through the restoring of the lost tribes.  But we often forget, just exactly what that covenant is, and that it is the purpose of the church to fulfill this covenant.  as for what this covenant in tales, we need to go to the book of Abraham.  In there, we read that Abraham was baptized, received the priesthood, and was sealed in celestial marriage, as explained in the bible dictionary, the covenant that God made with Abraham was that all of his posterity would have the opportunity to receive these covenant blessings and the possibility of exaltation.  Through baptism, all of us are adopted into this covenant, and have the responsibility to bring others into this covenant so as to restore the house of Israel.  If we aren't striving to make and keep the covenants in the Abrahamic covenant, we are apostatizing.

That's all the time that I have for now.  

Elder Gooden

Pictures from this week . . .

Week 14

Hola,

This week, I've been trying to be like one of the warriors in the army of Helaman, But more on that later.  

For starters, I want to say that the statement: it only rains in Obregon about five times a year is an alternative fact.  It has rained here almost everyday for the past two weeks and rain here is the worst.  The humidity goes up, there is no irrigation, and no one wants to talk with us when it rains.  Also, it's very hard to dry laundry without a dryer.

On the bright side, Mexican food continues to amaze me.  I can buy a fried chicken pizza, which is better than it sounds.  It's pizza, but instead of being cooked on pizza dough, it's cooked on fried chicken.  America, you need to step up your game.  Right now I'm able to eat foods that should give me instant diabetes and I'm still losing weight!!

As I also said, I've been trying to be like a warrior in the army of Helaman.  Firstly to explain this(because there are many reasons for why I've been trying to be like one of them) I want to explain the difference between a warrior and a solder.  In my mind, a solder is someone that is paid to fight in an army.  He is obedient, gets the job done, but at the end of the day returns home to his life away from the fight.  In other words, a solder has invested his mind into his fight, but his heart is not in it.  On the other hand, a warrior is fighting for a cause he believes in.  His whole being is invested in the reason for his fight, and because of this, he always goes the extra mile.  In other words, a solder is fighting for money or another tangible object that can be subject to change.  A warrior is fighting for a cause directly related to the conflict.

Here in the mission I have the choice to be a solder or a warrior for God.  I can choose to serve my mission with the intent of making family proud, or doing what looks good on a college application, and come home at the end of two years feeling accomplished.  Or I can choose to invest my heart into the work.  I can focus on how what I'm doing is saving people from the jaws of death and damnation.  I can choose to consecrate myself to the Lord.  I can choose to follow the advice of President Hinkley and forget myself and go to work.  The difference is that if I choose the latter option- to choose to be a warrior- the work isn't going to end after two years.

Another thing I want to talk about is the power of prayer and worthiness.  To start this story, I first want to thank my parents and everyone else that has been praying for me since I left for my mission.  This story happened on Thursday, when all of the missionaries were invited to a cultural celebration.  At the end of the celebration, I and about five other missionaries crammed into a taxi, which here means ten year old Cadillac, and started the half hour trip home.  About five minutes into the ride home it started to pour down rain.  And about five minutes after that, the car broke down.  as the driver got out to check the engine, some of the missionaries behind me(because I was riding shotgun) jokingly said that I should bless the car.  As they said that, I felt a prompting that I should do just that.  So I laid my hand on the dash of the car and started to offer a silent prayer.  As soon as I thought the words start the car, the engine started up again.  The reason for why I want to share this story is that at the time that I offered that blessing, I didn't feel worthy enough to perform such a miracle.  We hadn't had much success that day, and I was silently complaining for most of the afternoon to God.  As a result, my heart wasn't really invested in the work at that point in time.  And so I prayed afterwords for better understanding.  The response that I received was a big wake up call.

I was told that  I wasn't able to bless that car of myself.  Rather, God knew that we needed a way home that night, and that the prayers of our families, and the promises that he had made with them were what allowed that miracle to take place.  SO the moral of this story is, keep praying for me when I'm on my bad days.

That's all for now

Elder Gooden

Pictures from this week . . .