Week 31 Happy Christmas Season

Hola todos,

This week I've been trying to be like John the Baptist.  I just wish that this mean we had as many baptisms as he did, but more on that later.  

For starters, shout out to the Martins for the Halloween card I got.  As can probably be seen, the mail here takes a really long time to get to me.  On the bright side, it´s a form of communication that´s a little bit older and not as common, so it´s really fun to get and obvious to the other missionaries when someone else receives a letter or package.

As I said at the start, I´ve been trying to be like John the Baptist.   This one doesn´t have a long sermon afterwords, but just a simple update of what we´ve been doing.  This week we´ve begun the light the world event in the church.  For those of you that haven´t yet heard of it, or don´t fully understand what it is, it is an event of the church for the entire world.  A few weeks ago, the church released an advent calender of service.  Each day has a teaching of Christ that we can interpret in any number of ways to meet our own circumstances to provide service.  For example, today´s scripture is honor your father and your mother.  This could mean any particular thing, so long as we stay true to the spirit of Christmas.  How though might you ask does this tie into John the Baptist? He was the forerunner for Christ.  He was the voice that cried in the wilderness that prepared the way of the Lord.  It was he that was given the honor of baptizing the Savior and helping people turn their hearts to him.  By spreading the word of Light the World and living by the daily scriptures we get, I´ve been able to better act as his representative here in Mexico and help others prepare for when he comes the second time.

Also, following with the Christmas spirit, I've decided to share a Christmas message each week this month in my emails in edition to all of the other normal things.  This week, I decided to share something from the Polar Express.  For those that have seen the movie or read the children's book, the story revolves around a young boy as he begins to doubt if Santa really exists.  The resulting story is that in the middle of the night, a train pulls up to the side of his house, and takes him to the north pole.  

Through several twists and turns throughout the story, the boy sees several examples of Christmas magic in action.  Doubtful though, he is still convinced that there has to be  a reasonable explanation for why everything in this train is happening, and at times even goes as far to justify that this is all just a dream.  

This goes right up until that fate full moment when Santa comes out to go to his sleigh. The boy notices two things about what is going on in this moment of importance.  First, he is unable to see Santa thanks to the mass of other children and elves in front of him.  Secondly, he is unable to hear the sound of the sleigh bells until one of them falls off the sleigh and rolls towards his feet.  At this, he admits in what is doubtlessly a combination of defeat and a sincere change in heart, he admits audibly, though softly enough that he doesn't think that anyone can hear him two simple words: I believe.  His confession of faith allowed him to hear the sweet sound of the sleigh bells.

Unknown to him at the time of his confession, Santa had been walking towards him this entire time, and had arrived just in time to hear him.  Thanks to this statement, Santa chooses the boy to receive the first gift of Christmas, which becomes the sleigh bell.  

It is later that Christmas morning, that the boy shows the bell to his family, and while his sister is able to hear the sound at first, his parents are unable to.  The boy, now serving as the narrator of the story years later explains how as he later tried to share the joy of hearing the bell with his friends, many of them couldn´t hear.  and in time many that originally could, lost this privilege.  Even his sister in time found that she could no longer hear the bell.  But the author proclaims at the end of his book, "but the bell still rings for me, as it does for all who truly believe."

What great eternal truth lies hidden in this simple child´s tale!  Here we see a perfect example of how faith operates in the minds and hearts of all of God´s children.   Here we see someone who has been taught in the traditions of a believer, but has reached a point in their life where believing may no longer seem popular, easy, or practical.  At one point we learn about how the boy has become negligent in following with the traditions of his beliefs in things such as negligence to get a photo with a mall Santa, sending a letter to Santa, or setting out the milk and cookies.  Likewise, we can at times feel the same way to our own christian beliefs.  We may feel that the belief in Christ as the literal son of God, the Savior of the world who rose from the dead, and who now at this very moment is at the right hand of the father working to bring about the immortality and eternal life of mankind as a bit hard to swallow.  Maybe we think that it's easier to just say that he was a great prophet or a good person.  We can admit that we can learn things from his teachings to build our own moral character.  While none of these statements are wrong, if we minimize the nature of Christ to these characteristics, we loose sight of his divinity, his atonement, and basically, the things that make Jesus the Christ.

God though doesn´t want us to be kept in this state of ignorance or deniablility.  His plan is for all of us to come to a clear knowledge of the truth of his son.  So he sends messengers like the train conductor.  What we can see in this part of the story is that the train conductor´s arrival wasn´t by invitation, but was needed, and his mere presence was in fact a miracle.  In like manner, God has sent us people here in the earth to help us overcome our own trials of doubt, the prophets, and at a more local level, the missionaries.  While these messengers cannot give us their faith or their own spiritual experiences, they can help us by being a witness to the truth and help us know that we aren´t alone in believing things which aren´t seen but true"(Alma 32:21).

Finally, the real moment of truth comes to the boy.  At this moment, he is able to see all of the evidence of what people are saying.  He has seen the North Pole, he has spoken with elves.  He has had experience after experience after experience that while don´t necessarily provide definite proof, for he can still say that all of it is just a dream, his reasoning to believe has increased.  and now, the only thing between him and the blessings of seeings Santa are two simple words said with real intent.  

Likewise we have our own bits of evidence and guides to help us.  The Holy Ghost testifies of the truth of what we have seen or felt concerning Christ.  The book of Mormon is another testimony of the reality of the Resurrection and ministry of Christ in both Palestine and the Americas.  And not only that, we have all things on earth denoting that their is a God.  But if we refuse to act upon these experiences- if we don´t nourish our faith- we can´t enjoy the blessings of the Gospel.  As i said in an earlier letter, the principles of the Gospel rewritten in order, and we can´t progress to step two until we have completed step one.

The climax of the story is the ability to hear the bell and see Santa.  Something that I find very interesting about the story is that the writer chooses to call the bell the first gift of Christmas.  We all know that the first Christmas gift given wasn´t wrapped in a box with fancy paper or placed under a Christmas tree.  The first gift of Christmas was given over 2000 years ago in the little town of Bethlehem.  The reward of our faith is this same gift, the blessings of the Christ child.  We get to feel the sweet presence of his redeeming love; we are blessed with the comfort of the knowledge that we will all rise again; and, dependent upon our willingness to endure to the end, we may live again in the presence of the father.  

Echoing the words of the writer, I testify that the bell still rings for me, as it does for all who truly believe.  Christ lives.  He is more than just a fairy tail or an ancient teacher who´s lessons we often like to read to children.  He is the great King Emanuel, who even now is at the right hand of the Father.  He is the light, life and hope of the world.  

That's all for now

Elder Gooden

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Some Pics from this week

Week 29

Feliz día de gracias!

This week I´ve been trying to be like Abinadi.  No, I´ve not been threatened with death by fire, and no, I´ve not convinced someone to start baptizing thousands of people.  I probably won´t even really celebrate Thanksgiving.  More on all of this later though.

This week we had zone conference, 18 new investigators, and it was the second to last week of this transfer.  For all I know, I´ll be writing from Los Mochis next week, but until then, I´ve still got plenty of work to do here in Bamoa.  For starters, President Myers decided to focus on the importance o finding this week.  In layman's terms, this translates into the least enjoyable time for a missionary if all you can do is knock on doors.  Because of this, many missionaries like to fill their time with appointments with investigators, who may or may not be progressing, and trying to do anything else other than contact if possible.  This is why this last zone conference was dedicated to the various ways that we can contact, and why contacting is so important.  Put plainly, it´s that for every 27 new investigators that we find, statistically speaking, three of them end up going to church.  and of those three that go to church, only one of them end up getting baptized.  So, statistically speaking, if we don´t find a ton of people in our missions to teach, and make sure that we use our time wisely with them, we´ll never get to baptize.  So, the invitation was to redouble our contacting efforts and TALK WITH EVERYONE!!!

We also focused a lot on the importance of the Sabbath, and President and Hermana Myers shared something that I find very interesting.  It´s that one of the most fundamental ways that we can see if we are true followers of Christ or not is if we keep the Sabbath day holy.  Not only is it  an outward expression of our inner commitment to God, but that an apostle of the lord has said(this was back in about 1915, so I´m not entirely sure but I think it was from Joseph R Snow) that whether or not we sanctify the Sabbath, shows if our commitment to Christ is real, or if his sacrifice means little or nothing to us.  Strong but true words.

This translated over well to our week with finding new people.  18 new investigators was a new personal best for one week, we even found a family of four that were able to start recognizing the spirit after the opening prayer.  With a little luck, we can get a baptism within a month with them.

By the way, for everyone that saw the photo of the giant spider from last week´s email, part two of that story ended this week.  we came home one night, and we found it in the bathroom spread out over the entire bathroom sink.  after learning that the spider was really fast, and that it is immune to cockroach killing insecticide, I finally got him with the end of my shoe.  Photos of that will come in next week.

As I said, this week, I´ve been trying to be like Abinadi.  As a child I always looked up to Abinadi for his boldness and plainness.  Faced with the prospect of certain death, he chose to not only bear his testimony of the Gospel, but clearly plainly point our the errors of their ways repeatedly.  The most important thing though is that he always brought things back to Christ.

In the field, and for members of the church, we often have a fear of sharing what we know to be true.  We find it difficult to always take advantage of the moments God gives us each day to represent Him or to share a part of his gospel.  We close our mouths out of fear of a negative response or rejection.  For these feelings, I´ve found that the perfect remedy is found in Doctrine and Covenants 3:6-10: "And behold, how oft you have transgressed the commandments and the laws of God, and have gone on in the persuasions of men. For, behold, you should not have feared man more than God. Although men set at naught the counsels of God, and despise his words- Yet you should have been faithful; and he would have extended his arm and supported you against all the fiery darts of the adversary; and he would have been with you in every time of trouble. Behold, thou art (inset name here), and thou wast chosen to do the work of the Lord, but because of transgression, if thou art not aware thou wilt fall. But remember, God is merciful; therefore, repent of that which thou hast done which is contrary to the commandment which I gave you, and thou art still chosen, and art again called to the work"

The fact of the matter is that everyone is called to the work.  We all are given opportunities to help strengthen the Kingdom of God.  And all of us have the chance to receive personal revelation to help us in this work.  and if we chose to love God more than we fear men, we will have success.

Now, I know that I´m going a little bit out of order in how I normally write these things.  Normally, I explain how I´m trying to be like someone and then I have the big take home part of my emails.  This one is in a bit of a reversed order.  But the big thing that I noticed is that there is power in boldness.  I remember that it was nearly two months ago when a reference took my softspokenness for timidness, and that made me never want to talk quietly again.  the desire to not be called timid led me to be more bold in my invitations, and the bolder my invitation have gotten, the more ready I feel the spirit is to help me in this work. Maybe it might offend some people at times, but I´ve not been called to teach the gospel of itching ears.  And like every missionary likes to say in the mission, if I die out here, that´s a guarantied exaltation.  In all seriousness though, I´ve found that it´s always been much better to be bold and active in the missionary work than to be timid and passive.

That´s all for now,

Elder Gooden