December 20, 2014

 Familia:

This week was sooo awesome!! We finished up all the training with the last 5 zones and elder huerta and I got to go to a whole day of conference with our zone. It was so special. We all came down and pte Smith taught about the importance of fasting and how we need to perfect this principal in the mission. I don’t think I have ever learned so much about fasting and how important it really is. He connected it with the importance to make "personal covenants" with the Lord. Ill talk about that a little later. After that, we had an awesome lunch and started our fast. Then Elder Huerta and I trained on the importance of finding people to teach in every moment, and then Elder Finnegan y Moffat (our zone leaders) taught us about the importance of planning and setting goals with the Spirit. I learned a ton from them. Elder Finnegan and Moffat are two of the best missionaries that I have ever known!

That night they gave us an hour to reflect on what everything and a chance to think about what personal covenant we were going to make with the Lord. At 9:30, we went up to go to bed.

The next morning we woke up early and went to the temple to do the work for a family name. I did the work from Halvor Lochen, who was born in 1720. We did everything from baptism to endowment. It was such a cool experience because Elder Huerta baptized me for my relative and I got to baptize him for his. Then we both had the chance to confirm one another as well. We spent the whole day basically in the temple. I have never been so grateful for the knowledge of the plan of God, to know that we can have an eternal family and to know that the Priesthood Power of God has been restored to the earth to give us the chance to bring it to pass. I learned so much during my experience in the temple with Elder Huerta.

Tonight, one of our investigators, Maria, got baptized!! She is an ex Jehovahs witness who has been searching for the truth for a long time. She was so excited to learn about the Plan of Salvation and understand her life from an eternal perspective. She has gone through soo much to get to where she is now. She has been taking the lessons for over 8 months, and tonight she finally entered into the waters of baptism!! She was so excited and all of her family came to support her who are all non members. The spirit was so strong. Elder Finnegan and Elder Moffat also had a baptism tonight, Mara se llama. IT WAS AN AWESOME NIGHT!!!

So I want to share with you a cool thing that I learned this week in all of the trainings with pte smith. One day he shared the verse in ether 12:27:

12 "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will i make weak things become strong unto them"

In this verse he called our attention to the word "weakness." Isn’t it interesting that the Lord says weakness and not weaknesses? I always thought that it always meant weaknesses. Like all of my personal weaknesses, like patience, or pride, or disobedience, etc but pte smith explained that it is just one weakness. The weakness is: The Flesh. o sea, el hombre natural. The natural man!! He is our weakness!! And then it hit me. That simple truth finally made sense. Well it always made sense but it never really got to me like it did then. So how do we humble ourselves before the Lord? How do we testify to Him that we will follow Him? Through covenants!!! Starting with baptism! Then those in the temple, partaking of the sacrament every Sunday to renew them. Then we started talking about the importance of personal covenants. o sea, covenants just between us and the Lord that are incredibly personal and intimate. We make little covenants with him to be better or to protect ourselves from the adversary.

Pte smith shared with us the covenant he has to never watch TV alone. He shared an experience that he had over 25 years ago when he was traveling in a hotel and all of the terrible things that they have on the television and how great the temptations of Satan was on him in a given night. Then he told us of the covenant he made before God to never watch TV alone in a hotel ever again. In these past 25 years, he has traveled over 4 million miles and has stayed in over a 1000 hotels in the entire world, and has never watched a single program on TV. The first thing he does when he gets in is puts his jacket over the TV and unplugs it. He explains that this little covenant he has made has protected him for the past 25 years. Its one of the defenses he puts up against the adversary. Then he spoke of the attack he puts on Satan by attending regularly the temple. He testified that if he had not made this personal covenant and had honored this covenant, he would not be in front of us as our president today. I can’t really explain it over email but it was powerful! He then explained that we need to fast a lot of times to make covenants and then fast sometimes even more to keep them. I wish I could write all I learned this past week but I am running short on time. But I testify that if we want to become better, we should covenant with the Lord to do it! Without covenants, we cannot and will not progress.

Alright I have to go! I love you all so much! Have a great week!

Try a little bit harder to be a little bit better!!!

Share your testimony!!!

Con cariño,

Elder Staffieri