Saturday, October 19, 2013

10/14/2013 Meeting with Elder Calderon

Hey family,
From what I have heard sounds like things are going great over there in the land of free. How I miss my air conditioned house, car, church, gym, University, stores...you get my point. The summer has started here...and its blistering hot, but its my last one and I know that in a year from now I will be wetting my pillow at night, burried under five comforitors, missing this heat.
So this week we have two baptisms...Snow White, who is a mom that lives in a house full of Less actives that are coming back, and Erwin, boy friend of a recent convert. He is AWESOME! His light of christ is so active in him. He understands and TRUELY has a testimoney of all the things we say. Dont worry, it dosent sounds a bit shakey that he came to the church for his girl friend, but weve checked, and this week HE asked US if he would be able to marry her in the temple and how that would all go down. HES SO SWEET! Any way the investigators are doing good here, and we will have 3 for this month.
But what I really want to talk about is a meeting that was held last night. It included ALL the stakes in the city of Santa Cruz including Montero, where I began my mission, an hour outside of the city. So ALL that missionaries for the Santa Cruz North Mission, Santa Cruz Mission (mine), and ALL the members of the Ward Council from ever ward from ever stake was there.....A TON of MORMONS. And guess who came to train us. Elder Grow and.....MY OLD MISSION PRESIDENT, NOW "ELDER" Calderon. THoe two are fire balls together. It was so awesome. The whole focus was on rescuing less actives. That the day has passed as Elder Grow said that we send our missionaries out banging down doors to find people to teach. He stressed that the less actives that have not 1. Done all there ordenanzes and 2. Havent renovated (hope thats the right word im looking for in english) are JUST if not MORE important that baptisms. There was man they used to teach us this priniciple. He was the STAKE PRESIDENT of stake building that we were in for the meeting but some where down the line lost his testimoney and fell away and be the sounds of it was excommunicated (correct me if Im wrong, youll know but what I say a bit later) ....for 11 years, he faithfully, and shamefully came back to church with his wife. A month ago she went through the temple in Salt Lake, and yesterday this ex Stake President got his "blessings restored" of the temple and the Priesthood under the DIRRECT order of the quorum of the 12 apostles, by Elder Grow. I dont know if I have ever felt the spirit like that in a meeting before. It truely gave me the desire to go help whoever has been baptised who has fallen away. For me, that will be my focus  with my last ten months of the Lords mission, rather than baptizing. Of coarse Ill still do it, but I feel that I will get more satisfaction of of rescuing.
What was awesome is that after every one understood why it was important, ELder Grow and Elder Calderon took turns explaining how the WARD COUNCIL is going to do it. Not just the missionaries. ELder Calderon said "the church is governed by coucils. If we dont have councils we arent governing the church. If we arent governing the church as councils, we are letting satan govern it for us." It basically just slapped all the lazy leaders here in Santa Cruz in the face. Its part of the culture to be lazy, and they know it too.
So any way, the spirit confirmed to me last night more than ever how true the church is and how much the work here in SC is going to sky rocket. Its ridiculous what will happen if every one follows the plans that these two General Authorities have layed down, and better yet there are a bunch of reports they have to fill out so that all the leaders above the wards will know if they are doing everything.
But I know thats really long and no one but Dad and maybe Joseph will appreciate alot of the details but that was what was the best part of the week. If we have something like that every weeek, I would NEVER come home from my mission, ever.



1 comment:

  1. I really enjoyed it. Thank you. Sounds like you've caught the vision. Keep up the good work .
    -JUre

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