I Hope We Never Distance Ourselves from the Things That Bless Our Lives

06/23/2014

Well, here we are another week down, here in Catracholandia.  It was a pretty weird week.  It rained a ton, and the world cup... and this and that.  So basically for the world cup, we had to go in the house during the games when Honduras played and we had to be in the house at seven pm the nights of the games, so pretty crazy.  Then it rained almost every day.  And rain here consists of a constant down pour for like 40 minutes.  Our house has a mysterious leak somewhere in the roof and conveniently my stuff is always wet when it rains.  So that’s a great bonus feature.  The other thing is that our area is really, really big.  We have to take a moto taxi for 25 minutes to get to some of our investigators and that makes things a bit difficult.  It’s really hard and expensive to be able to follow up with some of our investigators.  But we are going to work on that and find out a way to make it work.  I also have another ingrown toenail.  

Yesterday we were teaching in a house and the power went out.  When that happens we have to go straight home because it’s dangerous.  Well we started to leave but an electric storm had just started and there was lightning flashing seriously like every second.  The sky was almost constantly illuminated for a solid 30 minutes. It was super sketchy but we didn’t die, so that was good.  

I also bought some new shoes because I ripped a hole in my tennis shoes.  However, when you live in a country with Latinos, the items of clothing generally don’t fit you, including shoes. However we found a pair that fit me….in pink.  I didn’t have much choice there….so I now have pink Nike knockoffs. [Editor’s note: I have requested a picture for proof J] 

So that’s a few of the little adventures we had this week.  We also had a lot of experiences this week that really made me sad and disappointed, all in one.  We have a lot of inactive members here and we visited with more than a few this week. One was a lady that had been through the temple, we were told, and had moved here but never came to church.  So we went to visit her and she said she doesn’t visit the church and told us we worship Joseph Smith. So that was quite a mind blower for me.  I don’t understand how someone can be so confused.  It makes me so sad to see that there are so many inactives like that.  [People] that have been baptized and made a promise to always keep going in the path of the gospel, yet don’t even understand that’s what they did, or don’t understand the things they accepted as truth when they were baptized.  It’s really frustrating.  I swear, some of the people just said yes to everything the missionaries said and didn’t even listen.  I also had a little experience where some inactives just didn’t have excitement about the church, they just were desanimado, that word again.  I don’t know what it means in English. [Editor’s Note: desanimado is translated to mean downhearted, dejected, lifeless]  And that makes me so sad.  They say they aren’t enthusiastic or excited to go to church, and they are sad.  Well not going to church isn’t going to help them feel better. As for me I always to try to look and see if these people are doing the small and simple things, like reading the scriptures, praying, and going to church.  I know I have seen in my own life that when I’m not doing these things there’s a difference, and it’s not a good one.  When we are not doing these simple things is when we began to slip and fall.  We aren’t strengthening our testimony and if we let it go far enough, we finally find ourselves inactive.  For me, I just know that these simple things bless our lives.  They keep us in the correct path and give us a stronger testimony.  They make our understanding clearer.  They give us power to resist temptation, and when we do them, we receive blessings from our Heavenly Father. I hope that we all can continue to keep doing the small and simple things: reading the scriptures, praying, and going to church, so that we can stay on the straight and narrow path and persevere until the end and receive eternal life.  (I definitely started typing in Spanish like three times in that sentence ja ja, weird.)  Well I hope everything is going well for you all and that you can do the small and simple things!  Love you all and I know this church is true and it’s the best thing for us. I hope we never distance ourselves from the things that bless and help our lives. 

Elder Ollis