I’ll start with the less spiritual, move onto the medium
spiritual, and then end with the actually spiritual.
Less spiritual: It rains a ton here. It rained for 3 days
straight this week.
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| Foggy morning |
Our shower is fixed so we now don’t shower in the sink.
#blessings. This week, I cooked onion rings and Dutch cookies. Super good. There
is a plant that everyone and their dog have that is used to make an herbal tea.
While we are tracting, I always snatch a bit off and then make a great tea for
the night time. I met a dog this week. It is a mix between a wiener dog and
something else. We became friends. This dog has huge ears and bugsy eyes and is
super funny. It reminds me a lot of Dobby from Harry Potter. So I named it Dobby.
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| Dobby |
I received cambios. I will become senior companion in Punta
Arenas. But that might not happen because of what the doctor told me this
morning. I had a radiograph [MRI] this week (see later on in the letter), and
he told me the marrow in my spine is inflaming from overuse and carrying too
much weight. He said I need to rest for 30 days. If I don’t the bone marrow
will continue to swell and my spine from overuse will start to have fractures.
Wow. Snap!
There a lot of English words that people use here in Chile.
Whenever I hear them they make me laugh:
-pat time -nuevo
loook -cofie brek -brek
-stahnd bi -inovaytion tat
exsites
-beh beh chower -vul time
-and a whole bunch of other funny words.
Riding the micros here is straight up nuts. They drive so
fast. iI call it public transportation that resembles more of a blender. If you’re
standing, you get thrown onto other people, you levitate on turns. They always
are break checking everyone and doing jerky accelerations. You just have to
hold onto for dear life. It reminds me of pretending I was surfing as a little
kid when I stood up in our van when we went over curbs.
Medium spiritual: On Monday, we ran into the elders from the
other sector. That was a miracle because we didn’t have any way to contact them
to send them the golden reference we had (the guy who went to church last
week), and we had made a cita with him for the next day. The Lord put the
elders in our path and the guy is being taught right now.
Another contact we made came to church! I taught a kid in an
internet cafe about what happens after this life while my companion checked the
computer for references. We taught a college student. He accepted a baptismal
date!! After the first vision lesson, we asked him if he had any questions and
he said, "No, I don’t. But that (first vision) is so beautiful!"
The hermanas in our ward reactivated a family. Our ward
mission leader said that it is the same as a baptism because you helped someone
renew their baptismal covenants. That hit me hard.
I’ve been studying grace a lot this week. I’ve learned that
the end goal of this life isn’t perfection, but rather improvement. Salvation can’t
be bought by obedience. We don’t give up trying. We try our best out of our
love for God. And living the gospel faithfully is not a burden. That has helped me out a lot this week.
Spiritual stuff: This week, I fasted for God’s will to
happen for the cambios. I fasted that if it would be according to his will, that
I could stay in this area. That was a massive leap of faith. It was scary. But I
have felt God’s hand throughout this whole cambio. That is why I love writing
you guys every week because it gives me an opportunity to reflect and see that
God is totally guiding everything and that this is totally His work.
One day after lunch, I was doing the dishes. I was pretty
ticked and frustrated with some things. After I went into my room to blow off
some steam. I was going to write how I was feeling down onto paper because that
has helped me before. But I felt I shouldn’t, rather instead read Jesus the
Christ. So I started to read, but I couldn’t focus. I kept trying to read and
trying to read, fighting the feeling to pray. I finally knelt down at the side
of my bed and poured my heart out to God. Afterwards, I felt the Spirt. I felt
love. I felt at peace. From this I
learned that the Spirit will guide us in small ways from step to step until we
are ready to do what we need to in the end (in my case it was prayer). I also
learned that prayer is a COMMUNICATION WITH GOD. Do you realize that??? You are
talking with God! Nothing in between the two of you. We can communicate and
talk to the most powerful being in the universe. The best father. The perfect
counselor!
This cambio has been probably been one of the hardest of my
mission. But I have grown like never before. My conversion has deepened, I’ve
learned the power of kneeling down and turning to God in prayer, patience, and charity.
I feel more independent spiritually and emotionally. I feel I have become a man
in this cambio. And I’m always growing in becoming a man of God.
The tube. So I went to the hospital for a radiograph
[MRI]. It is basically a giant tube. I
thought they only used it on cancer patients, and I’ve only seen it on TV. Imagine
a giant Twinkie without the frosting, and Elder West is the frosting. They laid
me down on a bed and slid me into the Twinkie (tube). I’m not a claustrophobic
person, but this was a whole another story. The ceiling was about 4 inches from
my face, and it progressively heated up. It was stuffy in there. They designed
the thing to blow cool air on your face so you wouldn’t feel so claustrophobic.
But I’m taller than the average Chilean so the air was blowing on my chest. The
tube is in a separate room with a massive bank safe looking door. How it checks
me out is by using sound blasts. I had to wear headphones to dull the sound. They
sound blasts started. At first I laughed because it sounded like really bad
dubstep. But after a while, it became more like a Chinese water torture. I was in
there for 20 minutes.
I was hot, uncomfortable, with back pain, claustrophobic,
and a little bit distressed. They slid me out. Then they told me that they were
going to inject me with a liquid so they could see the results more clearly.
"Oh crud, now I’m going to get stabbed." I lay there as the inserted
the needle into my vein. Just like an IV. Then they slid me into the
claustrophobic Twinkie, shut the bank safe door, and started the bad dubstep again.
I was pretty wound up. So I started so sing "Jesus the Very Thought of Thee"
to myself to calm me down. And it calmed me down as my thoughts turned towards
the Savior.
And then I felt the Spirit very strong as I thought how
Jesus must have had a lot of back pain after carrying the cross to Golgotha’s
hill. How He was very hot from the walk. How He had laid down on the cross. How
He must felt panic when He heard he was going to get an IV, or rather, nails
put through his hands and wrists and feet. How He must have been very
uncomfortable as they slid him into the tube again, or rather, lifted Him up on
the cross. But Jesus was calm. And that helped me be calm. Christ had been
there before, and He was there with me. I feel so grateful for my Savior.
Elder West
1 Corinthians 15:10
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| After the tube [MRI] |
