March 15, 2012
Hola Todos! This week has been quite the week. First off, as far as visas go, we have no idea when we will get them. They tell us that we will be leaving anywhere from next wednesday to three weeks from now, though the latest word is that they have just decided to reassign at least some of us starting this next monday, so I may still be getting reassigned, but we are definitely delayed at least a little. Hopefully the visas will come through and we'll be able to get there relatively soon. So this week we had a girl in our zone who had a kidney stone, and it was really not going well for her, so we decided to have a zone fast, and again, fasting really does work. She is doing much better now, even thought it's not over yet. But fasting really does work. We had a really cool devotional on tuesday by Elder Cardon of the seventy. He really had some really motivating/inspirational/spiritual things to say, and really helped me focus completely on the mission, and completely on submitting to God's will. This was great timing because a lot of Elders have been a little unhappy because of waiting for visas, but we need to learn to trust God's timing. "Faith in God means faith in His timing." I also love how much happier we are after the temple. You can't be in the temple and not be happy. It really is great. Go to the temple as much as you can. Also, the MTC choir is going to be singing in conference, which is kinda cool. I will probably be gone before then, but for the other Elders here that could be a cool experience. This week I found a cool scripture in Jacob 4:6. Jacob, a great prophet who saw Christ, says that over many times searching the scriptures and many little revelations we build our testimony. His testimony was built by little revelations, time after time, to the point where it was so unshakeable that he could command the elements in the name of Christ. I thought that was a really good example of the way we build our testimonies. Even for the great prophets, it's rarely a one time miraculous experience, but many little witnesses from God that this is his church. We also had a cool experience with someone we were teaching this week. We were teaching him about the word of wisdom and his son (who had followed the word of wisdom) had passed away because of cancer. It was a really cool lesson, he was crying a lot by the end and the spirit was really strong. It was cool to see how it really doesn't matter what language it's in, the spirit is universal. I hope you all are doing well, I'll be praying for you. Vaya con Dios! Love Elder West