5/13/19: La quinta semana

Buenas tardes amigos!

We had a pretty fantastic week here in New Rochelle filled with a lot of proselyting (finally) and some really awesome lessons. It's been cool to see the Lord's hand in our area this past little bit and see the people we are teaching begin to implement the gospel fully in their lives. 

I've had a lot of time to ponder on my mission experience recently, and it's been such a blessing. Everyone always says the last bit of your mission is the hardest to keep the focus, but I think it's the opposite. I've never felt more focused on Christ in my life! I've been able to set apart time mentally just to think about how awesome He has been the past two years, and how great He has made this experience for me. I remember at the beginning I definitely did not have that same perspective. When hard things would happen I would always be tempted to give up, let loose, or slack off. Due to great companions, leaders, and my personal relationship with Christ that has developed the past 24 months, I was able to keep going, just like all of us have to do in this journey of life. 

Elder Robert D. Hales said,
"We cannot expect to learn endurance in our later years if we have developed the habit of quitting when things get difficult now."

How often do we get discouraged when working towards a goal or end, and just give it up? 

Not giving up (Endurance) is an essential attribute that all of us need to develop while growing in the gospel in order to make it back to Him. Without the guidance of the Spirit in our lives, we won't last!

In the 4th chapter of 3 Nephi, there is an awesome story that I was reading a few days ago. The Nephites and Lamanites at this point had joined forces to fight against the Gadianton Robbers. This battle that they have is basically the equivalent of the movie "300". After the battle is over and the Nephites and Lamanites had won, this scripture is written in verse 33,

"33 And their hearts were swollen with joy, unto the gushing out of many tears, because of the great goodness of God in delivering them out of the hands of their enemies; and they knew it was because of their repentance and their humility that they had been delivered from an everlasting destruction."

I have had no shortage of tears these past few weeks, and they have all been shed with joy. It has been such a great opportunity to serve here in New York and I am so excited for this next week to go out and continue to give it my all. I love the people, and more importantly, I love the Lord. 

Have a great week!

Elder Allen

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 3: 3 Weeks Down!

Image
Me and my district!  Over halfway done with the mtc! It is flying by right now I honestly want it to slow down because it's honestly so fun right now. My district is hilarious and we all have a ton of fun while still getting everything done and staying obedient. Perfect combo! This past week has legit been so awesome. Our District :) So on Friday we had our first TRC. That stands for Teaching Resource Center, and it's where REAL recent converts, long time members, and sometimes real investigators volunteer to come in and get taught by us. It's crazy because you have no clue who these people are and you're supposed to teach them the restoration right off the bat and they speak super fast, but it's all good! Such a dope experience honestly. We actually didn't realize that the first girl we taught was already a member, so we invited her to be baptized.... whoops. But she played along and said yes haha. I had no idea, but apparently it's normal
Read more

Week 2: Segundo Semana!

Image
 Our District at the Mexico Temple!  Going into my third week here at the CCM! Not gonna lie, that first week was rough. It honestly felt like 3 months not 7 days. This past week flewwww by though! The language is coming a lot quicker now, and our district is awesome so time flies. It honestly is a lot of fun right now, which is not what I expected haha. And it helps that my mom is sending me packages with American food all the time, so shout out to momma Butta for that.  the clouds here look fake they're so puffy lol it's awesome    So David A. Bednar came to the Provo Mtc on Tuesday, and we got to listen to a live broadcast of it! That was awesome, and the spirit was crazy during it. Bednar is top 5 apostles all time no doubt. He's finally starting to age though which is crazy cause he looked like a 30 year old the past 10 years. The best part of the devotional for me was actually before Bednar spoke, when we were having a pre devotional in o
Read more

Week 40: HOLA!

Image
Buenos días! It was such a great week, but honestly it went by so fast that I literally don't even remember half of what happened haha. We had a baptism, so I'll start off talking about that! So on Thursday last week one of our investigators that was supposed to be baptized the week before messaged us and told us that he wanted to be baptized on Monday! His girlfriend came up from Virginia for it, and we had the baptism that night! It was pretty cool to see the difference in this guy from the first lesson we had with him, to now. His testimony has grown so much and his perspective on the gospel and God's love for him has completely flipped a 180. Elder Cuevas got to baptize him which was amazing! Got in the water within his first cycle!  We did tons of service this week. Just cleaning for people and going around doing little things for people we saw in need. One cool thing we did was go downtown with a member from another stake to translate for him in
Read more