AMERICAN!!!!!

(a letter from July 30)

I am now serving in the area Aquiles Serdan, zone Libertad, mission Mexico Puebla North. My comp is.......(drum role)...... Elder Hanson. He’s from the "factory" (Utah) but grew up in Montana. He has 6 months in the mish and is SUPER OBEDIENT!!!!! I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!! Each morning at 6:30 on the dot, we BOTH hit our knees. 8:00, all quiet but the turning of pages. 11:00, out of the house and moving (We have another hour of studies for Spanish). 9:00, planning. Lots of English though. That’s bad. We have to talk more Spanish. He’s not bad in the language. He served in Idaho for 3 months before getting to Mexico for visa problems, so now he has 3 months here and he is doing really well with it. Still has problems, but I understand. I was there a bit more than a year ago. He is really counting on me to helping with his Spanish. I do my best.

I was reading in Helaman in my personal study, and I passed for the part where the people once again return to their belief in Christ and they put all of the secret combinations (sp) into the ground to hide them from the world. I’m not sure if that’s just symbolic or literal, but why not destroy them? Later, bad people are going to come, find them and use them to cause havoc among the people of God, so why did they not destroy them? I started applying that to my life. How many times do I do something that I know is wrong, and then just put that mistake in another part where I will probably find it again and return to those problems? I then applied it to my investigators. How many of them just put the wine on a high shelf promising to never drink it again, and then on a bad day, they just need a chair to reach it again. We recently applied this with an inactive:


We found an inactive member of the church that has started drinking and smoking. He hates his life and he is staring to hate himself for falling into those addictions again. The old bishop here told us to visit him and when we passed by on Sunday, he wasn’t there. We talked to the nice lady at the door who quickly turned us away saying that Thomas was the only one that had interest in our message. Turning to walk away, we heard behind us, "Elders!" Thinking that it was just another person trying to make fun of us, we kept going until we heard again, "Elders!". I turned round reluctantly when we see a young man RUNNING towards us. He was still a ways off so I wasn’t worried. I said to Elder Hanson, "I think it´s Thomas." "I think so too." It was.

He invited us in and explained to us how he had lost his wife and his two kids to alcohol and cigarettes and that he wanted them back, but more than anything, he wanted to talk to God again. We taught him about the atonement and repentance and at the end of the lesson, he told us that for the first time in years, he felt hope that he could be better and be happy. I shared with him about the Lamanites that buried their weapons of war to show their repentance. Their greatest sin was killing so they left themselves no way to return to it. I asked him how he could bury his greatest sin. He didn’t have an answer. We left him chapter 4 of Heleman to think it over (Elder Hanson is also reading Heleman).

We have to get rid of our sins. Not just move them to the side. I´m kinda rambling. I still have to organize my thoughts about this and really live it, but I just wanted to share with you all a bit of what’s going through my head these days.

I love you all! Have a good week and I hope you enjoyed reading this!!!

Elder Heath