Zone Conference

July 10, 2012

Dear Familia,

Alright, I am emailing today because we had mega-zone conference yesterday so our P-day got switched this week. It's ok mom I didn't get shot or anything.

So this has been a pretty slow week. On Monday I actually didn't end up going to the beach, which was a good thing. We had pizza and socialized before everyone went down so Elder Denton and I figured that that was enough and we could bail on the beach. We ended up being the only missionaries that were back working on time. So Elder Denton and I worked their pool and then Elder Mikkelsen and Elder Anderson (Elder Denton's comp) got to our appointment at 7 (barely). On Tuesday we did an exchange so I was with Elder Cabeza de Vaca for the day. Not too much exciting happened there. We ran into some bashers who were quite unintelligent. I think I handled it in the way that I was supposed to. I quickly told them the message of the Restoration and told them that they shouldn't believe in us but that they should ask God. One of them kept throwing out a bunch of stuff that I agreed with. That got him pretty confused. Then he finally got something he thought he could use against us in that we said that we are all children of God. I didn't even bother trying to explain to him the difference between being literal spiritual children of God and being children in the sense of being joint-heirs with Christ. Then the other guy finally settled on being angry with the fact that we say we are the only church with authority and that isn't Christ-like because that is putting us above everyone else. So once again I just told them to pray then we left. I didn't try to disprove any of their belief or fight them at all, though I wanted to. They would have been easy to pick apart.

On Wednesday (the 4th) all we really did was go to the branch picnic. We were there for about four or five hours. I got quite a water fight going. Spanish people are boring. They brought a bunch of water guns and stuff but nobody wanted to use them. So after a couple of the kids and us missionaries were having fun and getting pretty wet I snuck up behind Magdiel, one of the guys in the branch, and poured maybe two or three tablespoons of water on his head. Then in retaliation he poured a water bottle down my back, then I poured a bottle of ice water down his and it all took off from there. Pretty much every member under 30 (and a couple over) got soaked, which made the hot day a lot more pleasurable.

On Thursday we got 39 people to English class, a huge jump.

On Friday we had another lesson with Jenny and Sylda. We had a drop lesson last week with them but they both firmly committed to read every day and come to church so we set up another appointment with them. They didn't come to church so we decided to have this lesson another drop lesson but they both had read. Jenny has set a goal to read the Book of Mormon all the way through again and they said that they both slept through their alarms on Sunday because they got back late the night before. We told them that we will set our next appointment with them when we talk to them at church.

Sunday only Jenny came to church. She is really changing a lot but unfortunate that isn't good enough for us to keep going. She is a member already so if her family isn't progressing then she is the branches responsibility. Nobody else came to church. Ana and Esperanza have been cancelling appointments. Raul talked to his boss who told him he can have Sunday off come October. Kind of disappointing.

Then like I said yesterday we had our mega-zone conference, so all the missionaries in Queens. President Calderwood is going to be a very good mission president. He gave a really good workshop about how we need to make sure we are converted before we can convert anyone else. He showed a piece of a talk that Elder Holland gave in the MTC in January 2011 (this talk is one of the best talks I have ever seen, especially for Missionary work, if you can somehow get a hold of it for the youth that would be amazing. We see some piece or other of this talk basically every big conference). This piece was talking about how Preach My Gospel was created as a direct result of President Hinkley looking at how many missionaries go less active after they get home. Preach My Gospel was made so that the Doctrine of Christ gets so rooted into our souls that we are changed forever.

One other spiritual insight that I had there about Charity (which wasn't really talked about at the conference this time, usually is) was that I was just thinking about how many less actives there are because of chisme (gossip, chisme is just a much funner word). And then also about how we have lost investigators because of unforgiving people, members and nonmembers. And then a bunch of scriptures started running through my head like in D&C where it says we are all required to forgive all men. Then in Moroni 7 and Ether 12 where it says that Charity is the pure love of Christ and that Christ's pure love is the Atonement. Then in the Sermon on the Mount, Christ says to judge not. And then it all just started clicking in my head. Everyone always talks about how charity is about serving others. That is a big part of it but another big part I just learned is forgiving unconditionally and not judging. If true charity is the Atonement, the closest we can get to emulating that is by forgiving others and serving selflessly. The Atonement is Christ making it possible for us to be forgiven, so when we don't forgive we are mocking His sacrifice. Every time we say something or even think something bad about someone, we are not forgiving them, and often times when we judge people we are withholding forgiveness for something that people haven't even done. That is my spiritual insight for the week. Now just the matter of putting it into practice. That's pretty easy for everyone right?

 Love you all,

Elder Pearce