Elder Joshua Blotter's Mission: Week 14

Responses To Questions:

So piano? Yeah, I play the opening hymn but none of the other ones, because the bishopric member conducting announces like 10 seconds before the hymn is sung, so I can't prepare at all. They are terrible at singing so, I have to play perfect or I'm screwed. It's hard.

Work For This Week:

We worked our tails off. Our investigators progressed but, at the same time, they all stopped progressing.

Virginia, the really cool catholic lady, went out of town, so she couldn't come to church. Her daughter apparently lives in a different colony during the weekend, so she can't/doesn't come to church.

Fernando, who is like a rock compared to his family, (they're members) decided he couldn't come cause his studies were more important. He is becoming a lawyer and has a big test coming up.

Maria Luna and her husband are being super frustrating. They are willing to accept what we teach them, but recently they've been terrible at applying it. Specifically, they are struggling with the Word of Wisdom. No one here has understood the importance of the B.O.M and actually asking God if its true. That is why there are so many less-active members here in Mexico - because they, as investigators, don't learn how to pray. It sounds like something easy - "You can just teach them the importance of reading and praying..." But after an entire lesson about the B.O.M, and the importance of it in conversion and praying to ask God if its true, you ask them to give the closing prayer of the lesson and they don't ask God if its all true in their prayer. This prayer happens like ten seconds after asking them to pray and ask a specific question and they don't do it! Discouraging...

This week I've been focusing on "commandments" and "obedience" in my personal study, there are some pretty wonderful scriptures about those. One thing I found really intriguing was about Noah, in Genesis. It talks about how Noah was perfect before God and just and all this stuff, and then if you look in Moses it says that Noah was obedient. I think that's really cool that he was perfect before God. Obedience is something based in love. If we love God, then we obey. When we obey we receive blessings, when we disobey, Leviticus 26 says that there are some bad consequences. If you act in rebellion there are some terrible consequences. One of my favorite scriptures on Obedience is 1 Nephi 3:7 "I will go and do..." and there's a part at the end of 2 Nephi where Nephi says, "I've written these things because the lord has commanded me and I MUST obey." I want that in my character. I don't know if I've shared this before: in Jesus the Christ it talks about Peter the Zealot. and how he needed to tone his zealousness down to become an effective apostle. He had to learn meekness and charity but his attribute of being zealously obedient made him a powerful apostle.

Embarrassing Story Of The Week:

I felt weird all of yesterday, had like burps that tasted terrible from like the second I woke up till night time. I felt weird in my stomach too, like I had to go to the bathroom all day. At the last appt. of the day my stomach decided to die. Not like "I felt sick", but "If I didn't use a bathroom right then I'd curl up on the ground in a ball in pain," so I go to use the bathroom. The door is a curtain and its about 7 feet away from the kitchen table were we were all sitting. All I'm saying is that it wasn't quiet. And I knew they were hearing practically everything. Pretty much I have just accepted the fact that everyone poops, and to not be ashamed.

Even funnier... another Elder in my ward pooped himself this past week. They were really far from their house, so they took a taxi back, and when they got out of the Taxi, he left a nice little spot on the seat...... hahaha. A day later the taxi driver came and was like remember me? Ya, I found the spot... and the Elder payed him a decent amount of money (for Mexico) to like clean it and to not get beat up.

well I love you guys!

Elder Blotter