01 March, 2011

The sacrament, a renewal of commitment

Hola familia, Well thank you a ton for the letter Dad, I learned a lot from everything you said. Well, this has been probably one of the hardest weeks of my misison honestly. My companion only has like 3 months left in the mission, and so he has no desire to do anything in the work or anything. We have lost the majority of our investigators, the members don't do anything to help us, and some have even started falling away from the church, and then on top of all of that it was raining almost all the week. Honestly I have just felt overwhelmed this week, and have had very little desire to force my companion to work. ONe of the biggest problems, is that when it rains here, people go in their house, shut the doors, and sleep. And, since we don't have very many investigators, it has been hard. My companion just sleeps all the time, and I finally got to the point that I just let him, and just studdied instead of trying to go out and work. We only taught 13 lessons during the week, but more important than the numbers, is that I really don't feel like I put forth all of my effort this week to help the people. It´s interesting what you said in the letter, because it's a lot of the things that I have learned in my studies during the week. I have been reading a lot of Jesus the Christ, while I was waiting for my companion to wake up, and have learned a ton from reading it. I really liked what you said in the letter, that the lord may not take away our burdens, but he will help us get through them. When I took the sacrament this week, I was thinking a lot about this past week, and felt regretful that I hadn't done all that I could during the week. When I took the sacrament, I felt all the fear, the frustration and everything that I had been feeling during the week leave, and it was replaced with a new love toward my Savior. I really am so grateful for his atoning sacrifice, and that he died to make it posible to overcome the weaknesses that I have. I feel like a different person now, and have the desire to work as hard as I can during the rest of my mission. I never again want to feel the regret of not having done everything that I could to help the people here. During this week, we were walking through a little stream that is filled with trash in our area to get to a different area. My companion stepped on a packet of milk that had water and rotten milk inside. It splattered all over the both of us, on our clothes, face, and everything. We had to go 20 minutes back to the house, take a shower, and change our clothes to go back out to work. Fernando, our recent convert is doing really well. He applied for a job, and under religion, put "Mormon." In this week the people told him that he won't be able to work their because he is Mormon, and rejected him from the job. Unfortunately, it's Paraguay, so there's not really anything to protect against that. Fortunately, he is still doing well, and just was a little frustrated that they did that. On Sunday, we had a special fireside with President Arnold of the 70, the President of the area South America South. It was a special fireside for recent converts, and investigators and us. We brought Fernando, and tow of our investigators met us their. One of them didn't seem like he cared, but the other one was really impressed, and we are going to keep working with him. Well, that's about all that has happened during the week. I love you guys, and thank you so much for all your love and support. Sorry that I've had a couple of negative emails in that past couple weeks. I hope all is going well with you guys, and I'll talk to you next week. Love ya tons! -Elder Ryan Griffin

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