Well I hope your guys's Christmas went well, ours was good.
Well for some up dates, I am right now reading in the old Testament, about to finish, I'm in Jeramiah right now, so i'll be finishing it pretty soon. Although it is a little bit boring, I really have learned a lot from reading it. I am also in the BOM for the third time in the mission I believe, I'm in Mosiah.
I got a package from the Rassmusen family, that was really nice of them to send. they sent three ties and some cereal.
Also I got a notice of a package saying that I have one, I don't know if it was from you guys or not, but it weighs like 1 pound or so. I'll be getting that next week.
Well, I already told you some of the things that happened this week, but I will tell it in a little more detail now.
On Thursday, the 1 year old daughter of a member fell off the motorcycle onto the concrete. We didn't see it, but the hermano came over to us in a panic, and asked us to give his daughter a blessing. As he started going over to go into a room, she started throwing up a bunch, and then I realized how serious it was. My heart started beating pretty fast, and I started feeling nervous. The guy is having a lot of family problems, and so it would have been really bad if that had have caused more problems. My companion still doesn't know how to give a blessing in spanish, so I gave the blessing. As I started the blessing, I was pretty nervous, seeing as I had never really given an emergency blessing like that before. However, when I started the blessing, I felt the spirit really take over. The words started flowing out, and I blessed her that she would be healed. I felt a deep calm rush over me, adn flet through my hands that the little girl had stopped convulsing, and stopped crying, and had also stopped throwing up. As her sobs calmed, and I felt the peace, I knew then and there that she was going to be healedI really felt the strength of the Priesthood that God has trusted me with. That was one of those moments that I was very grateful to be worthy to give a blessing, and feel that power. We found out that she ended up being perfectly fine, she doesn't even have so much as a bump from the fall. She didn't have a fever, didn't throw up after or anything. It really was a miracle for me to see that.
We also had another cool experience this week. My companion was kind of talking a little bit about how we come into the mission with a lot of faith, and then wse don't see what we want of miracles, and so it crashes our faith. I told him, yeah, but we just have to increase our faith, that's what God is trying to teach us. He told me that he had a lot of faith coming into the mission. Then a story that Dad told me a little while ago came to mind. I told him about how when training elephants in the circus, that they tie it up with a strong cord, and the baby elephant tries time after time to escape. Then with failure after failure, it realizes that it won't escape. Later, they can tie up the full grown elephant with a weaker cord, because they won't even try to escape, due to their memory of the failure before. I told him that we come to the mission with the faith to break the cord, but we just don't have the spiritual maturity. Once most of us gain that maturity, our faith is broken, and we don't expect to see miracles any more. I told him we just have to increase our faith now to be like it was when we came to the mission, and we will then be able to acieve the miracles. Right when I finished saying that, we arrived to our appointment. We talked to a guy, who the missionaries had dropped due to his busy schedule with school. We got there right in time, seeing as he had just taken his last exam, and was now free to talk to us. We had a good lesson with him, and it was really a miracle that we saw from the hand of God. We are really excited for this week, and we are going to be really seeing more miracles this new year.
My companion is doing a lot better. He is walking at a normal pace now, teaching a ton more, speaking Spanish way better. I have really seen a lot of improvement there.
We did have a tough time on Christmas Eve, and Christmas day due to the parties and everything, nobody really wanted to talk to us. They celebrate Christmas more like we celebrate new years. They stay up till 12, then light a ton of fireworks, and then don't do anything on the day of Christmas..... It's kind of weird. On the night of Christmas Eve, I could hardly even sleep due to the blasting of music, and the fireworks that they light off constantly. I kind of dosed off a little, but then at 12 they woke me back up with louder fireworks. Then on Christmas day, we only had 25 out of 40 normal active members in church. Only one of the thee talks was about Christ, and only the very last song was a christmas song. They don't really have the whole Christmas spirit thing here. We did get lunch from a member on Sunday, which was pretty nice. It rained as well, which helped at first, but then it just got really humid and hot. Even though it was a tough day as far as the missionary work goes, I was good to feel like we did what we could on the day. We made a jello-cake, and made some whipped cream to put on top. It actually turned out pretty good.
Today we had a district activity, we were going to do cleaning a little bit of the chapel, but it ended up being locked, and so we couldn't get in. We ended up playing soccer for about an hour or so, until I kicked the ball to hard and broke it. It was fun though, because we have two latins in our district, so I could get some practice in. Other than that, I think I pretty much told you everything else that happened this week, so.... until next year.
I love and miss you guys a ton. I hope and pray that you are all well. Love ya!!!
Elder Ryan Griffin
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