Hey,
guys! I hope you all had a great week!
Sorry I couldn't e-mail yesterday. My companion had his final interview and we were gone all day
basically. I can't believe that it is already March... This week was
crazy fast! This letter is much better. I was up til midnight writing
it, so that I didn't have to sit in front of the computer screen thinking
what I needed to write haha...
Tuesday
was just a normal day. We have been teaching a lady named Rosa. She's
like 35ish, has two kids that got baptized like 9 months ago. She wants
to get baptized so bad, but... she is living with a guy. His name is
Abel, sells vegetables for a living. He is married to some other lady,
but left her and now is with Rosa. He doesn't want anything to do with
the church. Rosa doesn't love him and doesn't want to marry him. Abel
feels the same about her. It is so sad to see all the families here and
how much they are missing. But we finally just talked to her and told
her to kick him out of the house cause he is only there cause he needs a
place to live. She wants to do it but is scared. Pray for her to have
the courage to do it. She wants to get baptized!
Also at around 6 pm, the
power went out, so we had to go to our house cause it's not safe and it
was pitch black. The power didn't come back til midnight. I showered at
9:30 pm. It was still 90* so i laid in my bed but with no fan (AC doesn't
exist here) and laid there for about 45 minutes and was sweating so bad
that I got up turned my flashlight on to find huge sweat marks on my
bed. So i went to shower again at 10:30 pm, then went and sweated some
more while I was reading my scriptures. Then finally at midnight the
power came back, showered again, then went to bed peacefully:)
Wednesday
we had a multizona. Elder Ochoa from the Area Seventy came.
It was a good
day. Sister Russell talked about one of my favorite topics, Faith. There
are two definitions of faith:
1- Definición del mundo: See = Believe. There is a famous saying in English" "I'll believe it when I see it."
2-
Definición del Señor: Believe = See. It is simple. In order to see, we
have to believe. One of my favorite scriptures says, "But, behold, faith
cometh not by signs, but signs follow those that believe." -Doctrine and Covenants 63:9. If
you have faith, fear disappears. We will have many times in our lives
when we don't understand why we need to do certain things, but we need to
trust in the Lord and do it!
One of my favorite examples of stories of
faith is Lehi. "And it came to pass that the Lord commanded my father, even in a dream, that
he should take his family and depart into the wilderness. And it came to pass that he was obedient unto the word of the Lord, wherefore he did as the Lord commanded him.
And it came to pass that he departed into the wilderness. And he left his house, and the land of his inheritance, and his gold, and his silver, and his
precious things, and took nothing with him, save it were his family,and provisions, and tents,
and departed into the wilderness."
-1 Nephi 2: 2-4.
It really is true that by small and simple things,
great things are brought to pass! Imagine if Lehi wasn't obedient to the
Lord or didn't put his faith in the Lord and did not act on what he had received? Would they ever have arrived in the Americas? Would we have
the Book of Mormon? It's questions that get you thinking. But thank
goodness that Lehi put his faith in God and did it! We also need to have
that type of faith and trust in God even if we don't see why (Ether
12:6).
First, we need to have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Second,
live by faith. Lastly, continue to increase our faith daily. Faith is a
gift from God, but you must nurture your faith to keep it strong. Faith
is like the muscle of your arm. If you exercise it, it grows strong. If
you put it in a sling and leave it there, it becomes weak.
Friday,
we had consejo with President Russell and Elder Ochoa came, also. It was
by far the best consejo that I have been to. Just talked a lot about
the strengths and weaknesses of the mission. It was awesome to have
someone from the Seventy there.
Saturdays
are always crazy, baptisms. And a lot of times there are problems, and
when there are problems we have to go and help out. Saturday morning, we
got a call from one of the DL's that had two baptisms that day but the
dad told his son (18) not to do it (typical Nica father) and the girl
(15) didn't think that she was ready. So Martinez and I went over to
their house and started talking to them. The Spirit was actually strong. I explained to them a lot of scriptures about faith how it is not a
perfect knowledge and we receive no testimony until after the trial of
our faith and all we do is need to plant a desire to believe in our
hearts and act with faith that things will work out for our own good. So
all in all, they both got baptized! It was awesome. We ended up with 23
baptisms as a zone in Febrero.
Sunday,
the Lord blessed me a lot more than I deserved because I wasn't in the
area for much time this week. I got eight investigators to church. It was
awesome! Right now I don't have a ton of investigators, but the people
that I am teaching, all have problems like Law of Castidad, Word of
Wisdom, parents... problems, problems, problems. Got to get them all
figured out cause they need to get baptized.
I
have been thinking about a lot of things lately. I'm rounding third base
and I'm almost home. I have many more things I need to learn. I have
learned many things on my mission. It is my foundation to my life, but I
also recognize that I will learn things for the rest of my life that
will be building upon my foundation. But my foundation will never crack. It will never fall apart. Even when all the storms and turbulent times
come, I can say that my foundation is strong enough that it will NEVER
be destroyed.
One thing that I am really trying to work on right now is
looking for the good when you feel that there isn't any because
sometimes after walking days and days in this heat with dirt being blown
into your face and no one receiving you, you kinda feel like there is
no recompensa. But I recognize that if I keep trying my hardest and
trusting in the Lord, things will work out. We will always have hard
times but with the restored gospel we can find true happiness. But,
happiness is not the absence of problems, it's the ability to deal with
them. This gospel gives us hope for something better. Hard times come
and go, but if it weren't for the hard things, we wouldn't ever learn. Once
we replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you'll start having
positive results.
I love this Gospel with all my heart. I try each day
to be a little better.
I hope you all have a great week.
Have faith and remember, "It's so hard when we HAVE to, and so easy when we WANT to"!!!
Elder Copahland
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