Thoughts on the Book of Mormon: Helaman 4

I was reading in Helaman 4:11-12 

11 Now this great loss of the Nephites, and the great slaughter which was among them, would not have happened had it not been for their wickedness and their abomination which was among them; yea, and it was among those also who professed to belong to the church of God.

12 And it was because of the pride of their hearts, because of their exceeding riches, yea, it was because of their oppression to the poor, withholding their food from the hungry, withholding their clothing from the naked, and smiting their humble brethren upon the cheek, making a mock of that which was sacred, denying the spirit of prophecy and of revelation, murdering, plundering, lying, stealing, committing adultery, rising up in great contentions, and deserting away into the land of Nephi, among the Lamanites

Those who professed to belong to the church of God had become so wicked and because of their wickedness and abominations there was a great slaughter among them. It all started because of "PRIDE".

Pride is feeling satisfaction for ones achievements.  Pride becomes a problem then when we think more of oneself than we should and we don't recognize and appreciate the gifts that we receive from God. We then become boastful and self centered and take credit for everything we do instead of realizing that everything comes from God and that we are dependent on Him. Pride blinds us and we become self confident and independent and we don't feel the need to be humble and ask God for wisdom.

President Nelson has taught us: "We can choose to let God prevail in our lives, or not. We can choose to let God be the most powerful influence in our lives, or not...The question for each of us, regardless of race, is the same. Are you willing to let God prevail in your life? Are you willing to let God be the most important influence in your life? Will you allow His words, His commandments, and His covenants to influence what you do each day? Will you allow His voice to take priority over any other? Are you willing to let whatever He needs you to do take precedence over every other ambition? Are you willing to have your will swallowed up in His?..My dear brothers and sisters, as you choose to let God prevail in your lives, you will experience for yourselves that our God is “a God of miracles.”

President Nelson also has taught us to "Hear Him" and to learn to listen to the Holy Ghost: "Our Father knows that when we are surrounded by uncertainty and fear, what will help us the very most is to hear His Son. Because when we seek to hear—truly hear—His Son, we will be guided to know what to do in any circumstance. I renew my plea for you to do whatever it takes to increase your spiritual capacity to receive personal revelation".

President Nelson also said this about keeping our spiritual momentum: "Spiritual momentum can help us withstand the relentless, wicked attacks of the adversary and thwart his efforts to erode our personal spiritual foundation"

I am grateful for a prophet that helps us see and teaches us what we need to do so we can become strong and be able to withstand the influences of the adversary. I we choose to let God prevail in our lives, by learning to Hear Him and keeping our Spiritual momentum by doing those things that bring the Spirit into our lives we will be able to withstand the darts from the adversary and not fall like those in the Book of Mormon who were led away because of pride.

Thoughts on the Book of Mormon: Moroni

I was thinking about this week’s come follow me.  Moroni wrote a letter to Pahoran. Moroni was angry because he thought Pahoran was not wanting to send help to his army. You know that the scriptures say how awesome was Moroni. In Alma 48:17 

17 Yea, verily, verily I say unto you, if all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken forever; yea, the devil would never have power over the hearts of the children of men.

And yet Moroni got angry. It made me think of all of us, we are humans and have weaknesses but Heavenly Father knows us and our capabilities. Even though we are not  perfect God works with us and can use us for His purposes if we allow Him to change us and transform us into a better version of ourselves. We may not be perfect but we are working towards that, every day becoming better. Moroni wasn't perfect but God had a plan for him, Moroni was a great man and leader with imperfections. We are all like Moroni, imperfect beings doing our best everyday to follow Christ and return to our Heavenly Father some day.

Thoughts on the Book of Mormon: Alma 44

I was thinking about the Come Follow Me lesson for today. As I was reading about how the Nephites were fighting for their faith, religion, right to worship, their liberty, their families, their country and the sacred word of God to which they owed their happiness (Alma 44:5).  Then Alma 44:4 says this:  

ye see that this is the true faith of God; yea, ye see that God will support, and keep, and preserve us, so long as we are faithful unto him, and unto our faith, and our religion; and never will the Lord suffer that we shall be destroyed except we should fall into transgression and deny our faith.

This made me think of how even though there’s so much confusion going on in the world today that as long as we are faithful and stay in the covenant path that God will protect us. He promises us that he will preserve us if we are faithful.

There will be people like Amalickiah who will try to deceive members of the church but if we follow the prophet and are faithful we will be protected from being deceived. In Alma 46:15

It says:

15 And those who did belong to the church were faithful; yea, all those who were true believers in Christ took upon them, gladly, the name of Christ, or Christians as they were called, because of their belief in Christ who should come.

When we are baptized we take upon ourselves the name of Jesus Christ and covenant with Him. When we go to the temple we also make covenants. Heavenly Father will protect us when we are faithful.

When Moroni wrote the title of liberty the people did “enter into a covenant that they will maintain their rights, and their religion, that the Lord God may bless them” 

We are a covenant people and blessings come from making and keeping covenants. As the world gets harder and harder it’s is our obedience to these covenants that will keep us safe. 

I love the Book of Mormon because it helps us see what the people of ancient America went through and helps us in our days and how we can overcome our trials. 

August 26, 2024 - 53rd Email - Was last pday really just a week ago

Hi lol

It's been a while (a week to be exact) and here I am with another email

And lemme tell ya this week was lowkey long lol

So i got a haircut on tuesday and it feels like that was two years ago fr (an entire mission in a week) it was pretty funny so the week before I had called our ward mission leader just like "hey does anyone in the ward give haircuts" and he was like uh hermana corvera has a friend that does and so we saw her thursday and i was like ayo i heard you have a friend that cuts hair and she was like yeah i do lol and so we set that up for tuesday and she asked me "who told you i had a friend that cuts hair" (all dis is in spainsh btw) and i was like oh yeah it was hermano arroyo he ratted you out and she was like "oh i figured it was him"

It was a good haircut it looks pretty epic i think at least

Oh yeah also tuesdays we have these meetings as leaders in the zone (one of our stl's started doing it which is weird cuz we already have our meeting before zone council on thursdays but whatever) and we were out visiting people and then this guy told us to come back later so we were like "well we have time rn lets go get a car wash" so we go to get a car wash but then theyre all like "hey turn your camera on" (it was a facebook messenger call) and i was like heck i dont want to turn on my camera we at da car wash and so i just played like it was totally normal but then obviously in the car wash the soap they put on the car is like super colorful and one of the stl's goes "whoa whats happening in elder hansons car it looks like a big o party" (it literally looked like there was a disco ball or something with all the colors) and so i showed that we were in the car wash and everybody just about died of laughter so that was fun it probably wouldve been easier if i just left my camera off

The weather these last couple days has been super nice btw like obviously its still hot but its no longer triple digits so thats good

Nights are actually like pristine quality weather fr theres been good breezes and its been hecka fun we went up to the mountains on friday at about 7 pm and it was like 61 degrees it was awesome

Still waiting patiently for it to rain (i havent seen rain since march)

Wednesday we did a fun exchange with some epic missionaries it was good but its always fun exchanging with english missionaries and staying in the spanish area because you really just teach all the lessons yourself and he was talking about how every time we had a lesson he would just think about the most random things (he said he forgot what things tho) because he cant understand spanish so like basically he just daydreamed the whole day (he is a goofy guy)

Also also theres a limited time gatorade flavor at the gas stations so you know i had to try that its called midnight ice and lowkey it just tastes the same as the grape gatorade but i had to buy it because its limited time i couldnt live with myself if i never tried it i mean it was good but i dont really get why its limited time

Our friend Alex is progressing nicely, word of wisdom problems are still there but he's actually reading what we tell him to in the book of mormon so thats super cool (and he's actually remembering it too) so he definitely has a good commitments

We talked a bit about 1 Nephi 4:6 about following the Spirit and not knowing beforehand what we doin and we explained about how we can trust the Lord and everything will be aight which is good because bro really needs it rn def read that chapter it's cool

He even read chapter 8 on his own about the lehi's vision and he actually like understood it pretty well we talked about that too

Oh yeah friday was a goofy day

We did like no studies that day so we wake up in the morning and we go to a lesson thats on the western side of our area (we live in the eastern side its like a 15 minute drive) and then we go back home to study and then i call our member dinner and she tells us to go see her right then we had literally been home ten minutes and elder bryan was cooking up some chicken, she had a second to meet us before she met with a client for work but she gave us an address that had two problems

1. The address didnt exist

2. It was outside of our zone if it did (the closest address number)

So we call her and she's like "yeah so i was confused by that too" and then she said give me a minute and then hung up and so we waited like ten minutes and called her again but she kept being super confusing and cryptic on the phone i couldnt really understand her so we had no idea what we were doin but she eventually told us to go to the home depot and we said ok we'll go to home depot and then she was like yeah but not at the home depot its at the stater bros (californian grocery store like smiths if you know utah) so idk why she didnt just say meet at stater bros the first time and so we go over and we pick up subway cards but she also gives us the cards for the hermanas in the ward so we've already spent like an hour trying to get our subway cards and its like 1 pm and we just went home and told the hermanas we'd get them their cards in like an hour because we needed to eat lunch and then the zone leaders came home and reminded us it was deep cleaning day!!!!! (Yay) so we went over to the hermanas apartment real fast and gave the hermanas their subway cards and then went back home and cleaned the apartment for two hours and finally got to subway about 5 pm but the line took FOREVER so we didnt get our food until about 5:30.

That was a fun day lol

Oh yeah also during deep cleaning so basically for the last two transfers (since before i got here) our toilet has been broken it basically didnt fill itself with water and we had to manually do it (not like dumping water or anything but there was a valve we had to turn to run the water) but there was a weird thing with the valve where if you turned it slowly it would fill up super fast so we just dealt with it but last week it stopped filling up fast so we were like oh yeah this a problem and we actually got a phone call from the housing coordinators in this area on thursday and they were trying to call another companionship but they called us by accident so before they hung up i was like "ayo we actually need help with something fix our toilet" (not exactly what i said but basically) and they were like ok and we got our toilet fixed on friday so we now have a functioning toilet (but the lid still keeps falling off )

Also on tuesday we got "dinner" from a member (she gave us $30 which sounds fine but she handed us an envelope with a $20, a $5, 3 $1s, and 8 quarters in it)

Saturday and sunday were suuuuper long because we had like no planned lessons so we just contacted all day those two days

But it was ok we found 7 new people to teach by wednesday which is our standard as a mission so we were pretty chillin on numbers this week

We also got 4 people to church but they were all different people from last week! And last week we got 4 too, imagine we get all 8 it'd be so cool

Ok thats pretty much it we got a new ward mission leader on sunday so thats weird

Also transfers are this week ive been in san bernardino for nearly 3 months already lol i want to stay so bad i have a lot of people i really want to see progress and a lot of people i care about so i want to stay for just one more transfer

Thisll also be my tenth transfer counting the mtc which is nuts

Aight bye lol

Pictures:

-converting yoda on exchanges

-cool sunset

-lake arrowhead church building chapel (we hung out in the mountains for pday)

-the zone (last pday yknow)

August 19, 2024 - 52nd Email - One year ago i was still a missionary

It's pday so that means its time for another email

Dang this week went by fast

Craziest thing was probably hitting a year out on the mission on tuesday

I have 11 months left now as of the 23rd this week so thats wild its only downhill from here (jkjk)

It was cool tho telling people "yeah ive been out a year now as of today" and theyre all like wow happy birthday

So here i am and im just chillin

There was some stuff that went down in my zone (and thats a whole crazy story on its own that ill leave up to the interpretation of the reader) and the districts got moved around so now one of the tech elders is a district leader on top of being a tech elder and covering three areas lol

That sounds fun

Honestly pretty normal week where we did a lot of contacting

Something cool that happened was that presidente luna from the mission presidency came to the ward to talk about the plan of salvation and missionary work so that was super cool and these two guys pulled up after the activity and we did a good chapel tour and it ended up going until like 9:30  but its ok

Ok so friday we had planned to visit our friends in the mountains cuz its far and we get there and they arent home which was depressing so we drove away but then i was like nah bro we boutta go back so we went back and one person was there and we taught him and then later we committed the family to church over phone and guess what they didnt come to church but thats ok because it wasnt a total waste of 2 and a half hours in the mountains because we at least talked to one person

Saturday i went on exchanges to english land so that was cool it was super fun and we had a few good lessons and set up for people to come to church

Then on sunday absolutely 1 person we conmitted to church of the like 20 actually came

But its ok because we mass texted slightly interested people sunday morning and we got 3 other people there so we were chillin

We also had dinner with a family in the ward on sunday and it was cool she gave us some gossip on goofy stuff missionaries have done in the past and it was WILD

and then we had a pretty regular evening

Today for pday we played pickleball at the church did a fun tournament with the zone it was cool i lost but i put up a good fight

Ok thats basically it lol

Cant believe ive been in california for a year just yesterday i was living in a single family house in victorville with absolutely no idea what i was doing and now im in san bernardino in the ghetto with only slightly more of an idea of what im doing Jesus has fr taken the wheel

Heres da pictures

-i gotchu woody

-up in the mountains

-up in the mountains again

Alright bye lol

August 12, 2024 - 51st Email - Everything is on fire for the third time plus animal cruelty

 What is even happening anymore

This week was basically in two parts

Before thursday and after thursday at about 2 pm

So basically

Elder mullins finished his mission rip the ginger because he was only gonna go untim halfway through this transfer

A bunch of epic missionaries finished their missions too including my trainer elder gonzalez which is super sad but i am now at the same point they were when i started. I reach 365 days out tomorrow (i started on august 14 but because of leap year i hit a year on august 13th) so thats pretty crazy that exactly a year ago tomorrow i was set apart and i still have 11 and a half months left

Ok so monday we had a noche de hogar (family home evening) but like nobody showed up (not really they all showed up a half hour late) and then us and the hermanas basically spent the entire time sending memes to each other on messenger and trying not to die

It was crazy so we pull up to the noche de hogar and nobody is there right because everyones running on hispanic clocks so we open the church building and a confused lady comes out of a room and says "you got somethin going on?" Apparently shes the wife of the english ward bishop and she had a couple cats with her and there was a really big wildfire that ended up burning down some odd 8 houses which was sad but their house was fine they just got evacuated so they all chillin now but we went up to the mountain where the fire was the next day and got sick pictures

On tuesday elder mullins hung out with the zls so it was just me and elder bryan and we saw a police raid (my second one that ive seen on the mission) and then the next day elder mullins said "hey did you guys hear about the fbi raid in muscoy" and we were like wait what we were there yesterday and there was a raid but the fbi mustve gotten there later apparently there was illegal chicken fighting and betting and the whole thing got shut down by the fbi but there was also probably a whole drug operation too or something with other goofy stuff so it was definitely something the fbi had to deal with but it was weird we saw it before it happened

Also tuesday evening was NUTS we had our elders quorum president come out with us for 3 straight lessons and they were all fire and we basically spedran all of them because they were scheduled a half hour apart and we were literally running for our lives to get to each one on time but our elders quorum president didnt care he just came with it was sick

Wednesday elder mullins said goodbye to everybody it was super sad

And thursday we had a good zone council and elder mullins said bye to a few more people and then we dropped him off at the mission home at 2 and then we were left on our own

We got pictures but bro hasnt sent em to me yet so thats sad lol

We were really sad to see him go but we'll keep the area afloat its only for three weeks

We gave a blessing to a lady that afternoon

Uhhh one person came to english class that was depressing

Friday was a ton of contacting, we did a huge amount of just visiting people over the weekend cuz we didnt have a lot of lessons

Saturday we went to the mountains it was hype to visit someone but i didnt get any pictures lol

We also helped move furniture and rip out carpet in a members house that was fun

First couple days without elder mullins and i think we survived

Alright thats my week

Bye lol

Pictures

-fire

-more fire

-dinner with a member family on tuesday

-cinnamon toast crunch bugles

August 5, 2024 - 50th Email - Goofy week

Hey

Zone conference was this week and it was cool

Saw a bunch of other goofy goober missionaries I havent seen in a while so that was cool

Some really cool talks and trainings especially an awesome one by elder jensen (who i lived with in victorville) on repentance

Elder Gonzalez (my dad [my trainer]) gave his farewell talk and I think that's pretty cool I was in one of the zones at the zone conference where he gave it

Also elder mullins did too

So theres a big group of missionaries that leaves this thursday (halfway through da transfer) bucuz they need to go to school in the fall on time or something (excuses)

And elder mullins and also elder gonzalez are part o that group so they be dippin here soon

Elder bryan and i boutta be a regular companionship after thursday which is wild ive enjoyed being in a trio but we have to do everything now lol

It's like a half transfer, itll just be for three weeks so we'll survive

It was honestly like the slowest week of all time its probably competing for slowest week of my mission which is weird because we also had some really fun days

We didnt find too many new people for most of the week because literally everybody proceeded to not open the door but its ok we survive because on sunday we ended up finding 3 people (well one of them mightve been a stretch but we still work it out)

Also we have a member that takes us to a mexican restaurant all the time and i decided to branch out this week and had some bomb tacos they were crazy good

We had this friend who we went over every single day of the week he was super cool and then on saturday we determined we wouldnt have time to visit him (we were having dinner with some awesome members that day) and then sunday he pulled up to church on an electric scooter an hour late which was a miracle and we were worried he was upset that we didnt go over the night before and then he proceeded to ask us "hey you didnt come by the house yesterday did you because i was dead asleep like all day" so we were like "phew" and also like "yes lets go" because bro actually came to church for the first time

Oh yeah we had a lesson with some friends that live up in the mountains but i havent actually met them yet because every time we have lessons with them we go on exchanges and when he came to church last week i went to a baptism in a different building and i still havent actually met them even though theyve been taught for weeks because we had elder mullins pop over with the tech elders that day and they just went to the lesson because they were gonna be in the mountains anyway so they hit him up

Also about the car that i got in an accident last week the car senior missionary told me i was chillin and i wont get my driving revoked so ya boy is still allowed to drive and that makes me happy so yay i guess

Visited a member yesterday to eat food and then got bible bashed outside his door in one of the courtyards of the apartment complex by some high guy and he was trying to tell us we dont know the bible by giving us random verses he expects us to have memorized and im just like well dawg the discussions aint just reciting bible verses we dont have the whole thing memorized so elder mullins just pulls it right back at him with random bible verses saying how we can pull up verses that we know and he doesnt it depends on how you study the bible and then he pulls up his phone and elder mullins says "hey but you should have these memorized" and then the guy didnt get like aggressive (i mean he was high and prob didnt pick up the sarcasm) but he started following us and yelling at us sp we just walked away and around the building the back way to get to the members apartment ive ran into this guy before but hes a dum dum fr like all bible bashers that expect us to just know everything

We went hiking this morning for our pday activity up in crestline voy a mandar fotos ot was really purdy up there with trees and stuff and the drives are sick between the cities in the mountains its called the "rim of the world highway" how fire does that sound

Also at zone conference our second counselor in the mission presidency talked about david and goliath and that story is super cool  and its also found in 1 samuel 17 which i didnt know before i probably shouldve but i do now so go read it its good

Ok anyway that was my week pray for elder bryan and i that we wont burn the area to the ground once elder mullins leaves

And remember how i smashed my finger bad it's starting to heal which is great ill post some progression pics of that too

Pics!

-My finger two weeks ago (right) vs an hour ago (left)

-hike pics

-sunset

-rim of the world view