Hey!
Haha sounds like everyone has had a pretty fun week (haha except
for you dad...no offense...). I'm glad everyone has been enjoying the summer. I
can't believe school starts in just a couple weeks!
This week was pretty good. The President and the assistants
were out of town all week, so it was just us office elders here. Haha I didn't
realize how crazy the assistants were until they left. It was way quite in our
pench without them. But this week we managed to go and teach several less
active families which was great. Haha you know one thing I love about the
mission? When a guy that is completely drunk/drugged, walks up to you in the
street and mumbles in spanish telling you to come to his house...you go without
hesitating. I used to spend a lot more time talking to people that weren't
really all there, but now that I spend so much time in the office and the bank,
it doesn't exactly happen as much, but we got to do that this week. I was just
thinking how at any other point in my life, I probably would have kind of
freaked out if that happened, but now it somehow seems normal and the three of
us didn't even really hesitate in accepting the invitation. Good times on the
mission.
I heard some good news about Rodeo del Medio this week!
Someone that Elder Perez and I talked to in the street during my 2nd to last
week there is getting baptized today! And do you remember Patricia? Her brother
and his girlfriend have committed to pray about a baptismal date and they've
been going to church! Haha I literally tried to get those two to go to church
for like 5 months, and as soon as I leave they finally go! Well, better late
than never I guess. So that was way exciting to hear.
This week I've also been pretty busy with the mission budget
(wow, that was probably the most boring sounding thing I've ever written).
But the new president and his wife kept asking me questions about the budget
worked, and it wasn't quite set up perfectly, so I basically just went through
and re-did the whole mission budget while they were gone, to answer their
questions. I've been also trying to figure out how to fund a trip to Chile for
next week. The secretaries are basically in charge of keeping everyone in the
mission legal, and for whatever reason, they decided it would be easier to just
have some people leave the country and then just re-enter, so we got special
permission to do that. So I've been figuring out how to send them over there.
Fun stuff.
So, verse of the week. 1 Corinthians 13:1-3. These verses
talk about the importance of having charity. The thing that caught my attention
was in verse 3. Often, when we think about charity, we think of physical,
charitable actions. Verse 3 says that "and though I bestow all my goods to
feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it
profiteth me nothing." So clearly, actions alone are not charity. If
charity was actions, then it would be impossible to "bestow all my goods
to feed the poor...and have not charity", but charity is more than
actions. It is the desire and intent that we have to help others. A gift
without real desire to help someone would be hypocrisy, not charity. The other
thing that caught my attention was the phrase "it profiteth me
nothing". Two things are implied by that. The first is that, the gift,
even given without charity, does in fact help the person you gave it to, so in
that sense, it is still worth doing it, it just wouldn't help you. The second
thing is that, since he is explaining that a gift without charity doesn't help
you, than he is implying that the opposite is true, that is, that a gift given
with charity, does help you. Its all things I've heard before but it was
something I hadn't noticed in that scripture before.
And with that, I hope you all have another great week! Go
out there and doing something charitable, with charity!
Elder Webster
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