Another Week

This week has been a really good week!! I have gone from being MRSAful (merciful) to MRSAless (merciless) haha! Anyway, this week I have really gotten a lot more confidence with my Spanish and I feel like I am understanding a lot more and able to teach better as well!! I am learning so much!  I love my family and I learned that without love nothing is possible.  Like if I don't have love for my investigators then I am not doing my job as a missionary.

Another thing that I learned that I would like to share with you all is that you cannot do anything without prayer.  When you pour your heart out to our Heavenly Father He will help you with anything that you need. I learned that prayer is needed both before you do something and after you do something. Prayer helps your testimony grow and I know that it will inspire me to know what I need to do as a missionary!

During the devotional on Tuesday the Elder from the Seventy told a story of how an Elder prayed to be able to know where to go.  He prayed specifically and asked what street and what house to go to and the Spirit was able to guide him and his companion to be able to find a family.  However, he also told a story about how when you don't pray you may miss out on teaching.  He talked about how a man was ready to be converted in Costa Rica and the missionaries had to leave because of political issues. When the missionaries were able to come back he would see them and hope they would talk to him. Then one day the missionaries were right next door and the family was not home he thought they would come to his house and they didn't.  It wasn't until a member talked to him about the church 6 years later that he joined!! 

I love the M.T.C. because of the Spirit it is really amazing all the things that you can learn! Oh I almost forgot I heard the best talk by David A Bednar it was a recording from when he came for Christmas! He talked about the characteristics of Christ.  He said that we need to be constantly turning out the natural man like Christ.  He turned it out when he was on the cross, He asked our Father in Heaven to forgive the people and to have John take care of his mother. He also said that cookie monster reminds him of the natural man. "ME WANT COOKIE NOW!" "I WANT BAPTISMS NOW, I WANT INVESTIGATORS NOW!"  He talked about how we live in such a now generation. We need to care about other people and have patience like Christ did. He also challenged all of us to get a cheap copy of the Book of Mormon and go through and mark the characteristics of Christ.  I am going to take that challenge because I want to learn more about Christ. He gave the advice to us that we should have 100 copies of the Book of Mormon and label them with what we wanted to find in our study.  So, me being a missionary and inviting others to come unto Christ I want to give all of you who are reading this email I am sending a challenge.  I would like you to purchase a cheap paper back copy of the Book of Mormon and choose one thing you want to learn about and mark it up.  Can you do that? OK I am hearing a unanimous yes coming from you :-) I love this church and I love this gospel!

Love, Elder Reisner