Monday, June 22, 2009

June 22, 2009

Hello my loved ones,

SWINE FLU!!! Pysch! Got you all worried didn´t I? Sorry, I just had to get that out of my system because down here it is very taboo to talk about ¨the disease that will take over the world¨ or so the chileans think.. To explain myself let it be known that 3-4 chileans have died because of the swine flu and for that almost every chilean has this undescribable fear of the illness. Its quite silly actually, I don´t know why everyone is so concerned about it. Less people have died from this than the amount of people who die from drunk driving in 10 minutes or so. Whats the hang up people? Oh well, you all already know that and know that it´s silly, or do you?


This week has been pretty good, well not really, it was pretty bad from the works stand point. Tuesday we had our devotional with Elder Dickson, newsflash, the man has one arm! Regardless he gave us a very deep devotional about how the roots need to grow faster than the branches, something i´ve heard before from Dad but it´s always good to hear quality doctrine again. The part that really was good during the devotional was delivered by Lawrence Corbridge, that man is a spiritual GIANT!!! He is one of the 70´s that lives in my previous sector and he gave us a quality rundown of a discourse(is that what a paper is called?) that we now are going to use as a lesson with the less active members of our wards. It´s a really huge problem down here in Chile. To the point that yesterday we had 6 elders in elders quorum 2 whom have the ¨name badge¨(AKA me and elder Inzunza) and when they passed around the list to mark off if you are ¨present¨ in elders quorum it was 4 stinking pages long... OH MY GOODNESS!!! Yeah so that kinda got me really down about the whole activity rate here in Chile, returning to where i got off on this crazy tangent, we now have a document called ¨perseverad¨ or persevere the which we will be using to drive the point home to the less actives that we all have hope and it comes through the atonement of Jesus Christ and there is no other way. ¨Any other way is foolish¨ as E. Corbridge put it (see his talk in the November 2008 edition of the Ensign) so that was a good charge on the spiritual battery. The next thing of importance that happened this week is that on Thursday I woke up sick, which was no fun but we worked anyhow, Friday we had our last zone conference with Pres which was even less fun because he´s the man. The part that I really took away from his words was how we know if we truly love someone. It was really powerful because he explained to us that love is wanting to be together with someone for the eternities. Obvious that part is my young ones, but the other part was what made me think, If we want to be together with them for the eternities how do we accomplish that? Taking the sacrament weekly, going to the temple, etc... what does all that mean? KEEPING THE COMMANDMENTS.. every single one of them. It was a huge lightbulb moment because I remembered all the times when mom and dad had nagged me to do this or to do that or had made me promise to stop dating someone who shall go un-named and I remembered that in those moments i didn´t feel like they were trying to help me. I felt like they were just nagging me to nag me or what not but I came to the realization that they really were exhorting me to keep the commandments out of Love, pure, pure love and nothing else. This lead me to think that really if I love someone, my comp, my buddies, my family of course, anyone who I think I love I need to help them to keep the commandments so that I can be with them forever. This is ¨family business¨ as Señor West put it. This is forever and not just a game, I need to take it more seriously, that being said i want to extend the invitation (haha i´m a good missionary and not gonna let you off the hook without a commitment) to really love your loved ones and help them in anyway you can to keep the commandments, start out small, not killing for instance. Should be easy for the rest of you, me however... PSYCH again! But seriously, every moment we have here in this earth is to do the Father´s will, do what Christ would do if He was in our shoes. In that we will find the happiness that lasts. The happiness that has no end. This past week i can´t tell you how excited i was when i opened a letter from Jayson and see Kobe with the trophy, i was stoked! But ask me how long it lasted... a day? Maybe two? Lies.. it lasted longer than that, in fact i´m still happy about it but i know that someday, in a couple of years, maybe 80 í´ll forget that they won the championship. But i can tell you that the atonement has no end, there is no end to Celestial Glory.

Alrighty i´m outta time i´ve seen many blessings this week, for instance i was way sick the whole week and Saturday night i even hit a fever of 101.2 at which time i almost thought i had that swine flu but with blessings, prayers on your part and mine and a little bit of faith i´ve been able to see miracles. I love the mission, i´m bummed i haven´t baptized in a while, this next week promises to have some for the which i´m happy but i´m even more happy that the family is doing good, that everyone is going to have a ball of a time these upcoming weeks together. I expect some killer pics, maybe some sent through the mail too? That would be cool, also if anyone feels the need to send me some reeses i wouldnt complain about that either. Recipes i´m hungry for some homeade food but i gotta cook it so send some easy recipes my way cuz i´m a little bit on the lamer side of the cooking business, meaning i can´t do much, ask Jayson, he remembers ¨what drew can cook¨... alright gotta run, i love you all. Keep in touch and STAY CELESTIAL!!!
Elder Livingstone
p.s. kirk or ty or kev or amy do you understand what that sign said in the pictures that i sent last week? i thought not, thats cuz chilean spanish is RIDICULOUS!!! it says -- drunk, you don´t save anyone!

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