Hola there mi familia,
Sounds like things are about to get a little more quiet at home and a little more stressful for the kids. But school is always a good thing. It blows my mind that you are already in the school year though! It seems like you all just escaped and now you´re back. What´s up with that?! But no worries, you´ll all have fun. Tell me a bit about Les Mis my brotha. Are there people I know participating? Who are the principal characters? Is Justin involved? Just curious. Say hello to the Allreds for me, I still can´t believe that Abby is going to BYU! And that Ammon is a senior! And that Skyler is at UVU! And I haven´t even started! When I get back I´ll be at the same level as Ammon :/ Did you realize that? I just did. It´s a bummer. Sounds good about the birthday stuff. I´m just wanting to be able to survive when I get home, I don´t need anything flashy. President Deere asked me in the last interview what I wanted to do when I got back before going to school. I told him my ideas, but realized I really didn´t have much of a plan. If you hear of anybody that needs help during those few months before I go to school that would be awesome. I kind of want to shadow Bro. Roby at his work to kinda get an idea of psychologist life. I could even help with his finances if he needed it. Or I could just do snow removal or construction or whatever. But it would be nice to have a few bucks before I go to school. But I guess we´ll see what happens.
So this week we had a baptism! It was great. She´s a lady from Bulgaria that was super prepared. It was a little tough to teach her, because her Spanish is limited, but we figured it out.I love baptisms :) I´ll send you pictures soon.
So I was thinking this week about something that I read in Jesus the Christ. It was talking about an experience that the Savior had with some of his disciples. These disciples had gone into the city and began to eat at some kind of function without having washed there hands before eating. The ritual of washing hands before eating was one that was greatly taught by the pharisees at the time. It was accepted by them and a commandment, as part of the law. But it was merely tradition. When the Pharisees rebuked the disciples and then the Savior the Savior responded "Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." Mark 7:7 I thought about how often that takes place in the world and in our own lives. There is a disctinct difference between what the doctorine teaches and what the world teaches. And not even just that, sometimes we become so focused on the traditions of the church that we forget about or ignore what is the real doctrine. And if we look at it closely, was it something wrong that the Pharisee were asking? Absolutely not. Washing your hands before you eat is something that is good. Ask any doctor or any mother :) But the problem came from the Pharisees teaching it as a part of the law, as a commandment. Do we do this? Sometimes I think we do. I had an experience in church that showed this. Now first off, I love the members of Spain and my purpose in sharing this is not to belittle them, but to illustrate my message. In church yesterday we spent the entire hour of Priesthood meeting talking about how the priesthood holders should direct people to seats and pass the sacrament and did not get to the lesson until the last 2 minutes of class. Now there is a time and place to teach these things, but in this case it was not teaching that was going on, it was a debate about what is the best way to do it. It made me think about this. The sacrament is extremely important and the meeting is essential to our sunday worship, but we cannot let our focus on how to best open the doors and fill the benches with members blind us from the true importance of the meeting. It is a doctrine that sometimes hurts. It´s one that can cut deep, because many of us are very loyal to our traditions. But we must be able to differentiate between the two. As a missionary there are things that are the same. In all parts of the church and outside. And the way we differentiate is by knowing the doctrine. And the way we do that is by studying the scriptures. Study them, they have changed my life. President Monson said, "Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved." Let us love and teach pure doctrine. I love you all and hope you have an amazing week!
Con amor,
Elder Charlie Flint