Just MacGuyver It!

Hey everybody!

So this past week was kind of crazy because we have been trying to help the Lopez Santos family attend the temple to be able to baptisms for the dead.  But in order to enter the temple we have battled with the baptismal registro of the mom, Carolina, and so in doing so we were making phone calls to her parents and famliy members trying to figure out what day she was baptized, and who was the bishop at the time because all the records appeared to be lost.  But thankfully, due to the miracles of getting in touch with Hermana Carolina`s father we were able to call Church Services and create a new baptismal form.  

In the midst of doing all of this we had forgotten one very important thing before leaving the house, which was the keys which we had left inside next the door as we closed the button lock that we had on bottom.  We discovered this at about five oclock at night when we ran quickly to grab some materials before a lesson that we had nearby the house and we couldn`t get in.  So later that evening after using knifes, and credit cards, and every possible thing to try to enter the door, we couldn`t get it to unlock.  So Elder Santiago and I got a little creative, and I climbed our back fence to find some possible materials.  I came up with the mop, an old broom we had tucked away in the back corner of our lawn and a metal hook.  So we got to work and cut some of the strings of the mop to tie the broom and mop together and finished it off by pushing the metal wire in form of a hook on the end of the broom and we literally fished for our key from the doorstep.   After a few failed attempts, we finally got it and were able to enter into the house and not spend the night with the wild dogs that roam our area, haha!

Anyway, a spiritual thought that I had this week comes more from my personal thoughts and something that I have shared several times, but personally it has been really applicable in my life and I hope that it can be a form of inspiration to you guys as well!

So this past week I have reflect a lot about King Benjamin`s address and the promises mentioned therein and I am always drawn to verse 41 of chapter 2, which states:

41 Y además, quisiera que consideraseis el bendito y feliz estado de aquellos que guardan los mandamientos de Dios. Porque he aquí, ellos son bendecidos en todas las cosas, tanto temporales como espirituales; y si continúan fieles hasta el fin, son recibidos en el cielo, para que así moren con Dios en un estado de interminable felicidad. ¡Oh recordad, recordad que estas cosas son verdaderas!, porque el Señor Dios lo ha declarado.  

I love this declaration of truth!  Those who remain faithful and obedient to the gospel of Jesus Christ are truly the most blessed and happy of all people!  This is a truth that Satan so desperately wishes to obscure from our minds by planting a form of negativity about who we can become and who we are in this moment! Please remember the peace that comes from the gospel and even when we feel frustrated with ourselves or with others that we can step back and realize the power of Christ to heal and perfect everyone of us, and that we can truly seek for the revelation that comes when we are in harmony with the gospel!  Because the world is only going to become crazier, but we are on the winning team if we seek wisdom through the scriptures, humble ourselves in fervent prayer, and strive to build our families we will be able to weather the great and difficult days before the coming of Christ!

I was able to play the piano for the Young Women in the new beginnings and we had some wonderful appointments but I love you all!

I will try to send pics next week!

Til next week
Elder Raven

Letter from Grandma Schulthies 3.4.19

Dear Elder Raven:     

            We were so excited to hear about the Lopez Santos Family getting baptized… what a thrill. We pray that they will continue to be strengthened in the faith.  I will put their name on the prayer roll this Wednesday when I go to the temple.  We loved seeing the pictures.  Along with the young mother you are teaching, Lizeth.  We pray for your investigators as we pray for you and your companion. Joshua and James really get a kick out of knowing that you know another family with their last name.  They are so cute when they think about that.

                       

Our Scripture from the Idaho Meridian Temple Presidency – 1 Nephi 11:2

2 – And the Spirit said unto me: Behold, what desirest thou?

Ponder – If asked by the Spirit as was Nephi – What would be your answer? (No Sunday School answers.) (Notice where the question was asked, and the answer given)  

            Yesterday we celebrated Valeda’s birthday and had Tammy’s family along with Grandma Joan celebrate with us.  In the evening we had the Come Follow Me Lesson covering Matt. 8-9 and Mark 2-5. As you know these cover many of the miracles of Christ.  Grandma Joan stayed for the FHE lesson.  It is wonderful having her share her testimony and conviction of the restored Gospel.  Do you remember the acronym WWJD (What Would Jesus Do)? Well the lesson shared an additional acronym HWLF (He Would Love First). Grandpa and I want to find both bracelets and wear them as a reminder to Follow the Savior’s example every day! The Come Follow Me lessons have been such a great blessing in our lives.

            It was truly heartwarming to know that Brady’s priesthood quorum included him in their ski trip last Saturday.  Tammy said that the YM president bore his testimony in church yesterday and said how the Come Follow Me Program has strengthened the YM in their ward.  He said that the first time Brady attempted go down the hill that he fell 50 times (I hope that was an exaggeration but perhaps not) but that the boys were right there with him helping him up until finally Brady was able to ski on his own.  Brady was so excited when he got home and thrilled that he could do it.  Reminded me of your letter Fall 7 times get up 8.  So so thankful for Brady’s YM leaders and priesthood quorum members. 

            Grandpa only has ONE more radiation treatment (March 5^th). We need to figure out a way to celebrate.  He is doing really well. A bit tired more than usual, but thank Heaven he was able to do the treatments before spring farming starts.  WE LOVE YOU so much, Kyle, and pray for your safety and well-being. I love being in the temple and hear the temple workers pray for missionaries and realize that they are praying for our wonderful grandson YOU!!!  Love always and forever, Gpa & Gma Schulthies

"Live well, Laugh often, Love much!"

Preparing for the Temple!

Hey everyone!

So this past week was absolutely wonderful and a special highlight that we had was the branch activity where we literally learned about what we do as members of the church inside the temples (don`t worry, this received approval from the temple Presidency here in Monterrey) where we decked out the casa de oracion in white and explained very simply what we do in the temple and how we can be worthy to enter and receive the blessings personally and for our loved ones!  It was absolutely great because we had some less active families in the activity that have not been sealed and are talking with the branch president to get going on the process!  We also had the Lopez Santos family attend but sadly due to delays with getting the signature of the branch president on their baptismal forms they weren`t able to receive a temple recommend without a member recordship number, but we have plans to go on the 16th of this month so we are really excited for that!

We hit a lot of difficulties this week in people rejecting the message after having taught them, trying to get the second lesson proved to be our greatest difficulty because a lot of people here are nice enough to listen once but then after that Satan has a great way of distracting people from the important messages of the gospel.

Spiritual message:

This past week with the difficulties that we have been facing in the district with being able to have investigators in the church, I really reflect upon an inspirational story or message that could possibly animate the other Elders in my district.  While I was thinking I recalled the story of the elephants and the rope.

Hope this can be of some motivation to you all!

As a man was passing the elephants, he stopped and was surprised to see that they were held back by small strings that were obviously too weak to contain them.

He saw a trainer nearby and asked why these animals just stood there and made no attempt to get away.  The trainer responded that when they are very young and we use the same size rope to tie them and,  it’s enough to hold them. As they grow up, they come to believe that they truly can`t break free.  And thus believing like that they never even try to break free.

I remember hearing this story a long time ago, and I truly believe that if we can stop listening to the lies of Satan telling us that we can`t and we come to believe in our Divine Natures as children of God, is when we can truly be the great forces of good we were designed to be!

Love you all!

Hope you have a great week!

Elder Raven

Lopez Santos Family Baptism 2.23.19

Lopez Santos Family Baptism 2/23/19

Hey everyone that I love so much,

This past week has been absolutely amazing!  

So we were able to Baptize the Lopez Santos family this past week and that was such a wonderful experience!  I was able to baptize the brother, Noè Lopez Santos and his daughter was baptized by my companion!  It is such a wonderful experience to see the whole branch supporting and ministering to the new converts!  They were so excited to be baptized and Noè just kept saying I feel so happy, I feel so blessed!  His wife was baptized when she was young but didn't stay active until recently.  It is in moments like these that help every difficulty and struggle to get to this point totally worth it because they were the family of my first lesson here in the mission field but we lost contact during the holiday season for 4 months but then afterward we found them, helped them make commitments and they are preparing to go do baptisms for the dead this Friday with the whole branch!  The miracles of God are so real!

Spiritual thought of the week:

Murmuring - I have reflected a lot this past week about the very easy trap of murmuring.  In my studies, I came across this talk from Elder Maxwell that helped open my eyes and I hope that we can see the importance of giving thanks to God for what we have been giving and acting with the best of our intentions to be forces of good rather than a stream of negativity.

Hope you enjoy this one! 

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1989/10/murmur-not?lang=eng

Sister Lopez Santos made Tamales for the Baptism

Other things that happened this week that were sweet!

We had a phenomenal lesson with Lizeth who is a young mother who wants to raise her children in a good way and live uprightly before God but isn`t sure how, and she accepted the restoration and the message of the gospel, but her husband ran into some anti-Mormon literature and this caused her to doubt, but thankfully she didn`t close the door on us but asked sincerely about some concerns she and her husband had and thus we were able to explain that they were the beliefs of another faith, and she is progressing super well and is such a miracle!

Sorry I ran out of time!

Next week I hope to share some more!

Love you all! 

Keep strong and put your shoulder to the wheel!

Elder Raven

Look up Joshua 1:9 for a piece of daily inspiration

6 Meses (6 MONTHS!)

Elder Raven's Entire ZONE 2/16/19

Hola everybody!

This has been absolutely wild looking back and seeing all that has happened in these short few months!  It has been really great this past week to work with a lot of contacting because sadly many investigators went cold on the gospel message, between the Jehovah´s Witness, family pressure or work schedules it was kind of rough, so it meant that we dedicated quite a bit of time to looking for references and doing street contacting!  This resulted in some pretty phenomenal experiences that I would like to share with y'all:

Leadership Conference

We had an amazingly edifying experience with all the Zone Leaders and District Leaders with the Asistants in the meeting of Liderazgo!  i was able to see about half of my CCM district was also assigned to be district leaders in other parts which is really quite strange because normally more experienced missionaries are assigned to serve as leaders but I guess it came about as a result of the fact that our mission right now has about one half of us with less than six months in the mission!  So it is really skewed to a group of younger missionaries which is great because it means that we have a ton of enthusiasm, energy, and the capacity to change the norms and create a lasting impression!

First, Jorge Alberto!

This young father has been searching for the true Church of God for 5 years, and is truly such a wonderful man who has so many questions that in our last lesson with him we had to slow him down a bit to be able to answer fully some of his questions and help him understand the basics, which is absolutely phenomenal!  We have him committed to come to the church, and it was an awesome time teaching him the first lesson because he was so hungry to learn more and began to ask loads of questions about the purpose of life and the plan of God after we had taught the Restoration, and my companion and I smiled at each other, then we introduced the first principles of the Plan of Salvation to him!  He is such a miracle in such a difficult week, and his young children are absolutely adorable!  We still haven´t met his wife yet, but we will figure it out on 

Wednesday!

As well, last Saturday we had the awesome experience of a Zone Activity in the branch of Hidalgo, where literally they have an average of 12 people attending church every week, but after the activity, they literally doubled and they have plans to help this struggling are!  What we did is that one member of the Stake Presidency or Stake High Council went with a companionship of missionaries to teach and actualize the member list of the branch and do some contacts as well!  This was really great, but was a little bit difficult in the activity because the households that we were assigned didn´t have the numbers of the houses in order and as we were driving by we passed by the numbers 204, 527, 904, 106 and it was like they had drawn out of a hat the number of their house which made it very slow but very worthwhile and we found three families that despite quite a bit of time outside of church activity are talking with the missionaries from Hidalgo, and we hope that everything can work better for them!

This week has been wild in the temperature because we have gone from 90 degrees to 50 degrees and with the air down here it can feel scorchingly hot or absolutely freezing, but we keep echando las ganas!  We feel truly blessed to be down here in Alianza Real and I know that this is the Lord´s work, that every one of us, with our varying spiritual talents and gifts that has a large role to place before the Second Coming of Christ, and that he can magnify us in ways that we cannot even imagine!

I love you all so much, and until next week!

Elder Raven

We finally pulled off a surprise party for Mckinley! 🎉

Elder Raven 

Thanks soooo much for the voice recording last week. It was so good for my heart to hear your voice. You sound incredible!!! 💙

I wanted to send this picture of Timp. I took this morning when I was taking the boys to school… It looked so pretty with the sun hitting it. We’ve had a lot of snow this winter! We probably have 2-3 feet of snow in our yard. 

Also Mckinley‘s 17th birthday was on Saturday, but the boys wanted to throw a surprise party for her. Remember we tried when you were 16 and she was 14 years old but the word got back to her and so she figured it out before it happened. 
This year the boys wanted to do the party NOT on a day close to her birthday so she wouldn’t expect anything. So we had friends come over after young women’s and young men’s Wednesday night and she was totally SURPRISED! It was so fun!

Questions 

When you had the surprise of the ZL’s and then President and Sister M. coming to your district meeting where was that located? I bet that was quite the shock. 

Even though it was stressful... The message you shared about having love and charity for the people is powerful… So you’ve been prepared for this since even though you didn’t know. I bet you did a great job. I know things can be stressful but just remember YOU ARE A SON OF GOD! He loves you and He will support you in all the demands and things that are placed upon you. 

He is watching over you and HE IS WELL PLEASED WITH YOUR EFFORTS! 💙💙💙

That “traditional” grandma’s advice was so funny… About how did attract a spouse when you get home. I bet that really made you laugh 😂😂😂

1. How are you feeling? 

2. We sent you a package and it arrived at your mission home. Did you get it yet? 

3. How is your area? 

4. How are the awesome families you are teaching? 

5. Thanks for your amazing testimony and wonderful emails. So many people tell us how much they love reading your emails. Tara just told me today!  We love you! 

6. Your kind heart is touching a lot of souls. The members in Mexico tell us what a good missionary you are and how much you have helped their Rama. 

7. It was fun to hear a little accent when you sent the voice recording! You sound so cute. 

8. How are the cockroaches?

9. How are those families doing that of been coming to church? How are your investigators?

10. I saw you’re getting a new mission President and July 1, 2019 do people know that in your mission? His name is Elder Jose L Isaguirre 

11. How is Cardenas Cano family 

You can answer some of these questions are all of them in the group email I just want you to know we love you we pray for you I think about you constantly. It’s been so fun for me to go and help with missionary efforts. A little girl my primary class, Jaylen  is taking the missionary discussions and it’s been so fun to go and hear what the missionaries are teaching her. It helps me

Feel close to you! I love you with all the tender feeling in my heart! ❤️❤️❤️ Here is a send you a pic of Jaylen with the missionaries! 

It’s Jaylen Rose. Do you remember her. She turned 9 in January so she is getting baptized in March. 

Happy Valentine’s Day! ❤️💕💝💛

You are in our prayers 

Love,
Mom

Here is a pic of all the snow we have right now! 

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Hey Mom,

Sorry about the scare!  We suddenly got news on Saturday night that we were going to have interviews with Presidente Maucotel on Monday, and so we ended up working all of Monday like a normal proselyting day, and we had our p-day today! I did take out 2,500 pesos (about the 136 dollars mentioned in the photos you sent me!) of money yesterday to pay for some new shoes as well as buy a knee brace for Elder Santiago because he really doesn´t have the money sufficient to cover it! Don´t worry I am going to get the money back because it is a medical expense and so it will come back to me cause its reimbursable! I am going to send some photos of the new shoes attached to this email!  I believe everything came in one piece, and thank you so much for the golf pants, the valentines gifts and all of the very special letters!  I have been reading the Miracle of Forgiveness non-stop and I only have 20 pages remaining in this awesome book!  I was truly shocked to actually finish the book and see how truly beautiful the repentance process is and all the unnecessary burdens that I have been carrying for so many years I am finally beginning to feel relief!  It is truly wonderful to be smiling from my heart as well as my eyes now!  I can´t thank you enough for this priceless gift as well as the beautiful commentary by grandma weber who truly helped me in learning about several of the principles inside the book!  In fact, I am going to use several in the massive group email! That is so awesome that you were able to surprise Mckinley, and I am so glad that you guys enjoyed hearing my voice!  I feel that I don´t have a very thick accent but we´ll see what two years does to me, haha!  

My area is really doing quite well!  We have the baptismal date for the 23rd of this month with the famillia Lopez Santos!  We finally found some baptismal pants for him too, because the brother is a bit chubbier and so we were looking everywhere for size 40 pants for baptisms but finally found it from this elderly member in our branch that is really amazing (Hno Galindo)!  We are also teaching Hermana Juanita y Nicolas and they are attending church and the Hermana is progressing but it is a slow but surely process!  We are really just looking for people to teach all the time, we have received a lot of references but the large majority of times we can´t find them because of their very extensive work schedules, but if we can find them, they will surely progress with their desires and the Spirit that they will feel!   

Elder Santiago and I are getting along much better now!  We battled a lot because I have always been a strict stick to the rules kind of guy, and I still am, but I have changed my perspective to be a little bit less prideful and we are working in harmony much better!

The cockroaches are fine, we really don´t battle much when it is really cold like it has been recently, but we´ll see what happens in the summer, haha!

Thank you for your kind words of encouragement!  I pray that we can be influences for good, and genuinely contribute some great families to the branch!  

Yes, we have heard about the new president and we are all very excited to see his administrative style and everything!  Being an area seventy he is sure to bring some fire Elder Holland style while still being a very kind and loving man, I presume . . . haha!  

The family Cardenas Cano is going great, the Hermana Alma is still attending and we have been teaching the hermano David, we hope they can keep going strong because of the upcoming move!  We visit them frequently to help strengthen them and we have really focused on teaching all the recent converts to make sure they keep being fortified!

I feel really great here and I truly don´t want to leave after this change, but I have felt that the Lord will call me to other directions, but quien sabe? who knows right, haha!

Love you so much,

Hope I resolved some of your concerns!

Elder Raven