Cecilia and Gerardo got Baptized!!! 6.10.19

April 10, 2019 Cecilia and Gerardo Baptism! :) 

Hey Everyone!

This past week has flown by and I have honestly loved every second of it!  With so many cool experiences it has been hard to put them all down with the time allotted but I am going to give a handful of my favorites!  Well, for starters the title of this email comes the goal of my companionship of really keep us in good physical shape, because the mission here in Monterrey is really awesome, but keeping a balanced diet is really difficult to maintain, so we have begun to place even more emphasis in an exercise program where we can try to burn off the extra tortillas and the extremely well-cooked meat, haha!  So while we were talking about this one day, my companion began to ask me how somebody describes someone that is really strong.  I jokingly responded with some slang about how you can call someone huge and it is a wonderful compliment.  So now, every morning after we finish our workout, he looks in the mirror and asks me I´m huge, right Elder Raven? and I just chuckle and say absolutely every time!  This is just so priceless because knowing my companion Elder Chavez does not speak a lot of English, it is about the only English interaction we have outside of language study, and somehow it strikes me really funny!

Anyway as for the more spiritual side of things:

The power of a personal inventory

As I was reflecting this past week during our companionship inventory that we do, I came to realize something incredibly powerful about the gospel.   The moment in which we come to know better our own personal weaknesses the better that we can connect with the grace and atoning powers of our Lord, Jesus Christ.  Sometimes I have noticed a cultural thing within the church that we can become debilitated by our apparent lack of effort, results, or whatever other lies that Satan wishes to give.  Sometimes we in the midst of an abundance of blessings can let the tiniest of details steal the abundance of happiness that the gospel offers us.  From this I realized something important, the much like the week prior, that if we can truly find our ways to improve then we can begin the process back to God, because I personally know that I have in some way s deluded myself into seeing my true colors, but during this past week I have tried to have a daily inventory with God in my personal prayers at night.  I am trying to sincerely ask to be filled with gratitude for all that I have, and then in turn, reflect, and ask Heavenly Father what it is that I can repent of.  These two steps have made my prayers infinitely greater this past week, and I have been able to see my little errors, I begin to see the infinite virtues of God who loves us perfectly, who acts in our best interest, and allows to face difficulties so that we can grow.  I truly testify that we have a loving Heavenly Father, that he wishes for us to become as He is, and that only through His Son we have the opportunity to receive these blessings!  I truly have felt the power of liberation that comes when we seek to genuinely look into our shadows to permit the light of the gospel to fill us!  I feel that this might be a ramble, but the point is that I testify of the Love of God for each and everyone of us, I testify of our divine potential and that God is at the Helm of this wonderful Church that was made to help us gradually become more perfected!

Weekly Recap

Martes: Intercambios con Los Elizondo (Elder Ramirez)

Take I had some intercambios with the Elders from Los Elizondo, with Elder Ramirez from Mexico City being my companion for the day!  The real highlight from this day was in being to help a member in the ward take the initiative to begin activating all the less active members of her family who live in Los Elizondo, and the Elders this past week were able to have many begin to come to church again which was a beautiful piece of news to receive!  

Miercoles: Bautismos de Cecilia y Gerardo

Cecilia and Gerardo got baptized and confirmed this past week and because we held the baptismal service with special permission to do it on Wednesday night after Mutual, we had basically all of the active ward members supporting her in this decision and it was a truly beautiful service because as well we were able to include a recent convert, Hermano Jahaziel to do the baptismal ordinance for her, and although he was incredibly nervous, he was able to do it flawlessly!  I truly testify that we have greater access to the atonement of Jesus Christ through these Ordinances and that through our faith and commitment to our covenants, we can truly become more like Christ, and shake off the darkening influences of the adversary!  I love this gospel for this exact purpose and that we can become beings of light to help illuminate everyone around us to find the joy of the gospel!

Jueves: Isael y David

We have been teaching the family Cabral for quite some time and we have been really focusing on David and Isael (Isael is the father of the family) and we are hoping that they will be able to be baptized soon!  They are a wonderful family, and we have really focused on maintaining daily contact with them to help them in their critical moments of opposition and blessings!

Sabado: Alonso y Paola

As a result of the bautismo de Cecilia and Gerardo on  Wednesday, her daughter-in-law, and her son became really interested in the Church, we have begun to find a few difficulties with them, but their desires to follow Christ are wonderfully strong, and we will see what this next week holds.

Domingo: Familia Garcia de la Cruz

We were able to spend time on Sunday to teach the family Navarrasco another time, but the really cool experiences happened when we were eating with the Garcia de la Cruz Family who are incredibly active and for 20-plus years have been battling with the father of the mother of the Garcia family to help him be baptized to be a member of the church and so that their family and be sealed together!  She shared that the missionaries before never really took much interest in her family life, but because we listened, we were able to give meaningful counsel through the Book of Mormon, and she told us that she is going to try another time to see if she can directly ask her father what impedes him from progressing in the church, and then lovingly invite him to speak with the missionaries for the zillionth time and begin the road to an eternal family! It was a beautiful experience and it made me really reflect about how we always have missionary opportunities, and I am praying that this sister will be able to have the Spirit help her to touch her father´s heart!

Lunes: Los Elders de la casa rosada

We helped the Zone Leaders move houses today, and their new house is a tint of pink so bright that already they are creating the legend of the little pink house Elders and I have been able to successfully use it to help other people find the directions to the chapel, haha!

I love you all

Elder Raven

Here is a pic of the baptism!

Tons of Tamales

Hey Everyone!

This past week has truly been phenomenal for so many reasons and to top everything off, in honor of the holy week (la semana santa) that we have here in Mexico, a lot of the really special foods have been coming out!  But one of my favorite things that has happened, is that we have been receiving too many tamales throughout the week that I strangely almost don´t feel like eating them sometimes, but then I go ahead and eat them anyways!  

And to help us out even more, today we had our Zone Activity playing soccer for 3 hours in 90+ Degree Weather, and to finish it off we all prepaid for tamales but the Zone Leaders bought way too many, and it was just my luck to leave with 30+ extra tamales to eat throughout the week, haha!

Anyway, General Conference was incredibly powerful and we had such a wonderful experience with the Hermana Cecilia and Gerardo her son that are going to be baptized this Wednesday!  She tragically lost her oldest daughter a couple of years ago and ever since we have taught about the temples and eternal families she has had the desires to do the ordinance work for her daughter so badly, and when President Nelson tenderly shared his experiences with his daughter, Wendy, in her final moments of mortality, she broke down crying. She said that she knows that Russell M. Nelson is a prophet of God and that nothing is going to stop her from returning to live with her Daughter and say all the things that she always wished to say to her!  It was such a beautiful moment and I can truly testify of these simple truths! We are part of the living Church of Christ that has been restored and is being restored through just men who have been called to direct the earth in these last days!

I can testify with all the faith that I currently possess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, that he wishes for us to be healed by him, and as many of the apostles and prophets shared, we need to be more morally clean than we currently are, if we wish to be true disciples of Christ, always changing to become more like him!

I truly love these simple principles and that the Book of Mormon contains the fulness of the gospel of Christ!  It can heal us of spiritual and emotional wounds, and when part of God´s will, it can also cause a physical healing within us!  

I love you all, and I just wanted to close by sharing that I love you Guys, I will send a more full email, but we have a ton of work, and make sure to support the missionaries by living the gospel in every moment, and taking a few seconds to share your beliefs with the people are looking for the truth and don´t know where to find it, and I promise you will be blessed just to give the invitation to your friends, family members, and coworkers to learn about the gospel from your local missionaries!

Uncle John McCune was sustained as a General Authority Seventy at April 2019 General Conference

I love you all!

I pray you can study the wonderful talks of this week!

Sorry for no pics!

Elder Raven

Sorry Hermana, It Was Only 15 minutes ;)

Hey Everyone!

Well, how´s it going?

Anyway so about the title of this email, this past week we were eating with this wonderful family from Venezuela and Columbia and they are honestly the greatest in helping us with missionary work and whatever thing that comes up. This was complicated a bit because before we ate I had two baptismal interviews to do for a companionship in my district, and these individuals were so wonderfully prepared and it was truly a cool experience to do 3 interviews in one day, but in returning to our area for the lunch appointment we weren´t able to find the correct bus and we ended up arrived 15 minutes late.  We apologized to the hermana, and continued until about half way through the meal, the Hermana began playfully threatening her kids to pick up their rooms, and she picked up her sons really nice nerf gun and began to wave it around in the air like she was going to shoot them to get them moving, but what ended up happening is that she accidentally pulled the trigger and the bullet passed right by my right eye and bounced off the back wall to hit me in the back of the head.  To this I jokingly responded, sorry hermana, it was only 15 minutes, and her husband (who is the second counselor in the bishopric in the ward) just was laughing and everyone in the house was just rolling on the floor because the sister truly had no idea that it was going to fire and was apologizing up and down, but I said no pasa nada hermana, and just went on laughing and joking, but it was kinda sketchy because it could have messed up my eye pretty good, haha! 

Due to some changes this past week, a Sister in my district had to go home for some health complications.  The food here was really difficult for her stomach and sadly she is waiting to be reassigned to a different mission right now!  But as a result of these changes we have been able to work both areas in Felipe Carrillo!  The other area has the large majority of the members in it so it has been really interesting to get to know them better, work more closely with the ward leaders and accomplish a lot of wonderful things here in our ward!

My companion and I are doing great, I have battled a bit with some sickness, but nothing is stopping us from teaching the children of God!  We have been able to encontrar (find) a lot of wonderful people and as of right now we have several families being prepared to get baptized!  The individuals that we have been teaching are so wonderful to us, and it is such a blessing to serve the Lord here.

I just want to take a moment to explain a bit about some of my favorite events throughout the week!

Salvador and Mauricio: They are a father and a son who are so wonderfully strong in their faith in Christ.  The father wants to teach his son how to be a good person and as a result of his desire to serve God and be a great father, and after having felt that this is the true Church, they have plans to be baptized in the end of this month!  Salvador works in various restaurants delivering and sending food supplies and he is honestly the sweetest man and it is such a joy to teach them!

We had a wonderful lesson with Nancy and her family as well, and they are all committed to come to church which is wonderful!  They are slowly starting to grow out of their Catholic traditions and desiring more of the gospel knowledge!

This past week I read "The Power of Everyday Missionaries" by Clayton Christensen and that revolutionized my perspective about the work!  I realized that I was not incorporating the potential of the members as much as I should have, and so we will be spending the large majority of this week with more members in our lessons, bringing the youth to accompnay us, and refining the wonderful potential of the ward to work with.

As a spiritual thought I would just like to express how truly essential is the attribute of humility in our church.

We have a gospel where the expectations are that we can become like our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, which means that there a lot of potential growth in each and everyone of us.  In order to accomplish the grand means of growing in our faith and devotion to God, I would like to invite each of us to reflect about the indicators of Humility given in Preach My Gospel which work on a scale of 1 to 5 in our capacity with this characteristics and they are:

Humility

41. ___ I am meek and lowly in heart. (Matthew 11:29)
42. ___ I rely on the Lord for help. (Alma 26:12)
43. ___ I am sincerely grateful for the blessings I have received from the Lord. (Alma 7:23)
44. ___ My prayers are earnest and sincere. (Enos 1:4)
45. ___ I appreciate direction from my leaders or teachers. (2 Nephi 9:28)
46. ___ I strive to be submissive to the Lord’s will, whatever it may be. (Mosiah 24:15)

I testify that as we seek to be more submissive, grateful, and sincere in our desires to have the Lord mold us, we will be able to pass through our difficulties as a refiner´s fire, make us stronger in our testimony and more capable of serving others with Christlike love!

I testify that this is a gospel of grand expectations, but that we are never alone!  Christ is always guiding, cheering, and inviting us to take the next steps, to make the small sacrifices that bring forth the great blessings of heaven, and that even though many voices criticize us for our way of being, I have found that I really resonate with the words of a Christian song Come as You Are which states Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot cure!  I love this principle and I love each and everyone of you!  Keep striving and believing in the miracles which are not seen but will come if we stand strong and committed to the only being who gave his all for us! Let us be Faithful and True, and never stray from the fold of the Good Shepherd!

Love,

Elder Raven

Elder Hernandez and I eating the Best Food Ever, Campechanas!!!

Intercambios with Elder Hernandez (With Some The Best Food Ever, Campechanas!)

The Rosalez Chino family (We baptized their son Kenai, and helped reactivate the rest of the family! They are the greatest!)

Where Rocks Fall (El Pedregal Pt. 1)

Wow! How are you all doing?

This past week has been phenomenally great and sad because after saying goodbye to all of Alianza Real I was kind of feeling down but then I came here with Elder Chavez and I am feeling the missionary spirit right now!  He is working really well with me, and although he is kind of goofy at times, we get along really well!  So this area is great because we are at the base of a mountain so the view is absolutely stunning and we have a poorer area because the further out from the city you are the less economically stable it is which is great because we have a lot of crazy adventures and a more teachable area!  This area has been known for having a ton of success and I am loving my district right now because we have really motivated great Elders and a pair of Sisters that share the ward with us because they live in the nice part of town, haha! 

Anyway, we have had some cool teaching experiences that I thought to share with you guys in vez de compartir some spiritual thoughts!

So we contacted the family Navarrasco this past Wednesday as we were checking for old references in the system and I felt to ask this young mother if she had ever spoken to missionaries before, we began to talk about the message of the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and as a result we were able to teach Yulissa (the young mom), her mother, grandmother, and several other family members that were interested and in total we taught a lesson to this wonderful family of 7 people!  We were all prepared and ready to teach yesterday the Restauration and see how receptive they were but then I felt a need to start asking a few questions about the family and their needs before continuing.  As a result, the grandmother of Yulissa told us that she had lost her son about a month ago, and she was so wonderfully enthused when we asked her if she would like to know where her son was at.  She smiled and softened up and prayed and began to teach the Plan of Salvation to all of them!  This was a wonderful way in which the Spirit helped her open up because she is a really tough old little Catholic grandma who normally doesn´t open up to missionaries but thanks to this lesson we are going to be teaching them next Sunday, and be having daily contact with them through a scriptural text or a phone call to make sure they are reading and praying about the book of Mormon because they all work Monday-Saturday so that was a really awesome miracle that we have going on!

Secondly, we found Nancy who is someone who the missionaries taught back in May who was really receptive and felt that the church was true but due to her work schedule she couldn´t make it to church and she lost contact with the Elders.  But thankfully and sadly that her father has contracted Alzheimer's she is bound to help him everyday of the week and has stopped working which has given us the opportunity to teach her once again!! She loves hearing the word of God and wants to draw nearer to him, but she really likes the Catholic Church, but I believe that if she can really connect and feel through heartfelt prayer that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, that she will have the desires to drop her traditions for a much more blessed lifestyle!  She is absolutely awesome because she loves the Elders from before and after the lesson just kept on telling us that whatever thing that we need we can count on her!  It was such a wonderful blessing to feel the spirit testify to her that really we are representative of Christ and that His gospel has been restored in these latter days!

These are just a handful of the cool things we are seeing, and I accidentally left my camera at home again! But until next week...

Stay Faithful And True!

Elder Raven 

Just Around the Riverbend

Hey everyone!

This week has been wild with receiving the changes and we found out that I am going to be changed to Felipe Carrillo 2 as the District Leader with Elder Chavez, who is an Elder from Mexico as well!  This is pretty great because I am literally moving to the Ward right next to Alianza Real, but a little bit less isolated, haha!  So I am going to be staying in the same zone and be able to talk with Elder Santiago and all the wonderful missionaries here that I have grown to love so much!  This is literally going to be a just around the riverbend experience for me! 

Irma Mireya Serrano and Cecilia Cisneros families had a going away party for Elder Raven.  They don't always do this, but they were so kind and even Elder Santiago stood up and said how much Elder Raven had helped him on his mission.

Spiritual thought:

3 Porque he aquí, yo soy Dios; y soy un Dios de milagros; y manifestaré al mundo que soy el mismo ayer, hoy y para siempre; y no obro entre los hijos de los hombres sino de conformidad con su fe.  

I really want to testify that God is a god of miracles that he can and will change our lives if we develop the faith that comes from righteous living!  LA FE or faith is a principle of action that will lead us to have a hope and confidence in gods promised blessings!

We have had some wonderful families that we found this week and I would like to share some of the highlights with you all but I ran out of time so only some pics for now!

Elder Raven

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