Solidaridad 11

Family and Friends,

As always it was a good week here in San Juan. I am nearing the end of my training.  This week we had divisions with our zone leaders again because they pertain to our district. It was a good experience as always to be guiding the area, stepping out of my comfort zone and leading the lessons. This coming week is the last of this transfer and really anything could happen but more importantly I will be done with training!

In Peru, religion is, just by default, a big part of the culture. Everybody believes in God and just about everybody has been baptized Catholic. Here, church and state aren't separated so they preach religion in school. This means one of two things either they are open to learning about us and reading the Bible, or they are super closed off to receiving us.

Seeing as how the colonists didn't start celebrating Thanksgiving here in Peru, while you guys are stuffing yourself it will be a regular day here. That doesn't signify that we aren't grateful, let's see where this takes us. It is easy to be grateful when we receive blessings big and small, perhaps it might take some effort on our part to see the smaller ones and really accept them as blessings. However, our lives, our families, our world are all blessings so shouldn't we be grateful for everything, including our challenges. Especially our challenges. Would we truthfully and sincerely mean it if at the end of a hard day, not an exhausting day, but a day that we really feel miserable and hopeless. Would we pray at the end of this day and thank God, who gave us our lives, and thank him for our difficulties. As a missionary, every day is different and yes some are hard but I am grateful. Like I said last week, the doubts and questions that my investigators have cause me to study and strengthen my knowledge about that subject.

As you can imagine, the people are really excited because Peru is going to the World Cup for the first time in 36 years. They had a game on Wednesday against New Zealand that went into the night and all we could here was the cheering and the fireworks when they scored. 

We had the chance to watch the face to face between Elder Oaks and Elder Ballard and the Young Single Adults. Bare with me to see if I can explain my thoughts clearly. As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints we believe in both inspiration, the hand of God directing the things in our life, and agency or our ability to choose. A great question is how do I know if I am doing what the Lord wants me to do and not just something I want to do.  In short, the two apostles said the link between divine inspiration and our agency is initiative. We need to secure that we are living in such a way that what we want to do and the Lord's will for us will align.

We have an investigator right now who hasn't come to church yet because he sings at parties Saturday night 11 pm to 8 am on Sunday. One could ask, well if God wants him to go to church why doesn't he just give him a different job?  However, what God wants is that we make that choice to change our lives to be better. Ultimately, his decision to sacrifice his time to come to church and do the things he has felt prompted to do will complete the process of inspiration.

Have a good week I love all you guys. 

Love,

Elder Craythorne