May 28, 2013

May 28, 2013

Hi,

     Another week gone in a flash.  The time goes by so fast now I fear that next thing I know I will be done.  Luckily someone reassured me that I was still Y... on my mission when we saw some RM's from this mission at the temple yesterday.  It made me feel like I was still Y... because they were both missionaries that had been released before I had gotten here.  Which brings me to what I learned in the temple this time though.  It seems that every time I go through I learn something new and this time it was something I can talk about so I would like to share it.  I learned how little we know and how much we may never know in our earthly existence.  Along with this I learned that this is ok.  This was exactly the thing I needed to learn because as my companion and I have been helping others to teach and share what they know about the gospel, I have caught myself in the trap of going over in my head all the things that they are doing wrong and could be doing better.  I started to think in the temple about how our Heavenly Father must look upon us.  Despite how little we know compared to Him, I could never imagine him pointing out all the mistakes we make.  Instead I can see Him encouraging us and always waiting patiently to give advice when and as we seek for them.

     With this topic of me not understanding things, we went and saw the G... family, our Spanish speaking family, this week.  As I may have explained before, we are helping them start family home evening.  It was all in Spanish.  :P  I think I counted a total of 13 words that I understood.  Luckily my companion was able to understand the lesson and help me to answer when I was asked questions.  It is also helpful that we are there so that we can help the parents know what things should be different that most other members would consider common knowledge.  The family home evening night, despite the fact I did not understand anything, was amazing and fun.  And I got to try an interesting new food that was really good and I will make again.  It is called "crazy corn", it is where they put fry sauce, ketchup with mayonnaise, on the corn and then cover it with Parmesan cheese.  My companion and I ate 5 ears of corn.  :D

     Luckily I was able to give back to my companion with his mastery over the Spanish language when we went to go see a man named A... with a member.  A... is from Ghana and Elder B... could not understand him at all with his heavy accent.  I could understand him fine though and it felt good to be able to be giving back to Elder B... for a change.  A... is a less active member that actually served a mission and has a strong testimony of the church.  Luckily A... is super nice and funny and isn’t easily offended.  I felt like I could be very blunt with him and we could still have laughs afterwards.  Hopefully I will be able to tell you about something cool we did next week because he said that he likes us and wants us to come back on Saturdays to do stuff with him.

     Well that's all the cool stuff that I can remember from this week.  Sorry I can't remember everything from the week.  Thanks so much for all of your support and prayers for me in this cause.

Elder Erb