Familias Eternas‏

Hola,

Well this was probably the best week of my mission, but I thought it was going to be the worst week of my mission at the beginning. There was A LOT of problems in our zone and missionaries making dumb decisions. I asked the Lord to increase my capabilities so that I could help solve the problems and help the missionaries in my zone. He answered my prayer.

We had the leadership council where we were able to learn a lot of good stuff. The best part for me was when Presidente LaPierre talked about having a vision and how he had this project to design a part of a jet engine and it was going to be a project of 6 years and on the way to a meeting about the project he begin to write and planned what he would do for the next six years. Some things changed, but the vision stayed the same and that is what guided him to be able to finish this project. He said that it is the Spirit that gives us the vision.

So as I was thinking of all of this after the meeting and planning our zone meeting an idea came to my mind and we planned it all out and did it with half the zone on Friday (we have to have a zone meetings with only half of the zone cause we can´t all come together for the distance) and it was one of the most powerful experiences I have had on the mission. What we did is take everyone into the chapel and sit in the first two rows. We talked about President LaPierre´s experience and then said how each one of us is the engine and Christ is the engineer and we need to know His vision for us and work to achieve it. We talked about our divine potential and the ability we have to progress and grow especially in these 2 years. Then, when the Spirit was strong we gave everyone a piece of paper, told them to find their own spot, say a prayer and then write what came to mind, promising them that the Spirit would guide them to know what to write. We all considered three questions: Who do I want to become before finishing my mission? Am I doing what I need to do now in order to achieve this vision? What will I do to achieve this vision? As I personally wrote I begin to think of things that I hadn´t even considered. One of them was to just let myself be happy and to radiate happiness. I realized that God doesn´t want me to change what I do, rather, He wants me to change my nature. As we were finishing we quietly went to each missionary and invited them to come back to the front of the chapel. The Spirit that was present there in that moment is difficult to describe, but it was something similar to what I feel in the temple. It was a sacred experience for everyone and it was very rewarding to hear everyone share some of the things that they had learned. One Elder who has had some problems said that as he wrote he realized that before, he believed he knew everything but now he sees that he still has a long way to go and a lot to learn. Another Elder afterwards said it was one of the experiences he would treasure and take with him home from the mission. Probably one of the coolest and most powerful experiences of my mission and it solved all of the problems we had in our zone. But I know it wasn´t me and Elder Sanchez. It was the Lord increasing our capabilities and sending us the vision of what we needed to do.

Then we had one of the most joyful experiences of my mission. The Familia Alfonzo who has been fighting hard to go to the temple for 7 years finally went and were sealed as a family, even though he was making very little money and even though his motorcycle got robbed. We focused sacrament meeting on eternal families. I talked first and had planned to just talk about the basics of the temple so our investigators understood, but after explaining a little bit I felt impressed to talk about Jace. I talked about how in that moment the promise of an eternal family was what kept us going and gave us hope and the thing that keeps us striving to be our best. Sister Alfonzo started crying and I just about started crying too. At the end I said something like ``this is what we do in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints-- we use the power and authority given from our Father in heaven to unite families together for eternity. That´s what its all about´´. Then we sang ´´Las families pueden ser eternas´´ and the Alfonzo family all talked a bit about how they felt in the temple and the experience they had. I almost cried again listening to Sister Alfonzo. I can´t describe the joy I felt to see this family united. Their home has a different feeling now and I have never seen them more happy and excited. And this is what it`s all about.

Con amor, Elder Hawk

In other news we had two less active members come to church for the first time. For her it was the first time in years and her grandson was so excited on the way to church, It was so awesome. And Hno. Morel came and is going to ask for every Sunday off of work. Also, Hno. Barbosa got a new job where he won´t drink anymore cause his boss doesn´t allow it. And many other amazing things.