November 18 2013

Hola Family,

Alright, so this week, nothing really exciting, but we have found a ton of new people to teach, so we´re not really walking around playing with our toes anymore :p

I´ve had a LOT of humbling experiences this week, and I´ve realized something that we, as members of the church can fall into sometimes:

And even when we´re not members, sometimes we fall into a dangerous game. It´s called the game of "False Wisdom". I named it myself, haha, but in this game we start to study, and we study a lot. scriptures, talks, other God-related books, and we fall into the erroneous trap of thinking we´re okay in the eyes of God because we understand the concept of repentence, or we understand why having the Holy Ghost with us is important. Then, the part of our mind that´s connected with our natural and fallen environment starts to tell us, "Don´t you worry, you´re completing everything you need to to be saved. you´ve learned it all, right? so why wouldn´t you be doing it? you understand repentance, so you can just do it after anything, and still be sincere." And the most dangerous part of the game is, we have to end it early, because if we play every level, we´ll have to keep playing it for eternity in Hell.

The art of knowing is 20% of the battle folks. you could memorize the scriptures and still end up in the Telestial Kingdom. a lot of great and really "Intelligent" people apostasized when the church first started, it´s just a matter of the subtlety of the temptation. sometimes we think we know so much that our conversion starts to only be in our mind, and we don´t realize that while we´re bragging about the spiritual KNOWLEDGE we have, our spiritual STRENGTH is slowly withering and fading into the darkness.

FAITH = ACTION, people. not just knowledge. and that´s the lesson for today :p. haha also, I´ve lost 70 pounds. only 10 more to go :D

Stay in school!

Much Love, Elder Sheppard

BLOG:

Hola Familia!!!

How´re things? I´m hoping good, because I feel a wave of success coming on over here :)

Okay, first thing´s first: Updates.

This week, we had one of the most awesome lessons in a family home evening I´ve ever had! we talked about the plan of Salvation, and we watch as this family unfolded their own purposes in life as they listened to us. we saw the spirit truly working in them and it was great. haha, it Gave me a testimony about family home evening :)

Then, last night, we went to this lady´s house who´s not a member of the church, but her daughter is and she´s on a mission right now, so her mom is NOT happy. She said the church stole her daughter and a bunch of other stuff, but now that my companion and I are getting along better, we took care of that thought process REAL QUICK. haha, I still don´t know if she keeps fighting against her daughter´s decision, but at least we delivered the message :p

Out here in the mission feild, I´ve realized that we as human beings tend to lose sight of what really matters here. I wrote about that last week, but the cancerous tumor of apathy still spreads throughout the hearts of "Those who profess to belong to the church of Christ."

We had changes this week, but nobody left or arrived in the district I´m in, so the changes didn´t affect us at all... but that just means I have another month and a half to combat this lack of feeling that´s assailing the city of Salamanca.

I´ve realized that Satan attacks the church from the inside out. first, he gets our families to argue, then, he gets us to bring family problems into our communication with other members so we stop getting along with them. Pretty soon, everyone on the outside of the church is saying, "I´m never getting baptized there, their own MEMBERS don´t even act like disciples of Christ." then, we all fall slowly into personal apostasy.

That´s his plan anyway, he just isn´t fully aware yet of whose arrived to put an end to it >:)

Well, talk to y´all next week! stay "prayed up"!

Elder Stormy Sheppard