E-mail 7.18.2011

Today's is SUPER good. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Or more. That works too.. ;)

Subject: Charity and Prayer

i love your sins away. that is how it feels to feel Christ´s love for someone. i have been feeling it here. i met a guy the other day who told me he is a member of the church and i almost crapped myself. dudes got tats all over and a cig hanging from the corner of his mouth. ha ha. he invited us over to his shack of a house and we went in and started talking... he goes on to explain that he fell away from the church at the age of 20 because of drugs and alcohol and crime and was put in prison for 7 years and after that was addicted to crack... after the conversation was over i had to pick my jaw up off the floor and i realized that i was with an ex-con ex-druggie beast of a man but i felt no fear... strange... i looked him in the eyes and asked why was it that he fell away from the church and he told me "all excuses aside, i fell away because i stopped praying... i stopped fasting... and i separated myself from Gods presence" it wasn't drugs... wasn't women... wasn't anything worldly... it was the seemingly tiny connection we have with the Father and the love we can feel from Him. if we stop praying we are in danger... this guy said he had sent his paperwork in to go on a mission... our only protection in this life is fasting and prayer. vocally and silently we must pray daily to have the Spirit in our lives, His divine protection, divine love, and divine guidance. but apart from that amazing lesson i learned from the Spirit in that moment i was also realizing the power of Charity(the pure love of Christ) i could look at that big burly hardened man in the eyes without an ounce of fear because i love him. and true love knows no fear. i felt purity generating from my heart. it doesn't matter what we do or where we have been God loves us with a perfect love and we can all be a part of that. we cant let temptation hinder our love. we can NOT afford to sin. we must let our light shine to Gods children to let them know that God loves them. there is POWER in the shameless love that God can instill in our hearts, IF we want it.. IF we let Him give it to us. after all we are His children... He is our Father and knows every need that we have. Looking to the example of Christ as we feel challenged in life, as we may feel at times unworthy to even utter a word of Prayer... When Christ was challenged what did he do? He prayed... when things got hard He prayed harder. when He was pushed to His Godly limits in the Garden of Gethsemane shedding drop after drop of mortal blood for our mortal sins, with an eternity riding on his success and endurance, what did He do? prayed His HARDEST.


It doesn't make a difference WHO WHAT WHERE WHEN or HOW if we stop praying its game over... we are lost without it.



i KNOW that God is waiting on the other end of the line... just waiting... in perfect patience, perfect love, He waits.



pray



ELDER ELREY

E-mail 7.11.2011

so last monday we went to a museum park that had statues and rocks and animals and stuff and it was pretty cool n stuff but i didnt mention last week. wasnt tooooo exciting...

anyway we had the goal of 3 baptisms this week and we were workuing hard to get it... we only had 2 with set dates and a sister who ha been going to church for a while with her member children who was on the edge of making a decision. Nicolas and Faustino both were good to go and Faustino got dunked on thursday and Nicolas on Saturday. but with this sister we had no idea what to do becuase she had heard all the missionaries for over a year tell her she HAS to get baptised... so we went and shared a few scripture from King Benjamins talk in mosiah 2:22-24 about obedience and then we went over to 2nd nefi 31 11 and 12 wher the Father commands us to repent and be baptized in the name of His Son and then Christ comes and promises the Spirit as He recieved it( in abundance) then we listened to the testimony of her 18 year old daughter and sang her the primary song about rainbows and baptism and invited her for thursday to be baptized. .... .... she said YES! laid it down. such a powerful moment. she then wednesday had her interview and all was well and then thursday morning it aaaallll went down. Friday morning we go to visit and we were back to square one some how.... :( all the progress that we had made she just erased... Satan knows how to attack and when to do it... it was painful to watch but it was just not her time i guess... we are still working with her and trying to figure the situation out so that she can be baptized soon.

so as i said Faustino the guy in the picture with just me and my comp. he is awesome. just a pure desire to follow Chritst and change his life for the better. he got baptized on thursday and saturday night got sick with fever and wasnt gonna be able to go to church and be confirmed but asked some other elders that we live with to give him a blessing and he woke up feeling just good enough to get to the first hour and then stayed for the second as well. and Nicolas... he is amazing. in three short weeks has gained the respect of every member in the ward. he goes every sunday to church with two small children and with faith gets there 10 minutes early every time. his wife works sundays and doesnt show much interest in the church and he has both the boys to watch after on the weekends. his service was planned as well for thursday with Faustino but our president visited them and the wife showed and interest in asisting the serveces and so with changed it to saturday afternoon. all went smoothly and he showed up on sunday right on time like always with Nico Jr. and Carlitos in his arms. i love and respect those two guys and know that they are inn Gods care and under the influence of His Spirit.

numerous blessings are awaiting me...

i love God with all my heart and i know that i am not perfect in anything i do... but i know that i am doing the best i can to reach the potentialthat He has given me.

i love you,
--

ELDER ELREY

p.s. I accidentally erased ALL of my pictures of almost my WHOLE mission on thursday night....
it happens...


1500 memories lost in the air somewhere....

haha.

that has been my motto recently...

"it happens"

stay posative

E-mail 7.4.2011

Subject: Happy 4th

well its kinda happy. as i stumbled out of bed this morning i muttered it to my companion and he gave me a cordial grunt of appreciation. haha. i miss the states... so many ugly dogs here that i just want to go where there arent any running around the streets. haha. sunday i completed 17 months in the mission and i think june was the fastest of them all. i think it is picking up. i cant believe it... i am happy where i am and i know i am here because this is where the Lord wants me.

This week we have been tossed around by all sorts of interviews and meetings a wedding and two baptismal services... on tuesday morning president wanted t see me in his office and i felt like a kid going to the principals office in elementary school. hah. so i went and hung around the offices for acouple hours until he arrived and we talked for a good 45 minutes in his office. the whole purpose of the metting was for him to tell me how much he loved me and to give me the oportunity to share some of my spiritual experiences with him. we talked a lot about the family and the blessings we have seen from all of our service in the church and i expressed with him that i would serve 5 mission s back to back to see the progress and changes i have seen in all of you. it was a sweet moment.

Wednesday we had to go to a near by towns court house to finalize oall of the paperwork for a wedding we were helping get organized for an investigator and so we were there all morning and then thursday they called us back in and we had to do her baptismal interview and then an activity with the youth in the church which is conveniently 20 minutes away in a little bus van. and then Friday morning we had the wedding and then friday afternoon we went to the church to prepare the font for the baptism which turned into a mission in and of itself. turns out it was still full from our last weeks baptism and there were crickets and lizzards having a pool party in there so we had to empty it. but the plumbing here isnt the same as home and to drain something of that magnetude you have to have pumps and sisternas and all sorts of stuff. kinda like in coatza when i had to go in the cemnt water box and open the valve... but in this church the pumps dont work and the water box is HUGE and was also full of water. what happens is the water from the font goes into the big cement box and then a pump sucks it out and waters the grass... buuuuuut the system is crappppp P. doesnt work. we had to call the bishop who called maintenace who was in Comalcalco 1 hour and a half away and we didnt start draining the font until 630. Baptism was scheduled to start at 7... shortly after we start emptying the beast it starts to rain HARD and we lost power. a crazy member starts going to it with a bucket and then the power came back and the left again and then came back........ so we got it emptied cleaned and filled and started the baptismal service at 8 ish... it was sweet becausewe baptised the mom of a family who are all members and she had been waiting for a long time to be baptised because they werent married... thats why we had the wedding in the morning... we got it done though and it was amazing. the two kids prayed and the dad gave a talk and all of them touched the chance they have of going to the temple in a year to be an eternal family... after that we went home and were happy... saturday we had no where to eat and so we went to eat with some other elders in their area close by the church and spent a lot of time in that because of the travel. then we had an appointment with an investigator named Nicolas i have mentioned him to a few of you. he is one of the Lords elect and has a true testimony of the church. we have been teaching him just two weeks and heis ready to be baptised this Thursday. we didnt really teach anything, we just stood in front of the ward bulletin and answered questions about family history and stake events and how he will be able to enter the temple and fulfill the will of God in him family. also talked about the priesthood authoruty and how he will be able to baptise his boy in a year when he turns 8 and all sorts of good stuff... then we went to a baptism of the other ward and supported their convert. a young girl who had no family who found love in the truth of the gospel as she explains it. she only wanted the missionaries and a member of the bishopric there. it was a sweet service and she cried basically the whole time.

sunday was bomb as well. we went to church and had 5 investigators with us there. it was great.

it made me happy to struggle through this week and feel the spirit and love through it all.

i know that the Lord is keeping his children.

the Lord loves us and the church is true,

Elder Elrey

E-mail 6.27.2011

last week was a lame monday and i hardly had any time... kinda like today but today was cool because we went to some sweeet caverns and went under ground. this place is sweeeet

hot but sweeet

i have been really good. we had a baptism of a sweet little girl this week and have just been working... its seems hard to write because eveery thing seem so normal now... on sunday we had 8 investigadors come to church and a ton of less actives. it was cool to see rows and rows of people that i taught in the week. we are having a great effect with our lessons and family home evenings and the most important part has been the presence of the spirit. i have felt His power within me. i remember in last area after a baptism we were cleaning up a little in the church and the son of the convert came down with a fever and they asked me to give him a blessing to heal him. i was shocked they even knew to ask me. so we went to the sacrament room and i administered a blessing to the kid and almost imediately the fever left him and he was running around like normal. that day was special for me because i was blessed with the oppourtunity to baptize and to use the healing powers of the priesthood. i love being a servant of the Lord. i have felt the spirit strongly recently testifying in the lessons that the church is true. and that Jesus is the Christ.

there is no doubt...

Elder Elrey