email dated 9/19/09
Another week has come and gone. If I am writing too early for you to write me email today than you will need to email me at urugoest@gmail.com today or tomorrow so that I get it. I have to write now because today we are traveling to Paysandu for a Stake Conference and I lose another Pday. But I live in the offices and so any emails I get pretty much the same day anyway, but I wont be able to check my emails again today. So that everyone knows, anytime that you write to urugoest@gmail.com I get those any day of the week while I am living here.
This week we had the Zone Conferences in Tacuarembo and Salto and Mercedes. I was on the road all week and I am really tired but we still have one road trip left to go. We talked about the importance of setting your goals and committing yourselves to the goals. Making that the goals drive your plans and not your plans drive your goals. It is probably the hardest thing that we do on the mission and I didn't feel really capable or worthy to teach it. For me, setting and getting goals is harder than anything else we do. On the mission all of our goals have to do with the actions of other people and we have to avoid the doubts or fears that "oh their agency makes us incapable of achieving our goals". It is easy to make that excuse. What I have come to realize is that if we don't get a goal we don't need to criticize ourselves or beat ourselves up. We just analyze what happened. If we did our best we go out and do it again, maybe adjusting the goal or our plans. Nephi was commanded to get the plates and 2 times failed. It was a commandment from the Lord to achieve the plates!! He could have wondered why it didn't happen right the first time, as did Laman and Lemuel. We just gotta keep going at it with a positive attitude.
I don't have much more time. I love you all very much! I bear witness that Heavenly Father loves His children and that we have the necessity and responsibility to seek Him every day of our lives! It is a journey towards perfection in which we daily need to be advancing. The good news is that God is no respecter of persons. Wherever we are on the path the only responsibility that we have today is to make a step in the right direction. I love you all!!
Andy
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
One Who Understands
email dated 9/12/09
I had a very strange trunky moment today. The intercom in the offices rang and the voice "Elder Shepherd line 2, line 2". I went and sat at the secretaries desk and was about to pick up the phone when I saw a certificate with my name on it. "Dear Elder Andrew Wade Shepherd, you are hereby released as a full time missionary...signed Steven K Peterson". It made my stomach turn over. I think that it goes in the packet they send to the stake President. I wasn't supposed to see that. It didn't actually make me trunky. But it was weird to see and thus I call it a trunky moment.
Elder Clark and I have the idea of baptizing 6 people before I go home. We have the people found and challenged. Now the trick will be progressing and going to church. We will continue to find during these weeks as well. We are determined and we will succeed.
Lorena is doing well, her new job still didn't help and she realizes that she wants to work without having to work Sunday. She really wants to be baptized. A girl who when I first met her said she didn't really believe or disbelieve in God, said this week "I have felt the spirit and I know what I felt. I know I need to be baptized."!! Your prayers have helped her. Keep praying for her.
Elisa is good. The bishop knows her a little better and she has accepted a date to be baptized in September. She has already been to church the required 3 times and so she is good to go. We could do it today if we wanted to. I think we will give her another week or two to prepare.
We found a full family yesterday!! Father, mother, two sons. Jose Luis, the dad, says he would like it for his kids to have faith. He said in their home they haven't talked much about God, although they believe. And that with the death of the grandparents the kids could use an idea what there is beyond all this life. The problem is again that he works a TON, 65 hours a week, and Sunday is rarely free. The Devil is winning WAY too many points on the Sabbath Day. I gotta say that after what I have seen on the mission I am convinced that Sabbath Worship can make or break the attitude of a society. The Uruguayan truly believes "I am ALWAYS working. I am NEVER home." They say it in a way I never heard busy people in the States mean it or say it. They don't say it as an excuse. They truly and honestly believe it. And for some people it is true, but all say it. But when you have the Sabbath you always know that there is a day to be with your family. As I look back on life Sunday is my favorite day of the week. I love going to church and coming home and having the whole afternoon where I have already decided I wont do homework on that special day, so I read, watch movies with family, eat chicken and mashed potatoes or yakisoba or whatever it is...I love Sunday. And I will keep the Sabbath Holy the rest of my life. The Lord blesses those that keep His commandments. Those blessings are real and too often go unnoticed. But I know they are there.
Anyway, I gotta go. I hope that everyone is doing just dandy. Take care. I love all y'all!
Andy
I had a very strange trunky moment today. The intercom in the offices rang and the voice "Elder Shepherd line 2, line 2". I went and sat at the secretaries desk and was about to pick up the phone when I saw a certificate with my name on it. "Dear Elder Andrew Wade Shepherd, you are hereby released as a full time missionary...signed Steven K Peterson". It made my stomach turn over. I think that it goes in the packet they send to the stake President. I wasn't supposed to see that. It didn't actually make me trunky. But it was weird to see and thus I call it a trunky moment.
Elder Clark and I have the idea of baptizing 6 people before I go home. We have the people found and challenged. Now the trick will be progressing and going to church. We will continue to find during these weeks as well. We are determined and we will succeed.
Lorena is doing well, her new job still didn't help and she realizes that she wants to work without having to work Sunday. She really wants to be baptized. A girl who when I first met her said she didn't really believe or disbelieve in God, said this week "I have felt the spirit and I know what I felt. I know I need to be baptized."!! Your prayers have helped her. Keep praying for her.
Elisa is good. The bishop knows her a little better and she has accepted a date to be baptized in September. She has already been to church the required 3 times and so she is good to go. We could do it today if we wanted to. I think we will give her another week or two to prepare.
We found a full family yesterday!! Father, mother, two sons. Jose Luis, the dad, says he would like it for his kids to have faith. He said in their home they haven't talked much about God, although they believe. And that with the death of the grandparents the kids could use an idea what there is beyond all this life. The problem is again that he works a TON, 65 hours a week, and Sunday is rarely free. The Devil is winning WAY too many points on the Sabbath Day. I gotta say that after what I have seen on the mission I am convinced that Sabbath Worship can make or break the attitude of a society. The Uruguayan truly believes "I am ALWAYS working. I am NEVER home." They say it in a way I never heard busy people in the States mean it or say it. They don't say it as an excuse. They truly and honestly believe it. And for some people it is true, but all say it. But when you have the Sabbath you always know that there is a day to be with your family. As I look back on life Sunday is my favorite day of the week. I love going to church and coming home and having the whole afternoon where I have already decided I wont do homework on that special day, so I read, watch movies with family, eat chicken and mashed potatoes or yakisoba or whatever it is...I love Sunday. And I will keep the Sabbath Holy the rest of my life. The Lord blesses those that keep His commandments. Those blessings are real and too often go unnoticed. But I know they are there.
Anyway, I gotta go. I hope that everyone is doing just dandy. Take care. I love all y'all!
Andy
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Amazing Grace
email dated 9/5/09
Amazing Grace how sweet the sound
That Saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found.
Was blind but now I see!
Twas grace that taught my heart to feel
And grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed.
And when this heart and flesh shall fail
And mortal life shall cease.
I shall possess within the veil
A life of Joy and Peace.
My chains are gone Ive been set free!!
My Lord my God has ransomed me.
And like a flood His mercy rains
Unending love, Amazing Grace.
I would like to think I wrote that, but I do have it memorized and that is almost just as good. What I have accomplished is that I have come to know that that Amazing Grace of which we sing is very real. It is by grace that we are saved. One thing I have come to learn is that only God knows the heart of a person. Not even the person necessarily knows his own heart, but our Heavenly Father always knows. And our Savior Jesus Christ, having felt what we have felt, knows us better than we know ourselves. Jesus suffered our afflictions and pains, which are only inadvertently connected with sin on account of the fall, but truly are not consequences always of bad choices we make. Yet He suffered those specific pains anyway so that He could know us and love us. And that is why His grace and His love is perfect.
This week we met a woman in the hospital named Marinela Deluche. She lives in a little town called Chuy in the other mission. She had been in a motor accident and had temporarily lost her memory. She had lesions that haven't healed in 4 months and she had an eye surgery as a result of the accident. They found a brain tumor and are in the process of finding out if it is operable or what will happen to her. We had gone to the hospital to look for her to give her a blessing because a member who was in the hospital had called our offices and requested one. It turns out that the member wasn't even there and Marinela had no idea we were coming or who that member was. We stuck around anyway to talk to her. A woman named Rosa was also there. Rosa didn't know Marinela before her accident and is living here in Montevideo. Rosa is a good christian. I needed to meet her. She would frequently visit Marinela just so that Marinela wouldn't be alone. Marinela has a 14 year old son named Emiliano and an ex-husband. Well, for 4 months her son has been with her ex and she has heard not a word from him or her son. She very well might die and what she really wants is to talk to her son. I felt so helpless. She accepted the blessing at Rosas insisting that we could help. We have visited her twice there. She doesn't know her sons number or that of her ex-husband but she gave me an idea of where they might live. I called the missionaries that are serving in Chuy and sent them and they told me that they found it!! We are going to be able to get her a phone number to call and talk to her son. We haven't really talked to her about baptism at all, which is usually the main thing I have been talking about to the people I am visiting. It just hasn't seemed the need with her right now. I think Heavenly Father isn't done teaching me about Charity and I have quite a few lessons to learn. Visiting her and Rosa has renewed my faith and hope in the good people of the world.
I love you all very much! Take care!!
Andy
Amazing Grace how sweet the sound
That Saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found.
Was blind but now I see!
Twas grace that taught my heart to feel
And grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed.
And when this heart and flesh shall fail
And mortal life shall cease.
I shall possess within the veil
A life of Joy and Peace.
My chains are gone Ive been set free!!
My Lord my God has ransomed me.
And like a flood His mercy rains
Unending love, Amazing Grace.
I would like to think I wrote that, but I do have it memorized and that is almost just as good. What I have accomplished is that I have come to know that that Amazing Grace of which we sing is very real. It is by grace that we are saved. One thing I have come to learn is that only God knows the heart of a person. Not even the person necessarily knows his own heart, but our Heavenly Father always knows. And our Savior Jesus Christ, having felt what we have felt, knows us better than we know ourselves. Jesus suffered our afflictions and pains, which are only inadvertently connected with sin on account of the fall, but truly are not consequences always of bad choices we make. Yet He suffered those specific pains anyway so that He could know us and love us. And that is why His grace and His love is perfect.
This week we met a woman in the hospital named Marinela Deluche. She lives in a little town called Chuy in the other mission. She had been in a motor accident and had temporarily lost her memory. She had lesions that haven't healed in 4 months and she had an eye surgery as a result of the accident. They found a brain tumor and are in the process of finding out if it is operable or what will happen to her. We had gone to the hospital to look for her to give her a blessing because a member who was in the hospital had called our offices and requested one. It turns out that the member wasn't even there and Marinela had no idea we were coming or who that member was. We stuck around anyway to talk to her. A woman named Rosa was also there. Rosa didn't know Marinela before her accident and is living here in Montevideo. Rosa is a good christian. I needed to meet her. She would frequently visit Marinela just so that Marinela wouldn't be alone. Marinela has a 14 year old son named Emiliano and an ex-husband. Well, for 4 months her son has been with her ex and she has heard not a word from him or her son. She very well might die and what she really wants is to talk to her son. I felt so helpless. She accepted the blessing at Rosas insisting that we could help. We have visited her twice there. She doesn't know her sons number or that of her ex-husband but she gave me an idea of where they might live. I called the missionaries that are serving in Chuy and sent them and they told me that they found it!! We are going to be able to get her a phone number to call and talk to her son. We haven't really talked to her about baptism at all, which is usually the main thing I have been talking about to the people I am visiting. It just hasn't seemed the need with her right now. I think Heavenly Father isn't done teaching me about Charity and I have quite a few lessons to learn. Visiting her and Rosa has renewed my faith and hope in the good people of the world.
I love you all very much! Take care!!
Andy
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