Hey there everyone, another week, another email I guess. I would like to dedicate this email to La Barba, The beard, James Harden, for always being there for me and for being amazing. Truly an inspiration to us all.
*Note: Also shout out to Jesus, and for all the blessings I received in this week. Always gotta recognize the big guys upstairs, God is good.
Today we had a Zone Pday and we played some interesting games. We are in Honduras, so we have to get creative sometimes haha. The first thing we did, we everyone brought a few 20 cent rolls of toilet paper (or sandpaper as I call it), and we used box tape to tape around the roll really tight, and then used these 15 rolls or so to play dodge ball with baseball sized rolls heavy enough to throw hard but not hurt anyone. We also have some Dominicans who play baseball and a softball player so everyone was good a throwing. Pretty fun.
The other crazy thing we did, was we got a hold of a LIVE CHICKEN.(Its Honduras what do you expect?) What did we do? You guessed it, we put the chicken in a room in the church, blindfolded ourselves, and saw how long it took us to catch the chicken. This chicken wasn't as hard as the one in Rocky, I caught it in about 27 seconds. This is how we know that one day this chicken will be killed, and eaten. If I were a chicken and a bunch of people were trying to chase me down, I would at least give my best effort to get away from these crazy white people that love chicken. Survival of the fittest.
This week was a good one. I am still working on patience. There is a scripture that I love in The book of Mormon that I love to use and teach to people. It says:
"27 And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them."
Lets take a minute to observe this verse and break it down. Christ says in the very beginning, that if we choose to follow him, he will show us that we are weak, that we have problems. (Sometimes I like to replace that word 'weakness' with something as a trial or difficulty, like God will send us a storm in our life, something on those lines.)
It then goes to say that " I give unto men weaknesses [or trials] that they may be humble." God is our heavenly Father. He does not want us to suffer, but just the opposite. He wants us to be happy, he wants us to have joy in our lives. But the truth is we will never find satisfaction in life if we think we can do it alone. We are humans, and we all have weaknesses and face trials. What this verse is saying is that God puts those "why me?" things in our lives that we can learn to put the control in his hands, or how the beautiful american idol winner, Carrie U would put it, let him "take the wheel".
It then goes to say that if we humble ourselves unto him, and search for his guidance and accept that we cant do it alone, that his grace will carry us. Grace is such a powerful word, and its something that most of us don't understand. You can study and work your whole life to understand completely how powerful the word grace is and I don't think I could do it. A quote by Brad Wilcox says, "“Jesus doesn’t make up the difference. Jesus makes all the difference. Grace is not about filling gaps. It is about filling us.”
He also uses an example of how Gods grace works on us, using the subject of piano lessons. When we are young and we take our piano lessons (for those of you who did, but for me my dad just practiced baseball with me and taught me to mow the lawn for free ;) ) Our parents pay for these lessons. Usually how it works, is they pay for a set of lessons in advanced so you can learn. Thanks to them, we don't need to pay for them, they are already paid for. What we can do to show gratitude to what our parents did for us is to PRACTICE. They want us to better ourselves, make a change. It is hard at first, and many mistakes are made, but after time we learn to be better.
We can use this example in the topic of grace. Wilcox described it in this way: Christ already paid for our sins. Its secure. We will all live again. What he wants for us, is that in our lives we can better ourselves, LEARN from our mistakes, and correct them. In the last line God says if we humble ourselves and have faith, his grace will carry us and our weaknesses will be made strengths, trials be made easier, and our "yokes" be made lighter.
Right now I am in a situation against my lifes second greatest weakness, (next to Chickfila), is my patience. God KNEW that I suck in that category, so 2 months ago sent me a companion who could show me an example of patience, and then give me a new companion to "help" me put it into practice. FIRST, I had to stop and pray for help to change myself, not him. I know I need to get better I have learned that when I feel frustration because my comp takes a long time in the morning to get ready and we are always late, instead of telling him to hurry, I try and do something to serve him like iron his shirt. I am searching for ways to help him and me at the same time, and it has helped very much. Whenever he does something and I wanna same a rude comment or hang him from the fan by his tie, I have decided just to drop down and do 50 push ups. It takes all the energy out of me so the bad feelings go away. I'm doing about 250-300 push ups a day right now, so its also helping me as a person. I'm nowhere close to being perfect on my patience, BUT I am improving for sure.
I invite the few people that read to this point to try and apply this scripture to your life. If you wanna find more great scriptures like this one, you can find it in the Book of Mormon, which is another testament of Christ, but written on the american continent by its native inhabitants. The purpose of it is the same as the bible, to convince the world that Jesus is the Christ, and so if you love the bible, there's a whole other testament that teaches us how to become closer to our God and Christ. My life has truly changed because of it, and yours can too ;) Love ya all folks,
Elder Butler.
PS. if you love me write me a message sometime or send pics and or funny tweets. Stay cool ;)
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