Hola mi madre, como estas. Tú no sabes cuánto te extraño.
Ha, do you know what I just said there? I hope you do. Anyway, I am really happy to hear from you and know that you are all doing so well. I had a great weekend. Did you just not love the talks from conference? I did. I loved every single one of them and I noticed that they talked a lot about families and being home and stuff. Now I’m not sure if that is because I am close to coming home and I picked that up a lot or what, but it really made me miss you more than anything mom. I can’t help but think that next year I will be there with you guys and we will be in Salt Lake, in the Conference Center. Try to get Sunday morning tickets.
Ha, do you know what I just said there? I hope you do. Anyway, I am really happy to hear from you and know that you are all doing so well. I had a great weekend. Did you just not love the talks from conference? I did. I loved every single one of them and I noticed that they talked a lot about families and being home and stuff. Now I’m not sure if that is because I am close to coming home and I picked that up a lot or what, but it really made me miss you more than anything mom. I can’t help but think that next year I will be there with you guys and we will be in Salt Lake, in the Conference Center. Try to get Sunday morning tickets.
By the way, WOW, what a surprise that was. Ha, Colin got baptized. That is the biggest shocker in the world I have ever heard. So how did the missionaries find him? I would like to hear that story and know how that is going. That happens to us a lot too what happened to nanny. People start to realize that they don’t want to be a part of our church and so they drop us off but within weeks they are back and we are teaching them again. I try to write my converts that I have at least once a month. So that they can see how I am doing and remember me forever. I love all of them and luckily I can say that they are still all active in the church and are doing great.
Good for you mom I am really happy for you that you worked out 5 days last week. Now bump it up a little bit more and go 6 times and try going one day twice. I know I need to stop eating so much. I am trying so hard to just eat food out of the house and go from there but it is hard. I am sorry I have been using the card a lot lately I will be better now. It was an investigators birthday and no one bought him anything for his birthday so I took him out to dinner.
I listened to conference in English. I loved it. I love listening to the Prophet. Thomas S. Monson is such an inspired man. We are so fortunate to have a living prophet to guide us and to tell us what it is we need to do and how we need to be better. One thing I pulled out from a talk was when they were talking about sacrifices. I began to think what things have I sacrificed in my life. What have I sacrificed so that I could come here on the mission? Also I noted another thing that was that in all decisions that we make in our life, in all things, we need to look at the spiritual aspect of it and really ask ourselves, what Jesus would do? I know that if we really do think like Jesus thinks, we can be that much more successful. Also we need to keep in mind when we make our decisions; we need to remember how this decision will benefit me in the eternal aspect of life. I really loved the Henry B Eyring talk though on Saturday. I loved about how he talked how we need to build our foundation so strong and how the very gates of hell will be up against us, but we can take these lessons and learn and become stronger. I love that because it is so true, we can take all the trials that we have in our lives and we can better ourselves. We need to be strong and we need to be obedient. There are so many more that I loved but I know that you were there listening to them too so you probably don’t want to hear me ramble on about them.
So this last week for me, I went to a place called Jalapa. It was beautiful there. That is in place where I took the picture of the sunset. Isn’t it beautiful?
So this last week for me, I went to a place called Jalapa. It was beautiful there. That is in place where I took the picture of the sunset. Isn’t it beautiful?
I loved it so much and I just knew that you would love it too so I had to take a picture for you mom. God really does bless us with nature and beautiful moments, but if we are walking to fast we will miss what He has in store for us. Just last night we were walking really quickly to get to the church and right before I walked in the door and looked at the sun, it was a beautiful sunset too. I didn’t have time to take a picture but I just think, if I wasn’t looking up I would of have missed that. I want to do better on that. Now I know you have told me that forever, look up, but I really understand that now, I want to look up and enjoy the earth more often. Anyways in Jalapa, I went on divisions with Elder Pulsipher. He is a great guy. He is going to be a future Quarterback for the BYU Cougars. He tried convincing me on going to BYU but I’m not so sure yet. I asked him if he was an agent for them trying to convince people to go there. He told me he was just looking for a roommate, ha. Anyways we had so much fun. We taught a lot of really good lessons and we even played basketball one night. We went and we played basketball with 15 investigators and there was this one guy who from the moment I arrived there had me marked. He was like 5 foot 2, and had a handle bar mustache, with curly hair, but slicked back and was this short strong man. He looked like a smoker and looked like he would fit perfectly on a Harley Davidson. Anyway, we got there and he was staring at me the whole time. So we go inside and he has his shorts on and a sweater and we start playing. We were sitting out at first and he was playing but when we got into the game, he took off his sweater and just had a netted shirt on. Gah, it was so gross. Anyways he was guarding me and he made a lot of points off of me, but I did manage to get a 3 in there and I have no idea how it happened. Other than that, I still stink at basketball so I’ll stick to swimming. It was just so funny though because at one point I was so tired. And he was sitting out and I tried getting him to play for me, but he just chuckled and said, ha ha ha, ya Te cansaste VA? Which means, you’re already tired huh? So I just told him, no I’m not tired and I went back in and played. It was pretty funny.
So one of the lessons that stuck out to me there in Jalapa was this one family we went to go visit. It was a family that is just great, but they are controlled by their 16 year old daughter. The family really wants to progress and do well but when they have a question they ask the daughter. So, I am almost positive that the 16 year old hates me now, but we set things straight there. We taught about the responsibility of the parents and how they need to be the ones making the decisions and step up to the plate and do the right things. They are the ones who had the experience in this life and they needed to make the calls. So once we got that fixed, we then taught them the first lesson and it was such a powerful lesson. It was so cool. They learned so much there, and most importantly they were really able to feel the spirit strongly in this lesson. It was really neat mom. Also in a district meeting, the district leader invited me to say a little bit, and so I got up there and started talking about the importance of baptism. I asked them, who here wants to baptize. They all raised their hands. Of course they would. After I asked them, why is it that they want to baptize? They were all saying, because we want to save people, they want to make their families happy, and etc. So we read some scriptures from the doctrine and covenants and it talks there about why it really is that we need to baptize these people. At the end of that meeting, I felt the spirit so strongly there. I testified to them and I will end on this. I want to baptize because I want to give to these people the knowledge of Jesus Christ and the great and marvelous thing that He has given us. I want to baptize these people so that the atonement can apply to them as much as it applies to me. I want to baptize so that they may see God more in their lives and feel worthy and dignified to be in His presence once again. I want to give the Atonement of Jesus to them, and give them the one and only true recognized remissions of their sins through baptism before God and the Heavens here on this earth. I know this church is true and I know that I can have you guys forever. I love that about our faith that we know that families can be together forever. If people would just realize what it is that we really teach, they would change in a heartbeat. They wouldn’t be looking from church to church, for years on end. Some people HAD it right in front of their eyes and they rejected it. That makes me sad. I know though that I do not want one person to go astray due to my faults. We need to give perfect examples. We need to be as Jesus. We need to invite and have a good knowledge of these things so that people can see what it is that they are lacking. I love you all and I will talk to you next week.
Love always,
Elder Shipley
So one of the lessons that stuck out to me there in Jalapa was this one family we went to go visit. It was a family that is just great, but they are controlled by their 16 year old daughter. The family really wants to progress and do well but when they have a question they ask the daughter. So, I am almost positive that the 16 year old hates me now, but we set things straight there. We taught about the responsibility of the parents and how they need to be the ones making the decisions and step up to the plate and do the right things. They are the ones who had the experience in this life and they needed to make the calls. So once we got that fixed, we then taught them the first lesson and it was such a powerful lesson. It was so cool. They learned so much there, and most importantly they were really able to feel the spirit strongly in this lesson. It was really neat mom. Also in a district meeting, the district leader invited me to say a little bit, and so I got up there and started talking about the importance of baptism. I asked them, who here wants to baptize. They all raised their hands. Of course they would. After I asked them, why is it that they want to baptize? They were all saying, because we want to save people, they want to make their families happy, and etc. So we read some scriptures from the doctrine and covenants and it talks there about why it really is that we need to baptize these people. At the end of that meeting, I felt the spirit so strongly there. I testified to them and I will end on this. I want to baptize because I want to give to these people the knowledge of Jesus Christ and the great and marvelous thing that He has given us. I want to baptize these people so that the atonement can apply to them as much as it applies to me. I want to baptize so that they may see God more in their lives and feel worthy and dignified to be in His presence once again. I want to give the Atonement of Jesus to them, and give them the one and only true recognized remissions of their sins through baptism before God and the Heavens here on this earth. I know this church is true and I know that I can have you guys forever. I love that about our faith that we know that families can be together forever. If people would just realize what it is that we really teach, they would change in a heartbeat. They wouldn’t be looking from church to church, for years on end. Some people HAD it right in front of their eyes and they rejected it. That makes me sad. I know though that I do not want one person to go astray due to my faults. We need to give perfect examples. We need to be as Jesus. We need to invite and have a good knowledge of these things so that people can see what it is that they are lacking. I love you all and I will talk to you next week.
Love always,
Elder Shipley
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