Elder Zach Taylor - March 17. 2014: Obligado Week 11

This week was awesome. The highlight of the week was the conference we had Thursday in Encarnación with President Zeballos and his wife. President LaPierre also gave a discourse. It was just filled with the spirit and it helped me see things in a different light. The conference was mostly focused on the extremely important role the Spirit has in our work as missionaries. There were a few points that I thought I´d share with you. It was talked a lot about how being obedient to what Heavenly Father asks assures that we can have the spirit with us. We need the spirit in every moment as missionaries, whether it´s while we´re walking in the street to know who to talk to, or during our studies, our daily and weekly planning sessions, or while we´re teaching to know what it is we should say. And the only way we can have that influence is if we are doing all that He asks. The crazy thing is that some of us are still here trying to do things how we think we should do them. The only thing we need to learn how to do is submit ourselves completely to the will of God, and after everything falls into its place. Now it doesn´t matter where you are on the scale of obedience right now, whether you are an obedient person right now or a rebellious one, what matters is the direction you are going; because this, the true gospel of Jesus Christ, is a gospel of progression. It´s not something we learn just once, but it is a way of life that we develop as we submit ourselves to God´s will. And the more we learn how to do that, the more we become like Christ. He never did anything that was in contrary to the Father´s will. Anything that made the Father happy made Him happy.. and that is what made him perfect.

The whole conference was just amazing, I wish I could tell everything, but I just said what I found most important. Besides the conference, we were also able to visit Osvaldo, the guy we met on the collectivo. We talked with him about his time as an active member. We found out that he had served a local mission here, had even gone to the temple. Then he got married (to someone who wasn´t too fond of the church at the time), and slowly stopped going. Now it´s been 10 years that he´s been inactive. If there was anything I learned, it´s that nobody, even the most active of members, are safe from the influence of the devil. Anyone can fall, and that is why we constantly need to be on guard against the many influences of evil in this world. When we invited him to come back to church he said nothing more than ´It would be interesting¨. I left 1 nephi 8 for him to read. He said we could come back later this week.

We did find a couple more people to teach this week as well. The only problem that we´ve found here is that everyone is always too busy. We find people once, then when we try to return they always have something going on. What can we do but carry on, I suppose.

I really have been able to feel the influence of the spirit in me during this week, and I can feel myself becoming something more than I was before. New goals and challenges are being placed in front of me every day, and I´m doing my best to learn from them. Until next time!

Elder Taylor