So Hna.Ireland and Hna.Flores and I are staing another transfer, yay! Every transfer goes by faster and faster I seriously don´t get it! It´s funny cause on the mission you don´t really think of time as months or days but as transfers aka 6 week periods, and I only have 5 more left, eeeeeeekkkk!!!! The world needs to rotate a little slower!
To wrap up the transfer we did our last exchanges with the sisters from Curacavi my foremer sector. It was great cause I got to ask them about the members and my converts and former investigators we had and how they´re doing and give them advice to help them keep progressing in the gospel. Something super crazy and funny that happened this week is that one night while we were walking home at the end of the day we turned a corner to the main road and the houses here have walls and gates all around them and as we turned the corner there was a man (not a teenager, not a child...A MAN) crouching ontop of the wall surrounding this house and he hissed at us! I looked up and totally freaked out and he said something in a language that I don´t think exists and we booked it across the street to the other side. It was sooooo funny but also kinda creepy, a lot of sketchy people around here, haha! This week was Hna.Flores´s birthday so we celebrated by eating a lot of cake and candy thanks to the members and random people on the street who gave us free food cause we´d tell them it was our companions birthday! So my plan is to keep my b-day on the DL and not tell anyone cause that will most certainly ruin all my diet and excerising these past months. Besides that nothing crazy has happenned this week and just pumped to do exchanges with my new group of sisters and to work my head off finding the amazing people the Lord has prepared to accept this gospel. In this area we work a lot with less-actives, it´s totally different than how I´ve had to work in other sectors, but I´m learning so many new things and love rekindling the fire that was once their testimony with my own flame.
I guess today I want to take more time to write not so much about what has happenned this week but about my thoughts. This transfer I´ll have a year in the mission, I know I still have a lot of time left but in retrospect I know I really don´t and that these months are going to fly by. Recently I´ve had to fill out scholarship applications, find housing for this fall, making goals for this new year and having to think about my future after the mission and it is starting to terrify me a little, really it´s a scary thought, to think I´m going to go back to "reality" soon. But I want to speak a little here to those who have already returned from the mission, that this life- the life in the mission, is reality. THIS is real life, that is as real as life gets, a life where you are 100% dedicated to the Lord, apart from the world and it´s many distractions, a life where 24/7 you are talking to real people with real problems and trying to help them by testifying of the reality of this restored gospel and the Savior´s atonement. When you serve a mission you do this forever, you have to serve the Lord forever, you have to love others forever, you have to share the gospel forever, you have to consecrate all that you have and all that you are for this great cause, not just for 18-24 months, but for a life time. The mission is the MTC of life and what you learn here you have to take with you and live the mission always. And really I´m scared to have to go back and live in "the world" and be exposed to wordly things and have temptations and people trying to pressure or influence me to take other paths. Living the gospel is so easy as a missionary, you have a time to pray, a time to study the scriptures, you witness miracles and blessings daily, you have the companionship of the holy ghost constantly to guide you, and you always know what to do and when to do it. You have EVERY 30 minutes of your life planned for 18-24 months WITH back-up plans, goals, and how your going to accomplish them. My greatest fear right now, greater than getting married (some of ya´ll know how much that intimidates me) is that I´ll come home and not be able to keep up with it all, that I´ll slowly revert and slum back to the world I came from, the world I once knew, the world I once felt comfortable in, that I´ll go back to speaking the language and following the customs of the world I was once a part of. My greatest goal this new year is that I can be a Returned Missionary and not an Ex Missionary. Here´s the difference: the ex missionary has forgotten who he once was, what he has learned on the mission, what he expected of his investigators which is exactly what the Lord expects of each one of us, he is no longer the obedient, diligent, honest, virtuous, chaste, miracle-seeking, faith-building man or woman he was, but has once again conformed to the ways of the world. But the return missionary never forgets, never regrets, never justifies, never is the person he was before the time he consecrated his all to the Lord, but continues to lay all things upon the altar of sacrafice and to qualify daily for the companionship of the holy ghost and to receive the promised blessings of the covenants he made in the holy temple. May you never be an ex missionary is my word of advice to all of you who have served. Have a great week :)
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