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| LAST DISTRICT MEETING |
I got transferred again. I´m in Tepotzotlan with E. Sandoval from
Veracruz. He´s a cool missionary and I feel like I´ll learn a lot from him.
He´s been a zone leader for 6 months so he knows his stuff. He wants to study
mecatronica, whatever that is in English.
My time in Lomas Lindas was short, but I got to know some
of the investigators and that was good. Mario is super ready to be baptized and
that will take place next Saturday. Vianey is happy that she was able to
be baptized. Her sister is also interested in hearing more about the gospel.
We had stake conference, actually the first stake conference for
the Alamedas stake, since it was divided just a few months ago. It was
great. I felt the Spirit a lot and it was what I needed this week. There were
talks about service, MISSIONARY WORK, love, and many other things that came up.
It was great to be able to be inspired and uplifted from my leaders here in
Mexico. During one of the hymns, the thought came to mind that maybe I wasn´t
in Utah where the Church has years and years and years of experience and
pretty much everything gets done right. However, Zion is in all the church, no
matter the country. The Mexican people might still have a lot to go before they
arrive to having stake centers on every other corner and temples all over the
place, but they are doing the best they can with what they know right now. It
has been great to be able to labor among them and to get to know them better.
Today I received an email from a friend who was telling me of an
experience that she had a while back and how she didn´t know what WOULD HAVE
happened if she WOULD HAVE listened and acted upon what she felt. I had a
similar experience that I would like to share:
A few months ago we walked into our neighborhood and I saw a police car with lights and sirens going down a street where some members live. I thought we should go see if all was well, but I didn´t want to be a gossipy person and see what was going on. We stopped by the house for a few things and as we were leaving I heard an ambulance and I thought the same thing again as we were leaving the house (we lived one street behind them). My companion at the time had called me chismoso or gossipy once when we looked at an accident so I thought that I was just being my normal EMT self wanting to see what was going on. We didn´t go. Turns out that a neighbor had just hung herself and her husband found her moments after she had done it. She was still blue and warm. Since that day I can´t help to think "What WOULD HAVE happened had I listened?" Was it just me? Did I just want to be an EMT again? Was I scared of what my companion would say instead of what I felt? I have read many times of miracles wrought by missionaries who arrived in the right moment. Would we have been instruments in God´s hands to save this daughter of His? I don´t know what WOULD HAVE happened, because I didn´t do it. The only way I can restore the damage now, is to listen and hearken the next time.
A few months ago we walked into our neighborhood and I saw a police car with lights and sirens going down a street where some members live. I thought we should go see if all was well, but I didn´t want to be a gossipy person and see what was going on. We stopped by the house for a few things and as we were leaving I heard an ambulance and I thought the same thing again as we were leaving the house (we lived one street behind them). My companion at the time had called me chismoso or gossipy once when we looked at an accident so I thought that I was just being my normal EMT self wanting to see what was going on. We didn´t go. Turns out that a neighbor had just hung herself and her husband found her moments after she had done it. She was still blue and warm. Since that day I can´t help to think "What WOULD HAVE happened had I listened?" Was it just me? Did I just want to be an EMT again? Was I scared of what my companion would say instead of what I felt? I have read many times of miracles wrought by missionaries who arrived in the right moment. Would we have been instruments in God´s hands to save this daughter of His? I don´t know what WOULD HAVE happened, because I didn´t do it. The only way I can restore the damage now, is to listen and hearken the next time.
I´m trying to live my live with WHAT DID HAPPEN because I acted,
instead of WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED because I didn´t. I think we´ve all had
experiences in this.
I hope that we can all endure to the end and keep an eternal
perspective. That we may stand up for the right even when we might stand alone.
It´s easier to disobey when someone else does it, too. Why do you think peer
pressure to do something wrong is so hard? Because they need someone to do it
too, so that they can justify their actions. I love President Monson´s
conference talk "Dare to Stand Alone" and the story he tells. Believe
it or not, the same thing happens here in the mission, even among the missionaries.
We are all here to improve. Let´s do it together.
Love you all. Have a fabulous week. And don´t forget to set the
clocks back an hour. Or maybe leave them so that you can all get to church on
time, and not on Mormon Standard Time. ;)
Love,
Elder Hill
Claudia and Toño, members from Lomas lindas and Pedro the
taxista from Lomas Lindas who gave us a ride to the offices.
The last district meeting.
Sisters Ibaven and Perez.
Elders Hill Piotroski Lamping Valdez Chandler and Bautista. Not
in order....
Oh Matthew, that IS GUT WRENCHING. I feel impressed to
share with you a story...It happens to the best of people..
Twenty-three-year-old Tom Monson, relatively new bishop of the Sixth-Seventh Ward in the Temple View Stake, was uncharacteristically restless as the stake priesthood leadership meeting progressed. He had the distinct impression that he should leave the meeting immediately and drive to the Veterans’ Hospital high up on the Avenues of Salt Lake City. Before leaving home that night he had received a telephone call informing him that an older member of his ward was ill and had been admitted to the hospital for care. Could the bishop, the caller wondered, find a moment to go by the hospital sometime and give a blessing? The busy young leader explained that he was just on his way to a stake meeting but that he certainly would be pleased to go by the hospital as soon as the meeting was concluded.
Twenty-three-year-old Tom Monson, relatively new bishop of the Sixth-Seventh Ward in the Temple View Stake, was uncharacteristically restless as the stake priesthood leadership meeting progressed. He had the distinct impression that he should leave the meeting immediately and drive to the Veterans’ Hospital high up on the Avenues of Salt Lake City. Before leaving home that night he had received a telephone call informing him that an older member of his ward was ill and had been admitted to the hospital for care. Could the bishop, the caller wondered, find a moment to go by the hospital sometime and give a blessing? The busy young leader explained that he was just on his way to a stake meeting but that he certainly would be pleased to go by the hospital as soon as the meeting was concluded.
Now the prompting was stronger than ever: “Leave the
meeting and proceed to the hospital at once.” But the stake president himself
was speaking at the pulpit! It would be most discourteous to stand in the
middle of the presiding officer’s message, make one’s way over an entire row of
brethren, and then exit the building altogether. Painfully he waited out the
final moments of the stake president’s message, then bolted for the door even
before the benediction had been pronounced.
Running the full length of the corridor on the fourth floor
of the hospital, the young bishop saw a flurry of activity outside the
designated room. A nurse stopped him and said, “Are you Bishop Monson?”
“Yes,” was the anxious reply.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “The patient was calling your name
just before he passed away.”
Fighting back the tears, Thomas S. Monson turned and walked
back into the night. He vowed then and there that he would never again fail to
act upon a prompting from the Lord. He would acknowledge the impressions of the
Spirit when they came, and he would follow wherever they led him, ever to be
“on the Lord’s errand.”
You cannot understand President Thomas S. Monson, newly
called Second Counselor in the First Presidency of the Church, without
understanding the repetition of such promptings in his life and the absolute
loyalty with which he has kept that early promise to obey them. Indeed, his
life seems something of a sacred manuscript upon which the Holy Ghost has
written—and is still writing—one remarkable spiritual message after another. In
this and so many other ways he is much like Nephi of old. He is “exceedingly young”—called
as a bishop at twenty-two, a counselor in a stake presidency at twenty-seven, a
mission president at thirty-one, an Apostle at thirty-six (the youngest in
fifty-three years), and a counselor in the First Presidency at fifty-eight (the
youngest in this century). He is also “large in stature,” a robust, buoyant,
whirlwind of a man who might have been a superb basketball player in his youth
had it not been required of him (as it was of so many others in the Great
Depression and its aftermath) that from his twelfth year on he forgo the
pleasure of extracurricular school activities in order to work at his father’s
side in the printing trade.
But President Monson is most like young Nephi in his
humility and in his faith. In all that he has so successfully accomplished, he
has been resolute in his commitment to “go and do the things which the Lord
hath commanded” (1 Ne. 3:7) regardless of the obstacles in the path.
Furthermore, he has done it as Nephi himself did it—“led by the Spirit, not
knowing beforehand the things which I should do.” (1 Ne. 4:6.) Little wonder
that such men as these are enlisted to “bring forth my Zion … for they shall
have the gift and the power of the Holy Ghost.” (1 Ne. 13:37.) In light of that
promise, surely no stake patriarch has been more prophetic than was Brother
Frank B. Woodbury that fifteenth day of March, 1944, when he placed his hands
on 16-year-old Tom Monson’s head and began to speak:
“The Holy Ghost has been conferred upon you to be your
inspiration and your guide, to direct you in your labors, and to bring to your
mind the things that have passed and to show unto you things to come. …
“You shall be indeed a leader among your fellows. … You
shall have the privilege of going into the world to proclaim the message of the
gospel … and you shall have the spirit of discernment. …
“Seek the Lord in humility to guide and direct you, that
you might know the proper course to pursue … in the high and holy callings unto
which you shall be called. … ”
This was a talk Elder Holland gave when I was 21.
Te amo
