A Week To Short For EVERYTHING That's Happened In It‏

This week is short because I have only five minutes to write everyone BECAUSE I WAS JUST IN THE FAMILY HISTORY CENTER WITH VICTOR FARIÑA GETTING HIS FAMILY PUT INTO THE COMPUTER SO HE CAN DO BAPTISMS FOR HIS PARENTS AND GRANDPARENTS IN TWO WEEKS. It was a beautiful moment. I'm including the picture. :)

Also, Change week.

It's officially my fourteenth ever, and my fifth in the office....

AND I'M GETTING OUT! 

I have my replacement, who is one of my coolest companions ever:

Elder Marco Leroy Milton Jr.

Coming in at a whopping 150 pounds from Safford, Arizona, Elder Milton has 15 months on the mission and is going to be a way better filing cabinet than I ever was! He's a natural.

So, I'mma send some pictures, but I really have to go. Just ask me what you want to know about this comp, and I shall tell you.

I'm super excited for the area this week, and I promise there shall be more information next week. I do really love you all and hope that your week goes wonderfully. I'll be training Elder Milton on the secrets and crafts of cabinetery in the meantime. We also have a goal of one for sure baptism this change and a lot of other great things, so you'll get to hear of the awesome things we're doing!

I love you all.

Sincerely,

Elder Harris

New Hopes and Old Faces

Good Afternoon All!

This week was indeed interesting and pretty active throughout. There's been some pretty good teaching and some good work with the members here, and then there's something that's just so awesome it'll probably take up a good half of the email.

Sunday was a little bit disappointing. The only person who came was Victor Fariña, who is so active nowadays! But I'm concerned because Araceli Alvarenga didn't come and we're really worried about how she's doing after such a long vacation with her family. She seems really overwhelmed with a lot of things. But, we were later able to go and visit Walter and Pamela on Sunday and bring them the Message of The Restoration, which Pamela understood very well. I'm not sure about Walter, because he gets really distracted in most of the lessons. But, when the time came to give the invitation for the baptismal date, she rejected, and probably because I asked in a rather hurried way and don't think that she understood the question very well. So, that's where we left off. But it was a great lesson and they're excited to learn more and ask.

We did have another lesson during the week, but they hadn't prayed to ask if Joseph Smith is a true Prophet of God and they'd only been able to get through half of the Pamphlet, so we spent most of the short lesson on helping them understand why it's important to know and ask. It was a really rushed lesson though, so we'll see how we can recover next time. They said that they'd be there Sunday, so pray that it does NOT rain!!!!

Yoanna hasn't been seen.

On Wednesday we did a division with a member, because I HAD to get out and visit some of the people that the Relief Society President gave to us. I don't know if I've mentioned that here in Campo Grande, this companionship is working two completely different areas so when we work more in one, the other gets really neglected. Everyone you all read about live in Campo Grand A, but everyone the Relief Society President told us to visit lives in Campo Grande C, so I went out with a member (actually the Bishop Portillo's son and one of the coolest youths ever) to visit them. AND ONE OF THEM WAS THERE! Thank you so much Javier (the Bishop's son)! It was a less-active family who committed to going to Church on Sunday.

And! On Tuesday Elder Billings came by the office because his companion had to go to migrations!

He's been sitting tight over in Santaní since he left the office, and he really seems to love it there. He has some crazy stories and it was just really nice to catch up with old friends, and show him HOW MUCH HAS CHANGED since he left! The Fichero's job is way different these days, now that we did away with all old reporting systems.

And then the coolest thing happened on Friday:

The Return to Capiatá!

Elder Monzón does Chapel Open Houses across our mission, a program run by the Area down here and President McMullin assigned him the task of carrying it out, and he does a really good job of it. However, he's having a hard time coordinating with the member who is supposed to be his companion (his Open House companion was assigned by the area), so he's had to take one of us from the office every time. Well, Friday the 13th, we had a staff meeting where President asked us which of us would be willing to go with Elder Monzón to the Capiatá Open House, and my hand shot up so fast. So I got to go and help out!

It was so awesome! The way it works is that there are constant runs going throughout the night. Three companionships of Sister missionaries are in charge of guiding the runs, which start in the Sacrament Room, with a big picture of the Cristus statue blocking the pulpit. Behind is a big speaker which, after the Sisters introduce what's going on, plays a voice recording of some of Christ's words from the scriptures. It's really awesome. Then the Sisters bear testimony, and we open up the dividable doors to where there are two posters set up in each of the four corners of the cultural hall. The first one talks about Christ and His doctrine and life, the second about prophets, ancient and modern, the third is about the Book of Mormon, and the fourth is all about families and children. Then they go and see the baptismal font, where two missionaries dressed in white explain baptism to them and they all talk a little. Then there's a reference table where we get to put down their information so the missionaries can go visit them!!!

After that it's open to exploration, and the leaders of every organization have their own parts, describing each of their organizations, so ALL OF THE MEMBERS CAME!!!

It was huge! I got to see all of the wonderful, familiar faces of the Capiateños! Brother Gil, Brother César Fernández with whom I went and did so many visits, all the wonderful youth who are such a great part of that Ward, and we were able to just delight in working side by side to bring more souls unto Christ. It was joyous. Unfortunate news however: Diana and Paola, the only two who were baptized in my time there, have since moved to the South mission and so I didn't get the chance to see them, and might not until I'm home. But! It was joyous anyways.

That was this week in a nutshell! I hope that things have been going well for you guys and I pray that you can all find ways to help missionary work forward! I know that each of you has something special to contribute to God's Kingdom here and I know that He has beautiful plans for each and every one of you.

The beauty of missionary work is truly work, and I pray that everyone can find the strength and the desire to go forth and work with all that is in them. It's not easy, but it's so rewarding. I know that the Lord is in this work and that when we work alongside the Master, we can find more peace in our hearts than we have ever known. In the same way that he who does not repent must suffer even as Christ suffered, which none of us can know how hard to bear it was, if we do repent and fight with all that is in us, we must rejoice as Christ has rejoiced and enjoy the fruits of the Gospel and Eternal Life, which is equally a mystery to us during this life.

I love you all,

Elder Harris

Seguimiento‏

Buongiorno fratelli miei!

That was my attempt at an Italian, "Good morning brothers of mine!" or maybe "my brethren!" Well, sisters too.....

Anyways, this week has shown a lot of good things, and a lot more control over my emotions. I think I'll start with the Work and then move along into personal things.

GUESS WHO CAME TO CHURCH! Everyone. That's who. I guess the only one who couldn't make it was Victor Galeano, who seems to have lost his desires to keep up with the Way, but we'll keep trying with him.

But yeah, Walter and his girlfriend, Pamela, were there and bombarded with people and baby gifts. It's kind of obvious that the two are struggling economically, so the Ward basically held a fifteen minute baby shower in between Sacrament Meeting and Sundayschool, which earned the Ward huge brownie points with Pamela. We hope that we can help them to progress spiritually as well as temporally. We had a crazy awesome chance to see Meet the Mormons in President McMullin's house with them (the Church gave him a special copy), but they couldn't come and have been cooped up the whole week because of humidity giving them fear about the baby's health. She really is small and fragile. But! We have a lesson set for tomorrow, so we'll cross our fingers that things work out well for it.

Yoanna came as well, with her brother-in-law Míchel, and the baby. She really loved it too and it's a great start. We had a solid lesson with her last night as well (seeing as we couldn't go see the movie for lack of investigator...).

We're keeping our eyes open and hope to get a second chance to get some people in President's house to see the movie, because it'll be a great tool for people who don't know much about the Church or struggle to see how what we share will really help them forward in life or bring something different from what every other Church brings.

The great personal developments this week stem in great part from a beautiful Zone Conference on Monday, where we learned how to set really good personal and companionship goals and really focus on developing as people. We were told something a little bit difficult, but that I find to be very true: anything, any attribute or personal skill that you can develop in the mission but do not will become immensely harder to develop in life afterwards. I see the truth in it, and so we had good moments of great introspection and I was able to get a better look at myself than in a while. The best part is that I'm different. I'm actually following the plans I've been setting, and while there's a lot more to go, I'm really changing, which brings me great joy.

So, that's why this email is Seguimiento. A month after the New Years, let's follow up (that's what seguimiento means) on what we've set out to be this year. Have we progressed? A month has passed, and much can be accomplished, so lets remember what we set out to be, lets modify those goals as we find troubles. I loved learning in the conference that every time we truly set a goal and truly set out to accomplish it, we should write down why we want it, our reasons and hopes, and memorize them. When we are challenged, we must ask ourselves, why, and when we see that the reasons are still true, we press forward.

I testify of our need to press forward in the Gospel. As a wonderful person I know once wrote me (I'm sorry to be stealing this when you read what I'm writing right here), this life and our progress is like a very long treadmill. That treadmill gets faster as we go on, and the faster we run, the faster it goes. I would add: it'll never get faster than we can outrun. We can always move forward, but every time we step forward, our pace becomes insufficient to take another step forward, and we must grow further and try harder, otherwise, we will fall behind.

The beauty is that we can fall so often and be forgiven. Our scrapes and burns are healed and we are blessed with renewed strength. I hope that everyone can progress, and can improve their progress. My prayers are ever with you.

Love,

Elder Harris

Endurance

Good Afternoon!

This week has been full of a lot of things, with some ups and downs and a lot of in-betweens. On Sunday and on Monday we didn't get out to work at all. Sunday was preparation for Concilio, which always involves a number of activities for me. So I was here making the January success video, preparing reports and getting things ready for the President and the Assistants to inspire the Zone Leaders.

But! After that we were able to get out and do some good proselyting. Yesterday we taught a young 20 year-old who has the goal to come back into activity in the Church this year. The lessons wasn't actually planned, and having that surprise really seemed to have thrown us off, because the lesson just really didn't turn out well. Couldn't find a specific focus or think of a specific commitment invitation that we wanted to extend. So, the lesson was somewhat wasted, but I know that the Lord is merciful and will give us a second chance to help this youth understand the value of keeping the commandments and his own covenants. 

Then we FINALLY had another lesson with Nelson, who was reading, and who kept the commitment that we'd left him with last time!!! We took things really, really simply last time and taught him about prayer, leaving him with the invitation to pray individually each morning and night, which he already does, so we added the daily family prayer. He invited his wife to pray with him every single day, and she did, and really loves it. Our hope is that she can see the changes in him and then take the decision to not hide from us and ignore our invitations to share with us. It wouldn't be the first time that I've seen one such experience on this mission.

This time, we had to read with him in the Book of Mormon, because he doesn't get anything out of it when he reads alone. So, we brought with us two members, one youth and the second counselor in the Elder's Quorum presidency, Brother Cañiza. Our first time going and doing visits with him, and it was so great! He personally asked for time in the lesson so that he could show Nelson his support and promise that he'll visit him with his wife during the week. It was strengthening and we were also able to gain more trust from the members this time around, which is a good step forward.

Those are the most important proselyting events to happen in this week. We keep looking for people and striving to make the office more efficient. Araceli Alvarenga is STILL on vacation! Actually, all of our Recent Converts over here are either gone on vacation or are inactive and hard to find. It's discouraging, but we will not stop trying to help them keep close to the Lord. The first year is crucial and it's frightening to see how easy it is for people to fall away in that period of time, no matter how young or old they may be, rich or poor. There are always excuses and reasons for people to put daily life above Eternal Life.

I'm learning and growing. This week has been difficult and good, but that's why I think about endurance. You go through a lot of emotions and stages in any endurance activity and there are legs of it that are easier and others that are much harder. We also find high joys, and we find moments that nearly break our will and we almost give up, but as we overcome those moments, they change us, and strengthen us. This week wasn't such an incredible difficulty for me, but I have had to feel that endurance perspective, when you just fight onward, you find that things were never as bad as they seemed.

So! The race goes on! I love this work and have great hope for progress. I know that the Lord blesses us and empowers us as we do His will and fight to retain ourselves clean and pure. I'm so grateful for His hand in my life and I want to remind you all of His divine grace. It is there. I hope that each of us can really take the time to feel it, and to know it, and to know that He does forgive us, and though we are so imperfect here, He blesses us with strength just for our striving.

I hope that everyone can take the time to find His peace this week. I'm always on this end praying for you.

With Love,

Elder Harris

Short Week and Birthtism Strikes Again

No time! But this week was amazing and I was able to help out some people in amazing ways! I finally feel like a capable office Elder, which also means that the work goes slightly more smoothly. But I wanna give everyone the highlights of this week!

1. Marcelo Cazal's baptismal interview was yesterday. He's an investigator from Mburucuyá who's been going through an eight month process to get to here. He'll be baptized today, but he's just so ready. Why is it birthtism??? Well! Today is his eighteenth birthday, which is why he had to wait so long to get baptized, but he didn't want to wait not one day more. It's so awesome!

2. I called Sofía Ortiz today and she is doing so well! Let everyone knows that she has remained so faithful to her covenants and serves her brothers and sisters with all that is in her. Hermana Sofía, si en algún momento llegue a leer esto, ¡sepa lo agradecido que estoy por usted y su progreso!

3. Nelson, an investigator who wasn't really understanding things well, came to understand some basic concepts and will be getting a baptismal date for March.

4. Victor Fariña has a date to go to the temple and do baptisms for the dead in March!!! It's going to be so awesome!

Those are the wonderful things going on this week, and I'm so sorry to be writing so late.

Thank you all so much for the birthday wishes, and I hope that this week is wonderful for all of you. Thank you to my parents, and especially to my grandparents who are such great examples to me, and to my siblings whose support is a strength to me. For any old companions who read this, I miss you guys and hope that things are going well for you! I love all of you and if I have one wish for this birthday, or if any of you were to seek to give me something for this day, the only thing I really desire is that each of you may live the Gospel, and may received a fullness of joy. I hope that you can all feel that in your hearts and that you can share it, no matter how hard it may be.

Love,

Elder Harris

Proselyting Again!‏

Good Morning All!

This one's bright and early, so I hope that you're all having wonderful mornings wherever you may be!

This week has been pretty exciting. I think that there are two things that stood out more than anything. The first was that I got out to go proselyting more this week than in the entire last change!!!! It was so great! I got to feel the beautiful worry and striving of serving with everything. Dedicating all thoughts, words, desires, all of my heart, every last piece of it, and putting it right where God wants me to: in the work. This week I got another taste of that, and it's just how I want every moment of my mission to go for the rest of it. I like getting absorbed in the work.

But! The office is always there to demand maximum efforts as well, and so I did have to stay super late all night yesterday to edit some documents, so it's a small bump in the road. But, I've learned that life is so full of the little weekly challenges that it's really a waste of time worrying so much about them. You just pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep up right where you left off.

We had a cool lesson with one less-active member named Victor Galeano who hadn't been to church in many years, and he's a young guy, 20 years old. He's really got strong desires to return to the faith, though he has a lot of desire to understand and has really good doubts that show that he's thinking about what we teach him. It's interesting how when someone can write down a doubt for us to help them answer and overcome, my first thought isn't to panic or tell them that it's bad to doubt or that something not make sense with their current understanding, because it's really a sign of desire for growth and real desire to know if something be right or not. So, we're really happy about these questions, and I'm really looking forward to helping him find his own answers with God. To quote Elder Andersen "Spiritual questions deserve spiritual answers from God." 

We also visited Familia Galeano, the father of which was stake president of this stake many years ago. They're also Uruguayos and gave us some delicious raviolis. :)

But they are a wonderful family that has a long and firm testimony of the Gospel. We shared with them about the joy of the Gospel and invited them to pray every single day in the week about whom they might invite to hear us, and to partake in that same joy, and they received the commitment very, very well, and I look forward to seeing them find a friend, or better yet, a family who comes to be baptized here in February.

Also, we had a visit with the Relief Society President, Hermana Margarita Riveros, about the new way of doing missionary work that our wonderfully inspired Area Presidency has issued forth. President McMullin gave us a sheet that he prepared based on his notes of Elder Gonzalez message (which he literally heard 4 times, which, we must note, is the number of times that Joseph received the same message from Moroni so that he'd actually remember and do). So, we went over all of it with her, all of what we were committed to do and all that the Lord through His inspired servants was asking her to do, and it turned out wonderfully. We are really setting things up to work out incredibly well with the Ward, we must simply keep it up to get the wheels really turning.

The other really notable thing was our Zone Conference on Wednesday. The farther we go along, the more I understand really just how to do every aspect of missionary work. At the start of my mission, I was learning about the same things we were taught about in Conferences, how to teach, study, contact, etc. Now, I've spent over a month studying about how to work with members, but I've just felt that there's been a missing key. Last month, President presented it to us, but I, for whatever reason, did not capture it. Now, as he repeated the same counsel a second time (which he is to repeat, supposedly, until we all drop down fainting like Joseph Smith did upon receiving so many visits from Moroni), it really struck me that it is the missing key. I now have the guide on how to work with members here in Paraguay, and this is really just something that the Lord has been setting up a long time running in the Area and with President McMullin. Now we're going to apply it and see the mission explode.

Church attendance, retention percentage, and baptisms. If we strive with all our might, we should see the attendance go from 4,000 last month to 5,100 by next December. Seems like a lot, right? Well, really we were at 4,500 in September, so it's just a matter of going out and rescuing again those who momentarily fell and then finding the increase in finding new investigators or inactive members who need the Gospel.

I love this work! I love ministering to the people using the Book of Mormon, and opening their eyes to see Christ's redeeming love reaching out to them. I love repentance and love seeing good people repent into great sons and daughters of God. I love seeing those surrounded by their sins cry out "Awake my soul!" and rise from languished sorrow into the unadulterated joy of holiness. This is God's work and His kingdom. He has shown it to me so many times and I feel at times like Nephi who wrote that God had heard his prayers by day and granted him great knowledge in visions by night, that his heart pondered continually upon the things of God and upon the scriptures. I have not his faith, and my heart faileth far more often, but I have the slightest taste of what he speaks and it is worth everything one might give to attain. In it is contained the strength to lift up nations and families and I testify that Thomas S. Monson acted as God's chosen Prophet here on the earth when he said: "The greatest force in the world today is the power of God as it works through man."

May we cease to desire to receive the benefits that power and begin to be the men and women through which it works. Let us not merely be doers of the word for our benefit, but rather seek to impart this benefit to all around us, members, nonmembers, active and not, all races, creeds, religions. I know that doing so brings greater joy and peace than anything else we might do.

I love you all,

Elder Harris

Old Man of The Office‏

Change Week!

It came and went and here we stand with what it's given us! I love the changes, because I know that God inspired this ordained mission president of ours with all of the things that have happened. So it feels really good and I'm really excited for what's coming up.

The changes themselves went by very, very smoothly and everyone got more sleep than usual. Elder Valenzuela has finally left us, to go train and open an area that was closed for almost a whole change!!! That is an excellent missionary and we hope to see a lot of great things from him.

The new missionaries were really, really good this time around, and I was happy to be able to take care of them for the day and night. We have what I believe to be our first missionary from Beliz in the mission. Beliz is a country in Central America, but it's an English speaking country with a really diverse population. It's tiny though and the Church is undeveloped, so it's quite rare to have him.  We received a fair number, not a lot, nor too little, and there weren't any big surprises that threw things off. Except for the day or two before we were notified that a certain Hermana never reported to the MTC and would, therefore, not be coming to the mission. That was actually going to cause a really crazy awesome change in which I switch Wards and the District grows and all this cool stuff happens, but now that she's not here I'm staying in Campo Grande and everything's kind of as per usual there.

The night before the new missionaries meet their trainers, they stay with us in our house, and I give a devotional every time to help them start off their mission right. And this time it was something that I've been thinking about a lot. It was this: starting with the end in mind. Or even really just working with the end in mind. Keeping yourself focused on those desired ends that you have in front of you. I realized that what we call goals often aren't truly goals, not truly where our heart is. I came to understand that what a goal really is is when you want something so very badly that, making the decision to achieve it, it spills out onto paper. I also realized that so much of being able to achieve these things is defining them well and understanding their component parts. You can't just write on a piece of paper that you want to baptize someone every month, and you can't just want it either. You also have to know what it takes to do so, and build up all the little goals and plans that go into achieving that big goal. It's all kind of something that we've heard before, but it was something that I think hit home for the missionaries. They'll be starting their missions well.

So, that's changes. This is my first change in the office where I'll be having a permanent office staff. Every other time someone's been coming and someone else leaving. Also, I am now the old man of the office! I have more time in the office than anyone else here! It's weird. I still don't feel like I've been here in the office for that long, does it feel like it's been that long to any of you reading these? I dunno, but it's shocking to me to realize.

We'll see if next change I get a replacement, that would give me at least four and a half months to just go out and preach before I finish my mission.... We'll see what happens!

Anyways, you area all wonderful. I testify of the truthfulness of the Gospel and testify that God loves us. I know that when we do what is right, He rewards us incredibly, and I hope that you all get to see it as well.

Love,

Elder Harris