Never a Dull Moment

Dear friends and family,

I don't know what to say other than I am so grateful for this area. We have been so busy the last couple of weeks and it seems like every week just keeps getting busier and busier. 

We have three people on date to be baptized, Jose Barrientos for sometime in July, a little girl names Sharon (it's actually kind of scary how much she reminds me of my sister Mara--like seriously--she looks like her, acts like her and talks like her), and a woman named Victoria who is so ready, she just needs to get married and then she will be baptized. We are planning her baptism for the 21st of July.

I don't want this email to get too long winded, but there are two experiences that I would like to share from this week that really impacted my testimony and taught me so much.

On Saturday our ward mission leader asked us if we could help him clean the church building and so at 9am we headed over there. He asked us if we could clean the chapel and as I was grabbing the vacumes, Elder Yount said, "Hey Elder, could we just sit in here for a second?" I walked into the chapel and immediately I felt the Spirit. It was dark, with only a little natural light coming in from the windows and absolutely silent. We took our seats maybe 7 or 8 rows back and just sat there for about 10 minutes in complete silence with an overwhelming sense of peace. The words to one of my favorite hymns came to mind and so I opened the hymn book and read those words, they say:

O home belov’d, where’er I wander,
On foreign land or distant sea,
As time rolls by, my heart grows fonder
And yearns more lovingly for thee!
Tho fair be nature’s scenes around me,
And friends are ever kind and true,
Tho joyous mirth and song surround me,
My heart, my soul still yearn for you

Now don't worry, I'm not getting trunky, in fact, as we sat there in the tranquility of the chapel, the words to this hymn took on a completely different meaning: this really isn't our home. Though it is beautiful and friends are kind and true, and this is an incredible world that we have to live in, we can't let it all distract us from our heavenly home. Eventually we had to turn on the lights and the vaccumes, but I will always remember just how peacful and powerful a chapel can be.

The next day I was having a lot of trouble focusing during my personal studies. I don't know what it was, but I could just not focus on the task at hand and I was getting very frusterated. After fighting with it for 20 minutes or so, I finally found a scripture that I was able to focus on and was able to escundriñar (I'm not sure how to say that in English) and I ended up having a pretty good personal study. The scripture I read was Isaiah 55 and as we were heading out the door, I had the distinct impression to bring my Bible with me--something that I rarely do.

When we got to church, about 45 minutes before Sacrament meeting was supposed to start, Obispo (Bishop) asked if I could give the closing talk because the couple that was supposed to come weren't going to be able to make it. I said yes, and we went into the chapel and I said a prayer asking that I would be able to know what it was that I should talk about. Immediately the scripture that I had read that morning came to mind and so did a slew of ideas that tied along with it. When it came time for the talks, right after the Sacrament, there was about 40 minutes left in the meeting and so the other brother who was going to speak stood up and spoke for about 7 minutes. The Bishop turned and looked at me with kind of a "sorry" look in his eyes and so I got up to speak. I don't know how it happened because it definitly wasn't me, but for the next 25 minutes or so I was able to give a talk based out of Isaiah 55 and it actually wasn't too bad! I know that the Lord really will fill our mouths if we do our part to prepare!

I love you all and hope that you have a great week this week. Sorry there are no pictures.

Elder Arkoudas