Faith and Hope and Fun-Real de Palmas- Week 9

About the heat: I guess there is something called "la caliqula" that is the hottest 40 days of the year, and it doesn't go below 40 C for the entire time. (Note: I looked it up, and 40 C=104 F.) It starts at the end of July or beginning of August or something nobody seems to agree. Juana and her granddaughter, Fabiola, got baptized yesterday. (I actually baptized Fabiola. It was kind of cool, but the baptismal clothes were big dresses, so we had to do it like 4 times each, because the clothes need to go under too, and they didn't want to), but ya, that's just about all of that story. The mission president came out, and when he showed up, I was teaching gospel principles super awesome, so he was probably super impressed. Just kidding, but I do that every week, teach gospel principles, and I think that it is awesome.
I do still enjoy riding the bikes, and on Saturday we rode them all over the place, and we sweated a lot. There should be some pictures of it up on Facebook actually, or Face, as everyone here calls it. The bikes are fun, and I think that being a missionary gives you magical bike skills, because I am a much better bike rider than ever before. We can get around our area faster on the bikes than the buses and taxis too, because there a million speed bumps here, and they have to slow down, and we can go around them or even over them a lot faster. Another fun fact (the first was that they call Facebook "Face") is that if I wanted to say somebody got baptized I would say "Juana se bautizó ayer". Which literally translates to "she baptized herself yesterday". At first you might think that they are just using the passive voice "se" construction, but "me bautizé cuando tenía ocho años" is "I baptised myself when I had eight years" and that is what I would say. So there is just something fun about Spanish.

 

Also, I did get the package this week, The pedigree chart and the pen are really cool and I am really enjoying the Ensign. The first talk I read was Jeffrey R Hollands talk about faith. I also really like Alma 32 which is all about faith. I really like it. It might be my favorite chapter of scripture ever. It is fantastic, as are the chapters around it and a lot of other chapters in Alma, and the Book of Mormon as a whole. It is all just really great. But about the Jeffrey R Holland talk, I really like it, because it talks about acknowledging your questions and facing them. Because if you just keeping going without a firm foundation of faith, you're going to find problems. Because here, if you ask people to rate their faith on a scale of 1 to 10, they will always say 10, however it is clear that that isn't true. So, it is better to say that you're looking at a seven or a five or something like that and look to improve than to just keep saying 10 until you don't really know anymore. And that is where Alma 32 comes in, because that just about gives the perfect road map on cultivating faith. Also, and this is a little unrelated, but in reading Jesus the Christ, I realized the the apostles had a maximum of 3 years following Christ before his death, so when you look at things like Peter denying Christ 3 times, it isn't as hard to imagine. So we have more time following Jesus Christ than them, and look at all the great things they did. Because when you think about it, it is amazing that any form of Christianity made it through the great apostasy at all, and what did was only because they worked really hard. But if i wanted to tie it all together a little, I would say that they didn't have perfect faith when the trail arrived, but it says in Ether that you don't receive a witness until after the trial of your faith, and we have trials to help us grow, to help us grow in ability and to help us grow in faith, and something that Richard G Scott told us in the MTC was that God does what is best for us. So if we have a trial, it is because we can overcome it and be better because of it.
So there is that. I hope that you guys are all having a good time in your new house. I also hope you are doing a lot of fun stuff and having fun and fun and fun and I don't know why I just keep typing fun. But have some of have some of it, because in one of the One Republic songs that this one family always plays, "What's There to Complain About?" so just be happy, because everything is going to be alright (That's hope, another Christlike attribute and one closely related to faith). So yep, there it is, I love all of you and hope that it is okay that I just kind of write this one big kind of general letter rather than spending a ton of time on each of the personal ones. If anybody has any objections, they can make them known unto me. But yep, there it is again, and I love you and hope that you are all doing good things, because the families that do good things are happier so be happy, bye!

Love, Elder Parkes