August 15, 2011

So I am loving training Hermana Perez. She is from Lima, Peru. She reminds me a lot of me when I first started my mission (in a lot of funny, ironic ways). I´ve realized that I´m actually not too bad at this training thing, better than I thought I would be, anyway. I think I´m actually better at (and enjoy more) teaching/training other people how to be missionaries than actually being a missionary. I hope that makes sense. I´m learning a ton from the new training program and I´m really glad that I have the opportunity to use it.

We´ve been sick all week. My ear drum popped again in the plane, and my zone leader told me he thinks I have strep throat because I´ve had a fever for the last 4 days, but it seems as if things are looking up in the weather down here, so hopefully we´ll be back to 100% soon!

So something that I was thinking about this week... When I was on the bus up to Osorno, I heard some of the Elders talking about something or other and they mentioned, in context to some Elder in their zone "He´s a fariseo" (I´m saying it in Spanish because I forgot how it is spelt in English haha). I thought about that though, about how the fariseos are so concerned with the details of exact obedience that they miss the big picture. I started to wonder if I´m like that. I know missionaries who aren´t as obedient as I am, but enjoy so much more success and happiness in their mission because they seem to just love everyone and have a great time. I wondered if maybe that was the key, if maybe I was missing the big picture and being too concerned with the small stuff. However, I then thought that there is no way that the Lord would want me to compromise my obedience. It´s just not something He would want. I thought about the phraze "return with honor." It doesn´t say "return having had a great time and tons of fun" or "return with visible results" it says "return with honor." I know that the way that I will be able to be an honorable missionary is through sticking to that obedience, so that´s my plan.

Yeah, sidenote, let me just tell you about the torture of today. We went ice skating again, even though I didn´t skate because I needed to rest, but they played 3 consecutive songs from the GLEE season 2 soundtrack, followed by "Here We Go Again" by Demi Lovato, then came about 4 or 5 Jonas Brothers songs, and we left just as Selena Gomez came on, I was dying not being able to sing along. Haha. Oh well. It´ll just make it better in 6 months!