Ola! Epistle #2 from Elder Lobo

Ola a todos!

Thanks for forwarding the last email around. It really helps me out a lot to write cohesively when I only have to write a few letters a week instead of several. I only have email access on Fridays and I only write letters on those days, too.

Happy Birthday to Jeff, Larabeth, Jason, and Drew! I don't know if my letters made it in time, but I hope they did.

Anyway, this week has been kinda crazy. We've moved on to learn how to teach the 2nd lesson in Preach My Gospel (which is absolutely an inspired book). It's the plan of salvation. Learning to express what I know in a digestible fashion has made my testimony so much stronger. I was sitting in Tuesday's devotional (Pres. Rasband of the Q of 70) and during the last hymn, "We Thank The, Oh God, For a Prophet," I felt one of the strongest witnesses from the Holy Ghost. Every line rang true in my torso and I could barely open my mouth to sing.

As for the passing of President Hinckley, here is what I wrote moments after we heard the news in a post-fireside video on Sunday:

"Right now, unless I knew him personally, I think sadness would be inappropriate. The Lord is leading this church and the prophet is His mouthpiece. He knows what the world needs and uses apostles and prophets to help us understand His plan for us. Prophets and apostles are for our good, and [our eternal existence] is dependent upon our willingness to obey. We cannot reject the prophets and we cannot have any negative feelings about how the Lord organizes and maintains His church. It's great that such diligent, valiant, patient people serve us. However, it's critical that we focus more on the teachings the Lord gives us. Deny [vain] ritualism and any form of idolatry. Focus on the truth and principle behind the physical manifestation."

The Lord's work won't miss a beat.

What else...

Recalling that the Spirit is extremely sensitive, I would like to share a little experience I've had this last week. We're counseled to be sure to stay positive in our emails and letters to people, and I believe this is working out for my good, so I'll share it:

There's an elder in my district (in the MTC, that's the group you go to class with every day) who really likes to argue. There have been a few "discussions" in our class about things ranging from when the 2nd coming is going to happen (because Mitt Romney has been prophesied to win the election, apparently) to which ski goggles are the best. One day, I decided I would try to put an end to it because it was starting to keep me from being able to study and drove away the Spirit. It just made things worse.

Elder Davis gave me some great advice in the most kindly blunt way I think I have ever heard. "Sometimes it's best to keep opinions to ourselves regardless of whether we are right or wrong."

So I decided to put it to the test. In doing so, I dove headfirst into the depths of humility. I prayed for how to best execute a solution and received an answer immediately, even right in the middle of my prayer. I overheard another elder from another district say, "The best way to learn something is to teach it to somebody else." So the best way to teach somebody to be humble is to actually be humble yourself. Pride seems it grows in a self-perpetuating cycle because of the inputs of other people. So I decided to cut off the inputs from other people that were feeding into my pride. Whenever an argument starts, I either focus extremely well on reading or speaking or even leave the room. In doing this, though, I realized that I was encouraging argument by jumping into it. By not rewarding that kind of behavior with a response, there's less incentive for it to continue. So far, that's what I've learned from this situation.

In other news, Portuguese is coming along well. There are a few other people who speak well, both in the practice settings and with other missionaries. There's one sister who took a Portuguese class at BYU, and we talked about a few things pretty well. Also, every week our teachers interview us to see how we're doing and how our language study plans are working out. With Irmao Christofferson, more than half of our interview was in Portuguese. When we started talking about something I didn't really know the vocab for, I switched over to English. It's coming along very well.

As for teaching, we taught the complete lesson 2 for the first time on Wednesday, and it went pretty well. We are learning to use the scriptures pretty well. However, I think teaching the Gospel requires love for the investigator, and it's really hard to fake charity, especially in a practice situation.

Anyway, I hope all is well. Keep Oregon green and weird. Read Romans 8:18, if I haven't mentioned it already.

What else... I have 2 minutes left of my 30...

Oh and send some "warm cake" for Elder Davis; it's his birthday on the 15th.

And have one or two in there for me, too.

Abracos!!

Elder Lobo