The Unspeakable Gift of the Holy Ghost

General Epistle:

I invite everybody to think at Christ's visit in the Americas. He taught what we call the “Sermon on the Mount” in basically the same way as he taught it to those in Jerusalem. When he said “my time is at hand”, had he finished teaching? ABSOLUTELY NOT.

I invite you to put down what you're doing grab your scriptures or go to lds.org and read 3 Nephi 17:1-3. When Christ taught the people, they couldn't understand his words.

So, he taught them the Gospel more clearly than in ANY OTHER recorded event, second only to the Atonement itself.

I invite you to try this:

Recognize that Christ had been teaching the Gospel only with words in the previous chapters.






Now, STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING, CLOSE YOUR EYES, BREATHE DEEPLY, THEN OPEN YOUR EYES BACK UP AGAIN AND CALMLY READ ALL OF 3 NEPHI 17.






“My bowels are filled with compassion towards you”

He cured people ALL manner of afflictions and infirmities.

That was when He said His joy was full.

SO WAS HE FINISHED? ABSOLUTELY NOT.

He kept blessing the people, He had angels come down, He blessed the children one by one, He prayed to the Father for them, and He drew everyone's attention to THEM, not to Himself. (“Behold your little ones”)

Words could not express what He did. Have you ever heard of the “unspeakable” Gift of the Holy Ghost?

OK.

Did you get it?

Now, right now, go do something nice for someone. If you're not sure what to do, don't do anything else until you have a sincere idea.

I SEND YOU THIS EMAIL BECAUSE I LOVE YOU

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE PACKAGE AND THE G2'S!

The world is like Chevy: LIKE a rock, but not even close (Helaman 5:12)

Alma 31 verse 1 is basically how I felt

The tail end of the Fatima (Mary) procession

HEY EVERYBODY

The attached picture is from the procession of Fatima (Mary) from Cacilhas to the Cristo Rei statue in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the construction of the statue. I invite you to read Alma 31:1 if you want to know how I felt about that. Luckily, I had my camera at the time because we had just come from a baptism.

Thanks for sending that package off! This might be a little TMI but I got my first blister of the mission this last week, so the new socks should help it be my ONLY blister.

With the proceedings of the last week, I have entered into a G2 crisis [as in pens -- more are in the package!]. I have only a few drops of ink left. I feel like Moroni when he was the last Nephite. I am nearing the end of my third moleskine thanks to what I have been learning this past week.

As a preview, we didn't find new people to teach regularly, though we did find several people who wanted to learn more and wanted to read the Book of Mormon. Preach My Gospel says that “nothing happens in missionary work until you find someone to teach”, so the fact that they didn't want us to come over and teach them makes me feel a little bit of failure in that respect, but I find it hard to believe that encounters such as these cannot be counted as teaching moments.

The freedom in doing my best that I found last week slowly regressed into trying to find ways to improve, which degenerated into another form of perfectionism. I answered huge questions I had about that this morning.

I want to talk about a lesson we had on Sunday with António Fragoso. He served a mission about 20 years ago, has a strong testimony, but doesn't go to church or go to the activites or things like that. He loves history, so we decided to investigate with him the scripture in D&C 88 which says to learn about the perplexities of nations and kingdoms and all that. We read the part in Mosiah about when he translated the record of Ether and wanted everybody to know what was in it. So we decided to read the book of Ether during the week and talk about the lessons in it in our next visit.

This lesson that we had with him was probably the most effective lesson I have ever seen on my mission. We talked for a long time. We talked about how we have the opportunity to cross the great waters (this life) with light or in darkness, based on our faithfulness. We talked about 3 Nephi 10, and once I brought that up with him and related how it has helped me to treat my perfectionism, it started opening him up. He's a rather quiet person. He is very well educated. He doesn't really like to “mix and mingle”. He described himself as being “abnormal”. He has a strong testimony of Jesus Christ and of the Restoration, but he has felt rejected by the members, just because he thinks differently and has different interests. 85% of our active members are socially dependent on each other, ignorantly apostate, and stubborn to change. Many of them go to church just to be part of the group and fulfill social expectations than to express their personal gratitude for the Savior and to progress individually. So, you throw in somebody like António Fragoso, and everybody starts jumping all over him because he's not just like them, telling him that he needs to change. When he goes to church, he goes to learn, but it turns into more of a social ritual than a spiritual one. It's no excuse for not going to church, obviously, but it's a clear explanation.

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but Sundays are the hardest days for me as a missionary. Culturally, in this mission, we're supposed to be those cheery people shaking everybody's hands and conversing with everybody and seeing how everybody's week went. We're meant to make their experience better. Let me make this clear: I am not that kind of person. During church, I'm pensive and I try to be penitent so those three hours aren't just time lost. Since I've started playing piano, I've loved being able to play prelude music before the meeting and try to make a difference that way instead of being irrevrent. It's made a big difference for the members of the ward, too. It's been quieter in the chapel. Previous missionaries who played the piano never did prelude music because they felt obligated to “meet and greet”. I am not a meet and greet person, and I don't really care about social obligations, honestly. I have made covenants with God, not with them.

So with António Fragoso, I shared with him my simple testimony of Jesus Christ. I don't think I've shared it in email because it's very, very personal, but Jesus Christ is the only reason that I don't give up. I have thought life to death, and there is nothing that justifies it except Him.

I asked António to go to church and just sit up on the front row with me to not have to worry about the rest of the members. He wanted to! He wanted to keep studying parts of the Book of Mormon with us. We're going to review Lehi's dream tonight.

Anyway.

I did a study this morning on faith and works.

In previous discussions and debates with people before the mission, I was taught to reflexively whip out James 2, that says “faith without works is dead” and that Abraham was justified by works.

I found in Romans 3 today some verses that say that we are justified freely by the grace of Christ or even that we are justified by faith not works.

It's an issue that weighs extremely heavily on our minds. “What are the requirements for eternal life?” is a question that created many different churches. Faith? Covenants? Keeping commandments? What exactly is it?

We often feel extremely pressured because of some gravely misunderstood doctrines (as far as I can tell): faith leads to action, signs follow those who believe, we have to show our faith by our actions, etc.

I want to illustrate my point with some extremes:

I have felt like I don't have faith because I am not perfect and don't understand how I'm supposed to do everything right that I'm supposed to do all at the same time. If I really had faith, shouldn't it show in my works? In other words, if I really had faith, wouldn't I keep every commandment like I should, regardless of my weaknesses?

The misunderstood idea is that action is proof of faith. This is false. I guarantee that thousands of “active” members that go to church every week and do everything they're supposed to do do not have faith as strong as we assume they do. They do great things, it appears, but they don't have faith! Actions are not proof of faith.

I was in Alma 25 today in my reading, and Alma 25:15-16 teaches the true relationship between faith an works very clearly: The law (the commandments) do not save you. Keeping the commandments does not save you. D&C 82:10 teaches that the Lord is bound when we do what he says, but can we really believe that we are keeping his commandments perfectly as to merit salvation on our own? They kept the Law of Moses to strengthen their faith in Christ, not to try to prove it. (To whom are we trying to prove our faith, anyway? Other members? Non-members?) They kept the law so they could keep the hope they had in Christ. Christ is the Savior, not our obedience. He is the guarantee. Only he can guarantee our salvation – that's his job, not ours. The Gospel, as taught by his mouth, is faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. Anything more or less is “not built upon [his] rock.” When we think we qualify ourselves for salvation, we've started building our foundation on ourselves and not on Him. We must have faith in Him and strengthen our faith and hope in Him.

Action is not proof of faith, but faith is proof of action.

Faith only comes from action.

Action does not instantly produce faith.

The Holy Spirit of Promise is how we can know if we are “justified” or not, and only we can feel that for ourselves.

Salvation is between you and the Lord (and nobody else), and it always will be.

Let's do our best.

LOVE

ELDER LOBO

Pictures will get uploaded later, but here's the letter for this week!

Hey everybody!

Well, this week has been sensational.

Nothing has really changed all that much, but I want to talk about a return I feel like I’ve made.

I’ve described the mission as a fall in a lot of different ways before. When I was at home, everything was provided for, and it was more or less pretty easy to be about as happy as I decided to be, despite all the crazy things happening. Then I left EVERYTHING, more or less, as we all know. The cloud that I thought I walked on before suddenly evaporated from beneath me and it was like Gromit in “A Close Shave” after the sidecar he was in got separated from the motorcycle. It takes pushing a bunch of buttons all at the same time to get the wings open. Even after that, it takes another couple buttons to get the oatmeal gun to pop up.

Before, some people who I worked with often asked me why I had such low expectations in life. I never agreed with them – I didn’t have low expectations, but I never really was able to explain it. Even my boss, Ben, at StowAway2 asked me on my last day how it was that I handled myself. I tried to explain it, but I couldn’t, and I didn’t even know what it was that I was going to explain, but it was something that I never really figured out until now.

When I entered the MTC, I wanted to do my best. However, I don’t know what it is that they put in the food there, but almost everybody who leaves the MTC leaves with this artificial idea of “obedience with exactness”. I took it to an extreme, agonizingly raking myself over the coals anytime I did anything that wasn’t exactly correct. It was and has continued to be very difficult, especially since missionaries tend to take responsibility for the decisions of everybody around them, especially myself. I had been on this ridiculous quest since leaving to find all my weaknesses and then fix them all. I tried to do the same thing with my testimony before I left, trying to answer every question, doubt, or confusion that I had at the time, but it ended up working me down to a void, something I can describe as nothing short of complete darkness and self-exclusion from life. When I realized that I knew more than I thought I knew and that to “know” something is much more of a matter of trust and faith than it is of information, I found this amazing freedom from my knowledge of the Restoration and the Plan of Salvation. It was awesome.

Never in my life before the mission did “obedience” ever present itself as an issue to me. But once I hit the MTC, I, along with a significant percentage of others around me, were completely focused on not messing up our one chance in the MTC, trying to do everything perfectly, and since the MTC life was very, very simple, it wasn’t very hard to do more or less “perfectly”.

Once arriving in the mission, life as a greenie was easy. You don’t have anything to do except for your own studies and following your trainer around. Obedience seemed so simple. You just don’t screw up and everything will go fine, right?

Then I got in the office. As many of you remember, I had the niggling question of “Do I do what I think is right or do I do what I am told?” There were no rules to obey exactly in the office. There was no guidance for our job. The church manuals were written more than ten years before and were, in all reality, obsolete. “Never have I given a temporal commandment unto the children of men”, right? But all these guidelines seemed so temporal and obsolete. They were! What in the world was I supposed to do?

I did my best. And I was happy by the end.

Then I came to Almada with that new perspective, and things went pretty well.

Then I got a greenie, and, simply, I reverted to perfectionism. I was so weighed down by imperfection and inadequacy, trying to guarantee some form of success by completing the “small things”, which I couldn’t do perfectly, so I felt like it was hopeless to have any kind of promise fulfilled (D&C 82:10). Anytime something good happened, it felt as if it were chance or coincidence because I knew I wasn’t perfect enough to merit something like that.

I started reverting to what I now call “checklist obedience”, meaning that I should be able to check off all of my duties as being done, and day after day, week after week, it wasn’t happening like I wanted it to. The value of teaching an investigator was about as valuable as washing dishes, because I was supposed to do both, and not doing either would equally keep me from being “exactly obedient” or perfect.

Elder and Sister Kearon, in the Europe Area Presidency, spoke to the mission on Friday. Sister Kearon’s talk spoke right to my center. She spoke about feelings of inadequacy, doubt, and confusion in such a sensitive and precise way that I wish I could study what she said like we study certain conference talks we love. She said so eloquently and gracefully what can only be summarized as “It’s OK. Jesus will make everything alright.” Since Friday I was digesting this idea with what was already in my starving spiritual stomach.

I realized once again on Sunday, as I had in the office, that “exact obedience” is not what we think it is. God doesn’t command in all things, so we can’t have a perfect checklist to obey. It’s not about being perfect. Jesus Christ did not come to save perfect people. He gave his life for the imperfect people.

Monday morning, I was reading in 3 Nephi 10. This is during the destruction prior to the descension of Christ, where the people are weeping bitterly and wailing with very good reason for the loss of their friends and family. They had every reason to be lamenting the loss of their loved ones. It was obvious that the destruction came because of their choice to be wicked. How horrible is it to watch somebody choose to refuse Christ and watch your chance to help them slip away. The Voice says, “How oft I have gathered you... How oft I would have gathered you... and How oft will I gather you...” He’s got his bases covered. Even more reason to deeply mourn the loss of those who refused it in the past, especially ourselves. He will gather us. Once the darkness receded and the mist disappated and the tremors halted, the weeping and wailing ceased. The anguish turned into joy.

What had changed? The immediate situation was much less tumultuous, but they had still lost their family and friends. They could probably see the bodies of those injured and killed in the destruction, along with the ruin and scarred face of the earth. What had changed?

The lamentations turned into thanksgiving for the Lord Jesus Christ, their redeemer.

Monday in district meeting, I talked about this and very emotionally talked about when Miguel chose not to talk to us anymore. But I realized something at that moment that was incredible.

In Preach My Gospel, there’s an activity that says to “express gratitude for the manifestations of the Lord’s hand in your work.”

Let’s define our terms:
Gratitude: The uncontrollable joy felt because of something somebody else has done.
Manifestation: A small representation of something much larger. (like the dorsal fin of a great white shark cutting through the surface of the water)

I read in Moses 7 again that morning: the vision of Enoch. He was so bitterly tormented until the absolute end of the vision (Moses 7:67), which was when he saw the very hour of the redemption of the righteous.

This is when “Jesus will make everything alright.”

That was when Enoch received his fulness of joy, as mentioned in Moses 7:67. Nothing matters without that day. Any blessing we could receive in this life would be completely worthless without the Redemption. It would all be lost. We need that redemption, and very little more. We should be grateful for everything that He gives us. While He gives us many temporal blessings, those things are great, but I just want that last day.

I’m easy to please. My needs are simple, thanks to Jesus Christ. That’s how I managed to live happily without really knowing it. It was because I knew that nothing in this life really matters as much as we think it does, because everything depends upon that great last day.

We can be happy by being grateful of manifestations of that great day to come in our everyday life. Small changes in investigators, members, or even ourselves are small samples of what the hour of our redemption will be like. The time that we feel our burdens made just barely lighter, we can be grateful for that manifestation of the time when “Jesus will make everything alright.”

I am so unbelievably thankful for Jesus Christ, because I know that He will make everything alright. I am so thankful for this time that I have to have a sample of what it must be like for Him to shepherd us in. It’s painful, but it’s amazing. He doesn’t need my help. He could do this Himself. But he lets me experience it.

We should express gratitude for the manifestations of the perfect change that can happen within us and those we love, when Christ will cure our spiritual blindness and deafness, like he did physically while he walked physically on the Earth. He will make everything alright.

The Gift of the Holy Ghost is so much simpler we think it is. We may think that we have to “qualify” for the guidance of the Holy Ghost, and that’s true in a sense. When we establish our own terms for that qualification, like a perfectionist checklist of commandments we have to obey, we lose it. The greatest of all the gifts of God is eternal life (which is a perfection of our agency, which is the greatest gift God has ALREADY given us). Eternal life can be nothing more complicated than joy. The Gift of the Holy Ghost in its simplicity is nothing more than peace in knowing with certainty that Jesus really will make everything alright.

After realizing all this, I have felt as if I have been born again. I have felt able to forgive myself. I have felt unrestrained in loving and forgiving others. I have felt peace. I have been happy. It sounds too good to be true, but it’s nothing that I did or will do, aside from expressing gratitude for manifestations of the day when Jesus will make everything alright.

Let’s be more grateful – and let’s never forget that great day that will come.

Love to all,

Elder Lobo

WEEKLY EMAIL

Three-wheel bike with a trunk

Cristo Rei

Hey everybody!

Well, Mother's Day is coming around, and I CAN'T BELIEVE IT. This is the third time [to call home]!!

I received the new check card. I haven't tried it out yet (that would cost money, obviously). It still has my photo from when I was 16, and I remember when I got the card in the mail and was kinda disbelieving that May 2009 would ever roll around. Even now, 2013. Do you know where I'm going to be in 2013??

Where do I even start about this week....

Lots of searching. Lots of contacts. Lots of atheists. Not as many Brazilians as I expected... Lots of drunks. Lots of interested people that live in other areas. More or less, there has been a lot of stuff going on with regards to finding, but it hasn't gotten much farther than that.

However:

A couple weeks ago, we were walking by the gas station by our house, and this skater girl ran over and started talking to us. This was when I had two extra copies of the Book of Mormon in my hand to give to specific people, but we ended up giving them to two different people within 30 minutes and had to go back to our house to get more. She asked where she could buy whatever book it was that we use. She was in some kind of a hurry, and we had to take some time explaining the Restoration while I stalled writing our information inside Book of Mormon. As soon as she got it in her hands she basically ran off, saying she would see if it matched up with her idea, and we had no way of getting a hold of her.

Now, if I didn't have the testimony I have, I could rely the following trend to unshakeably believe in God (like when Alma 30:44 says that “all things testify that there is a Supreme Creator”, especially the coincidence that one cup of rice takes two cups of water... that is genius in its simplicity.):

We have a tendency of running into our investigators several times soon after finding them. We ran into this girl, Roseane, again. I asked her how much she had read, and she retold almost the entire story up to 1 Nephi 7 or so. She started telling about her “idea”, basically that people will need to follow some kind of Messiah for the world to have an economy that will sustain itself and so that there won't be any poor people. She kept asking us if we thought it was possible, because that is what a perfect church would be, if there could be one. I normally wouldn't do this in a contact, but I felt like I should explain the Millenium, and how we need to prepare ourselves to qualify to resurrect to live in that time, because that's more or less what it will be like. She believes the Book of Mormon is true, but only to the extent that she trusts what she is reading – not to the extent of knowing that God restored His church through Joseph Smith and it's still here. It was absolutely mindblowing. She's looking for the truth amid the confusion, but she ran off before we could get any contact information to help her even more. I know we will run into her again. I'm usually too skeptical to believe something so specific like that (out of fear that it won't happen, I admit) but I can't see it happening any other way. I just don't believe she will disappear, never to be found again.

The only overwhelming thing in this life is the Atonement. There is nothing that can be compared side by side, neither conceptually, intellectually, nor spiritually. There is no promise greater than that of the Atonement, not even from the lying, creative mouth of Satan. There is nothing that deserves more attention and devotion than the Atonement. Oxy-Clean is not the best stain remover, and it never will be, no matter how many iterations of sprays or powders that crazy TV guy comes up with. Who expected blood? Who saw that coming?

I know that the Atonement has a great transforming power, and we can only recognize our transformation when we don't recognize our previous self. When we look in the mirror, we will see literally a different person. If we met who we were previously, it would be like meeting an old friend from high school – you think you know them and try to talk to them like you were back in the day, but it doesn't work, and you end up satisfied in going your separate ways. How do we access the Atonement? Faith, repentance, baptism, the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and endurance. Reading the scriptures doesn't do it, going to church doesn't do it, serving in a calling doesn't do it – even serving a mission doesn't do it. The Gospel is simple. No matter what we do, we can do it with the trust of our faith in Christ, the humility of repentance, the decision of baptism, the help of the Holy Ghost, and the intelligence of never giving up.

Like that talk from Elder Cook, “Hope ya know, we had a hard time.” No matter what happens or who we find, I feel able to say that I have been spending 100% of the time trying, regardless of the results. As Elder Bednar said, “it's spiritually demanding work.”

Anyway,

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Amo-vos.

Elder Lobo

Grandad Murray would be so proud!

Preston's excellent footwork

Watch out for the wildlife!

Preston learned landscaping before he was born. He has spent time spading the garden and mixing in the compost. Note his technique with the shovel, especially the footwork. Ah, learning to work and grow vegetables at the tender age of four! We don't call this child labor!! It is a sure way to guarantee a nap and/or an early bedtime. He was tired afterward.