Fearing Man More Than God 6/26/21

 Ok to all who have wanted an email the last month I am so sorry... This last month has probably passed by the quickest of all of the other months in my mission thus far. I have had some pretty incredible learning experiences and met some amazing people! I am still in Cusco after the tansfer and I have a new companion who is super chill and thinks a lot like I do. The mission is still having to close areas because we don't have enough missionaries so we took all of one of our areas instead of Half so we have 3 full areas that are SUPER promising. 

We had a leadership council in a city called Puerto Maldonado which is basically in the corner of Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru. Kind of reminded me of Arizona with how the weather was but other than that it was a super cool experience!! To get there it's about a 10-11 hour bus ride through... once again... vomit town... but it actually wasn't too terrible. We left at 8:30pm to arrive at about 6:30am so red-eye bus ride😅 We had the opportunity to play a lot of different games and sports and I took 2nd place in a ping pong tournament but lost to the 2nd counselor in the Mission Presidency... sad. We did another puertas abiertas where basically we prepare little stations and people walk through and we explain the gospel and what the church does. We had another group of 14-16 Elders living in our house so that was... interesting to say the least but there all cool so it's ok.

This part is going to be a bit lengthy so bear with me. A couple of weeks ago I realized I have retained a lot of bad habits that I want to stop. Out mission president had said that we should all take the things we want to stop doing or get rid of in our lives and write them down on a piece of paper. Then we should destroy these pieces of paper and forget about them to symbolize the destruction of these bad things. Sounds cool right? welp... for me it doesn't work. I think too much and as soon as the things are destroyed I forget that I wanted to destroy them and I keep doing the same thing. SOOOOO I decided to do things a little differently and I kept all of the papers I destroyed and put them in a little bottle so I would never forget the things I promised to stop doing. I then thought to myself "What is the one thing they all have in common and maybe I can start there?" Well... I'll tell y'all a little secret and it's that the answer is something that controls ALL of our problems. It's the simple concept of fearing MAN more than God. If we really believe that God knows all and we really believe that through Jesus Christ we can be saved... then when it comes time to doubt whether we should do the right thing or not based on what others are going to think... THAT is the moment when we need to remember that God knows all and can inflict much more pain on those who reject us than those who reject us ever will be able to inflict on us. As missionaries we run into this all the time and it's pretty hard to put this principle to action but I PROMISE that it works. "The character of Christ is turning outward when the natural man in you and me would turn inward." -Bednar (Character of Christ). Don't learn about Christ... learn from and of him. Be willing to stand firm and fear God more than man and be willing to do it now because he needs us now more than ever. 

Love you all and I know God has a special place for each one of you!!!