Tuesday things started off with a special capacitation by Elder Scholes, that man is a bomb of knowledge and wisdom. We focused on the basics, the Doctrine of Christ. Faith, Repentance, Baptism, the reception of the gift of the Holy Ghost, and Endure to the end. As we talked specifically of each one of those steps the question arose as to what was meant by 'endure to the end' and as the conversation deepened, the spirit guided as we learned that the last step just means a repetition of the first four steps over and over again. As we do things right, our faith is increased and that leads us to have a desire to repent, in order to complete the repentance process we must partake of the sacrament (renewal of the baptismal covenant) and in turn God promises to give us His spirit which in turn will increase our faith which will lead us to repent of our imperfections, and you get the idea. It is a continual process until we are perfect.
After that spiritual feast I was assigned to be companions for the day to the legendary Elder Mackliet. (If you remember back to November of last year he was my second companion here in Chile) And let me tell you it was a blast! I loved it. I mean any day where I get to be with a humble follower of Christ I would call it a good day. But what made it even better was that we found a less active family (part member) who were going through a really rough moment in their lives. By the guidance of the spirit we were able to help them realize that hope was there, that through our great mediator Jesus Christ all of our pains and sorrows would be made right, That through Him we are healed.
But the adventure with Elder Mackliet could not have ended in a worse fashion. He, with his companion, recently began the workout routine of completing a ridiculous amount of squats in the morning, something that I have not done for........well, a while. But I couldn't leave the challenge unanswered, and believe me it was answered. Just after answering it I was hurting.
This Saturday was the South America service day for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, our stake was assigned to help re-paint a graveyard. All the tall gringos were assigned to paint the fences, which were about 24 feet tall. So we scaled the fences and painted and painted after four hours of hanging from the fences and getting plenty of paint in our faces and hair we finished, the end project looking a whole lot better than when we begun.
The highlight of the week though was Sunday for sacrament meeting where, after a hard week of work, we have the church attendance at a 15% increase due to all of the less active members who attended. It was a sight to see. One of those less active members was the first branch president of San Carlos and he stood up and bore a moving testimony of how it is our duty to go out and bring back those who have been lost. (He being the fruit of such an effort).
Much Love,
Elder HUtchins
