week 88

Hello everyone! This week's email will be a bit shorter than the last, but that's ok because I'll just focus on the best parts.

This week we spent every open moment rebuilding our area book and calling people and organizing our contacts. We had GREAT lessons with lots of old and new friends. Luis and Paola are a couple who just met us last week and since the last visit they had read the introduction and the witnesses to the Book of Mormon, and Luis had lots of good questions. He was confused because he thought that both of those were part of the ancient text that was translated but we helped him understand what they actually were and why they were so important. He was very interested in the fact the the Book of Mormon has an account of the ministry of Christ in the ancient Americas and he promised us he would read 3 Nefi 11. We are so excited for him!

We also had a lesson with Carmen, a recent convert baptized 2 months ago and she has such a strong testimony! She already referred her entire family in Peru and the missionaries are teaching them there, and she told us how she's going to marry a member of the church in a month (he already proposed) and go to the temple! She told us of her dreams of visiting all the temples in Utah it was honestly so inspiring coming from someone with so little time in the church.

We also had an incredible lesson with Rolando where  we talked about the importance of using the bible and Book of Mormon together and he understood it very well. He actually actually wants a copy of the bible witht the footnotes to the Book of Mormon in it, and we're going to get it to him this week.

We also taught Julio this week and unfortunately for the 4th week in a row he hadn't read anything at all in the Book of Mormon even though he promised us he would 2 times during the week. We ended up just reading with hi right there and applying what we read to our daily lives. We testified of the power of the Book of Mormon to help us come closer to Christ, and invited him to try again to read this week and let us know how it went.

We also had a lesson with a new person we found through Facebook and she seemed genuinely interested in the message we share so we set up frequent contact and I'm excited to see where it goes!

We also had another lesson with Liliana and the Relief society President in the branch and it went very well! She has been taught everything, and so this time we just taught about prophets and their importance in guiding the church, etc. and at the end we invited her to watch the video of Russel M Nelson about Gratefulness. If you are reading this and still haven't seen it, it doesn't even matter that you are now 4 months late GO WATCH IT it is too good. 15 minutes after our lesson with Liliana, she sent us a text telling us that she just finished watching it and she loved it! She says that she shared it on her page and with some of her friends because everyone needs to hear it. Then she told us that she followed the prophet. Talk about obeying the commandment in a very literal sense :)))

This week we also did a total of 8 hours of service, 4 hours at the food rescue task force and 4 hours at habitat for Humanity with Benji the crazy Nepali guy in charge.

Spiritual thought:

Something I learned from my mission President this week was about how the world is full of distractions. He told us how lots of people just seek self-fulfillment instead of making worthy sacrifices to our Heavenly Father. He said "It is so easy to be distracted by things, relationships, careers, education, information, and gadgets. The whirl and whiz of modern living can cause us to spin entirely out of control." I was taken aback a little bit by the fact that education was on that list of distractions but I realized that the problem is when our education becomes more important to us than our own devotion to God. After pondering about this deeply I have decided that to avoid that loophole of education becoming a distraction, I want to make my own knowledge and relationship to God the priority and focus of my education. Anyways, continuing onward with what my president said, 

"While we serve our missions - (this is me Elder Hilton here just letting you know that you can substitute that first phrase with whatever situation in life you are in) - there are distractions that are even more concerning. Fear, self-doubt, and loneliness can be great obstacles to achieving our divine destiny. These insecurities have the ability to cripple our spirits and may cause us to believe that we are incapable of finding happiness on our missions or throughout our lives. To a certain degree I have experienced all of that on my mission already. But I have also been able to find the remedy to all those feelings that come from the worldly distractions. And that remedy is more readily available than any other because it comes straight from Christ. I love the New Testament's comparison of Christ to water because water is ESSENTIAL. It relieves our thirst, it put out the fires of life's distractions, and in the long run, nothing can live without it! To finish off, I hope you - the person reading this email - will allow yourself a few moments of peaceful reflection about the wonders of your life and the incredible part you play in the plan of God.

Love, 

Elder Hilton