Come to Christ

Hello there my dearest family,

 

Well this week was one of the hardest weeks in all of my mission, well to this point that is. We had more trouble working with the members here than any other time. And its our fault for not emphasizing (sorry for the spelling) the importancia of their help. We are going to be better about helping the members be missionaries too. We felt pretty down until last night we looked at the whole week in total and we realized that there was success and more importantly, there were miracles.

One of the miracles that I saw and got to be a part of this week was a blessing we gave to a baby (10 months old). This nino is learning to walk and was half crawling, half walking about the house when he found his way to the kitchen. All the people here just have like camping stoves for cooking and in this instance there was a pot of boiling water waiting to be made into soup. Well he made his way to this pot and used it to stand up. And as you can imagine, it fell over and this boiling water splashed all over this poor kid. It was all an accident too. His mom looked away for 2 seconds and he was gone. He suffered severe burns on both his legs and one of his knees was super bad. They rushed him to the hospital and they had to peel away some of the dead flesh so it wouldn't get infected, but this family couldn't afford any more treatment so they took him home and made medicamentos caseros. (homemade medicine) With plants, herbs, and cream of some sort. I'm not sure exactly, but I do know that it must have been extremely painful. This family called us, and one morning we went early to their house to give him a blessing. He was asleep but moving around a lot. We gave him a blessing and then we left. The next day they called us again. Not to give another blessing, but to thank us. He had slept well that night, and when they looked at the burns the next morning they had reduced a ton and he was a happy kid, playing and smiling. He didn't have any pain, and the burns now are just little scabs. Its not going to scar and he is completely fine.

The sacerdocio (preisthood?) is real. It is a power from God. And it works miracles.

Looking back at this week, thats just one of many miracles that we saw and had the chance to be a part of.

Oh and this past lunes, one week ago today, we went bowling. And guess what?! I won. Thats right, I won bowling in Bolivia. With an astounding 121 points. It turns out that I'm terrible at bowling but the Latins have never even seen bowling before so I'm a bit better. Not to brag or anything. It turned out to be really fun but also pretty expensive. In comparison to the US, its normal and maybe even cheap but here its really expenisve. 85 Bs for one hour. But not to worry, the mission payed for it all!

Also this week was really cold. And really hot. It never gets below about 55 degrees here but the hard thing is that inside and outside is the same temp. When its cold its cold inside, outside, during the day, and duriing the night. There is no "Lets go inside because its cold" Its. "Lets go inside... oh wait its cold there too." You can't escape the cold!! Showers are the worst. Especially morning with cold because these days never ever ever have hot water and I don't know why!!!

But its all good because often the next day is hot and sunny. Its a lot like Houston here. The weather changes a ton.

Also I bought a box of mac and cheese this week. I felt like I was home with the little ones sitting on the living room floor watching Tangled or Frozen eating lunch. Except I was in my kitchen sitting on my table watching the spiders on the walls eating a bowl of badly cooked mac and cheese. But none the less, It was a good feeling. Ethan and Melanie and Carly, I want to have one of these lunches when I get home!

Well my thought is short today and its very simple. It starts with the meaning of the word "come." Its interesting that our purpose as missionaries is "Invitar a las personas a venir a Cristo." We are to invite others to come to Christ. But before we can do this we have to be with Christ. You can't invite someone to "come" to a place or in this case a person without first being there yourself. You can invite others to "go" but not to "come." This is our purpose as missionaries. First we have to be with Christ or as close as we can to Him and then after, we can invite others to do the same. I strive every day to go to Christ so that I can fulfill my purpose and Invite others to do the same.

The church is true. Christ lives. And we need to live as close to Him as possible.

I miss you all, I pray for you all.

Hurrah for Israel!

Love,

Elder Gehring

Oh and this is me bowling. Did I mention that I won? 121. Beat that.