Week 70: Another week in the books

Another great week in the mish in the books!!

The last week was real tough but the lord has blessed us with muchas blessings this week. We had the baptisms of the family of hermana karen and we have been having lots of sucess reactivating péople and getting there whole family converted and baptised!!

I gave the lesson in preistood about service. in the teachings of godon b hinkley

I have come to see that if we complain about life, it is because we are thinking only of ourselves.

Do you want to be happy? Forget yourself and get lost in this great cause. Lend your efforts to helping people. Cultivate a spirit of forgiveness in your heart against any who might have offended you. Look to the Lord and live and work to lift and serve His sons and daughters. You will come to know a happiness that you have never known before if you will do that. I do not care how old you are, how young you are, whatever. You can lift people and help them.

we all need to reach out and give serive to someone in need if we do this our lives will be filled with more joy and happiness.

Love you all

Elder Thackeray

Week 69: The Robbery

7 My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment;

8 And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes.

Well, this week has been a tough one not gonna lie haha. robbed twice grandpa one our most positive investigators tested us out of the blue and said we couldn't meet anymore and she was gonna get baptized this week. It seemed that a lot of stuff didn't go our way and it was rough but we endured it to the end. And are seeing the blessing because of it.

 We made it a point not to [murmur[ like Laman and Lemuel. and we feel that the Lord has blessed us because of it. It been a tough week but also a week where I felt like I've grown a lot. I put into practice some advice from Joesph b Wirthlin in a talk he gave called come what may and love it his 4 points he says we should do are 1 laugh, 2 seek for the eternal perspective, Understand the principle of compensation, and put your trust in the father and the son. this talk helped me a lot in this week and help me endure the adversity. 

In a talk by Thomas Monson called decisions, he told a poem 

[One ship goes east,

 one ship goes west,

 with the same winds that blow,

Its the set of the sails,

and not the gales,

That bid them the way that they go.

it's not what happens to us in life that matters, but how we react to this adversity and where we set our sails!

So then Karen that we were gonna baptized this week turns on is already a member. We went to do the interview at her house and shes like well my mom called me today and I told her about my baptism and she was like but you already were baptised there when you were little and she didn't remember but her records are there so well it was cool reactivating her and we are gonna baptised her daughter   Kashima and 2 of her niece and nephew that live with her petition and perished  haha weird names I know.

Hope all is well !!

Love older Thackeray

Week 68: Remembering Grandpa

Hanging out at the Zone Meeting. 

Well, Grandpa has passed on to a better life. He was a great man with a strong testimony in the gospel. His weekly passages of scriptures always helped me strengthen my faith. He will be truly missed but now has the opportunity to rest in peace con grandma for eternity and the rest of the family members that have passed on. Death is a sad thing but we are comforted by the fact that it doesn't end with this life and we will all be able to live together again in the next life! We'll miss you, grandpa!! One of the last memories I have of him was going to a doctors appointment and John Denver's country roads take me home came on and we had a good time singing together! Grandpa Roy has gone home to live for eternity with grandma theta!

Good week per usual!!

We have been really working hard with a less active family and it's been going well the came to church every week last week and we baptized their daughter Sabrina. It's really an awesome experience to see them getting back to church and it's like a family of 15 so it fills up the church!

On Sunday as we were confirming Sabrina we felt such a super strong spirit we were talking afterward me and da Costa and we both agreed that you could just feel the spirit in the sacrament room the world was just silent for those few minutes really awesome!!

Karen and her daughter and doing well and we are going to have there baptism on Saturday keep them in your prayers.

Hope all are well 

Elder Thackeray

Week 67: Good Ol' Slow Pitch

Well, sorry I didn't get a letter sent off last week. I got really sick on Monday so we just went to the house. Recovered from that but then I got some eye virus that's going around in my area nothing to worry about mother haha!

Things are going really well here! We have been blessed with lots of new investigators! We do a lot of divisions with members so that we can visit more people and we are having a lot of success with references from members!

We had a really good lesson with A Hermana named Karen shes a single mom with 3 kids. We had a great lesson with her about the restoration and the book of Mormon and she asked so many great questions and we could feel the spirit so strong!! It's really awesome basically all of our success comes from the book of Mormon, it really testifies to the power it has in peoples lives!

Today we all played some slow pitch softball haha it's a little hard when you play when a bunch of people who don't know the rules but it was a good time anyway.

Hope all is well!!

Elder Thackeray

Week 64: Tarde Blanca

Nevertheless they did fast and pray oft, and did wax stronger and stronger in their humility, and firmer and firmer in the faith of Christ, unto the filling their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the purifying and the sanctification of their hearts, which sanctification cometh because of their yielding their hearts unto God. Helaman 3:35

Well power went down in puerto. so the letter is coming in a little bit late.

Had another awesome week this week. we have been blessed with tons of miarcles this whole month. We have been working so hard and fasting every week and have truly been blessed. We were able to hit our goal of 5 baptisms this month with the help of the lord so we are feeling really grateful and blessed. We had a tarde blanca where 15 people were able to be baptised an awesome experience where you could feel the spirit so strong! It was an awesome experience!! 

 This week we had the baptisms of mikel and aikel. dont laugh haha thats their names. They are two brothers that are really awesome and have a strong desire to share the gospel even though they are so young, they were already inviting there friends to the church before they were even baptised!!!!! We are going to baptise there older brother this week. We are also working with a family 4 hno pedro his wife his dad and his kid we are really working hard with them so that we can help them become members and start there new life, hno pedro likes to drink alot but has progressed so much in the gospel. Andhe hasnt drank in over a week and so we are going good with him just have to keep them in the straight and narrow.

At zone meeting i talked to the zone about how we can make the miracles drop from the heavens on us, i feel like the zone really liked it and will help to put into practice what was talked about.

Pday as a zone we made pupusasa but as was said we were in the middle of cooking them and the light went out so we could only cook about half of them but such is life!!

I loved all of the experiences you guys sent me about sharing the book of mormon. Its our most powerfulñ tool combined with the spirit we had as missionary. The challenge i have for you all is open your mouth and talk to a friend co worker or whoever it is about the gospel of jesus christ talk about the book of mormon, give them the book of mormon and share your testimony. "Don't be afraid; just believe."-Mark 5:36. I look forward to hearing more of your expeiences.

Love yall

Elder Thackeray

Week 63: Zone Meeting

My son, give ear to my words; for I swear unto you, that inasmuch as ye shall keep the commandments of God ye shall  prosper in the land.

The Kitchen

Well another great week in the book.

Presidente came and we had a zone meeting we ate chilliquilas and talked about a new way to find new investigators and such, go in talk about the book of mormon pray and then asked them how they felt after and how they could have those feeling again worked really well and we found 30 new investigatores  this week. it was awesome!!

We had a good experience this week while we were looking for a referencia and we were talking to this guy that was on the street and this drunk looking guy was in his house a little of the road and he was calling us in but we didnt go because well we talked to about 500 bolos a day that never have anything good to say about us.So we just finsihed talkin to the guy and then we went on our way. Then the drunk guy sent his kid to come get us to talk to them. So we talked to him and hes family that was it the house that we didnt see and talked to them and there an awesome family, are accepted to be baptised next month. the spirit was strong in getting us to that house.

Funny story: we finished teaching a lesson and we asked this guy to pray and he was like yes i will. he started praying and it started really quiet then started getting slowly louder and louder until he was jumping up and down and shaking his hands and then when he finished he sat down and was like winded and was like oh man that prayer took it out of me haha i bet. Evangelicos and pentocostal have some entusiama when they prayer.

Our Apartment 

Hope all is well and that you guys are always praying reading the scriptures and having family home evening!!

Love Elder Thackeray

Someone glued this fruit to the tree!

Week 62: La Semana de Milagros

And now, O all ye that have imagined up unto yourselves a god who can do ^ano miracles, I would ask of you, have all these things passed, of which I have spoken? Has the end come yet? Behold I say unto you, Nay; and God has not ceased to be a God of miracles. Mormon 9:15

This Tuesday in our zone meeting we decided to make this week the week of miracles. We made plans to do things to make the miracles rain down from the heavens on us. And thats exactly what we got this week.

We had 0 possibilities to baptize this week, so we put goals to find at least 1 miracle to baptize.

On Wednesday we found an old less active we had been teaching when we first got to the area and we were talking and we found out she has 2 kids, Rafael and Janixia, that weren't baptized and she said she wanted them to get BAPTISED ON SATURDAY!!!!!! The lord was quick to answer our prayers and let miracles rain down on us!! The MIRACLES HAVE NOT CEASED 

Friday our day started really early but ended awesomely, we left the house at 630 in the morning to go work with our first counselor Hermano Glen, we visited a bunch of less actives, investigators and new people, it was a good time. Hermano glen is my favorite, I thought I did a good job not having fear talking to people and inviting them to be baptised in the first contact, but Hermano glen the first few words out of his mouth to someone new we meat is Why aren't you baptised if you're not baptised you cant be saved haha. Me and DeCosta are always saying we gotta be more like Hermano Glen haha. It was a long day because we were fasting and its always hard to fast and word super hard but the Lord blessed us with strength.

On Saturday in the morning one of our recent converts Miladi called us and said hey can u guys come over my mom has some service for you to do, so we went over there and it wasn't really service, it was just here mom, our investigator, wanted to make us lunch and we helped her get it all prepared and such. Right after we broke our fast, an old investigator of me and elder da costa, alix who was awesome and was supposed to get baptised but the week of the baptism he disappeared, called us and was like elders I've been going through some tough times they just fired me from my job and i think this is god telling me i need to get baptised so i want to GET BAPTISED TOMORROW!!!! we were so happy!!! at 4 we had the baptisms for janixia and rafeal super aweosme it was all in miskito the service you could feel such a strong spirit there and such was the case at the baptism of alix!!!

Funny Story: We were contacting this guy and a drunk guy comes up and starts yelling at the guy that he's a bad person then he kissed my companion's shoulder and said I can do that because these two are holy people , then he was like hey you didn't see me look, then he took my hand kissed it and said the only reason I can do that is because they are holy and not sinners like you and me then we had to leave because they started to fight haha

Hope all is well!!

Elder Thackeray

Week 61: Lobster Dinner

Well another transfer down!  I am officially the oldest person in the Puerto Zone now!  

The District President here works on the Sea.  And this week he came back from work with 2 of the biggest lobsters I have ever seen!  He made us dinner with them, they were delicious!  We said it is that time of year again and we are going to be having alot more Lobsters, which is fine by me!

The rest of the week went well.  We had some great lessons with some people interested in joining the church.  As you can kind of see in the picture I was able to rock my American Flag tie of July 4th!  It will be nice to be home for the 4th next week. 

Anyway have a good week, 

Love yall!!!

Elder Thackeray