Hey family!
Its beginning to look like Christmas!! The stores have Christmas stuff here and people are putting up their lights! How exciting!
So, I think I’m allergic to Peanut Butter or nuts. Ever since I started eating it after a few months off it, I’ve had major diarrhea and such. And so my Mission Mom told me to stop for 2 weeks to see, and after 5 days, I feel so much better. If you’ve sent some, my Mission Mom said she GLADLY take it for me. Hahahha and she told me she’d spent 2 weeks off of cookies so she could join me in this fast! How nice!
This week, I also received a package from Mom and Dad and DIED! I opened it and found an English hymnbook, CDS, everything I asked for! ahhh I just soaked in my love for them and their support. I want to share with you something that really changed my life that they sent me: A book called ¨Suit Up.¨ It is written by my favorite Education Week speakers and it’s on preparations for missionaries! I started reading it, then felt bad because I wasn’t sure if it was approved for the church so I put it away, and decided Ïd give it to my Mission President the next day so I would be obedient. When I gave it to him, he laughed, told me to read it, and enjoy it! And man, I did! I ate that book like a chocolate cake! I finished it in 4 days and felt so good! Even though it was for pre missionaries, it made me want to better myself as a missionary. All you young people, ask Santa Clause for that book.
This week, I wish to share with you my personal testimony of Jesus Christ as seen through exact obedience to His commandments. As a new missionary I struggled with exact obedience: It just didn’t seem possible. I understood that I wasn’t perfect so I was okay with only following 90% of the rules. But something didn’t feel right because my dad, who is my role model and example, emails me each week with a simple reminder to be exactly obedient. I have asked myself many times what my father sees in my, that I don’t see myself. This past Tuesday we had our quarterly interviews with our Mission President and he spoke to our zone on obedience. He expressed his disappointment to hear that we, as missionaries, were simply content with 90% obedience. In that moment, my mind went to an email that I had received from my father the day before in which he expressed his concern for me, his son, because he felt that I wasn’t being as obedient as I could and should have been. As I continued to listen to my president, I felt the chastisement of the Lord, but I felt a greater desire to be better. With these words from my President, my heart was changed forever: ¨What would have happened if the Savior had been okay with simply atoning for 90% of the inhabitants of the Earth. And what would have happened if we were the 10% that didn’t get saved?¨ Wow. I realized that my complacency had restricted me from receiving an extra 10% of blessings that Lord had prepared for me. He himself declared: ¨I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say, but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise¨ (D&C 82:10)
How grateful I am for my dear father´s diligent counsel and example in my life.
After our interviews, my companion and I made goals to be exactly obedient. We started with our biggest problem, which was getting home by 9:30pm. In our area, most people work until 8 at night or so, so our last hour of work is primetime to teach. Thursday night we had a lesson with Hna Berta, a mother of a less active. It was a beautiful lesson on the Book of Mormon and she even testified to us of the truthfulness she had found because she could recognize the feelings of the Holy Spirit. While the lesson was so spiritually powerful, we had to leave because it was 9:23pm. So, we sprinted home. My exercise hating, chocolate loving body could barely do it. (I’m still working on obedience to 30 minutes of exercise.) It was so humid, my body hurt, and I said a prayer to God. I told him I was doing all in my power to be obedient and I needed Him to fill in the rest so I could be the representative I was prepared to be. As I said this prayer in my heart, and followed blindly behind my companion, we got home at 9:30, just as I was about to give up. What a great spirit my companion and I felt as we entered our home and reaped the blessings that come from obedience. At that moment, I was a witness of the power of prayer and the personal relationship God has with us.
As I meditated upon this tender mercy of the Lord, I asked myself this question: ¨What can I give to my Savior and my Father in Heaven in gratitude for their mercy upon me?¨ As I reflected some more, the words of a favorite hymn reminded me that ¨Never can I repay thee Lord, but I can love thee, thy pure word¨(Savior, Redeemer of my Soul.)
In the April 2013 conference, a living prophet of God, Thomas S Monson, shared how our Savior Jesus Christ showed love for His father in Heaven:
The Savior demonstrated genuine love of God by living the perfect life, by honoring the sacred mission that was His. Never was He haughty. Never was He puffed up with pride. Never was He disloyal. Ever was He humble. Ever was He sincere. Ever was He obedient...As the Savior instructed His early Apostles, so He instructs you and me, “Follow thou me.”16 Are we willing to obey?http://www.lds.org/
I invite each of you to read this talk this week and meditate upon the Divine invitation to obey. President Monson finishes his talk by declaring, The knowledge which we seek, the answers for which we yearn, and the strength which we desire today to meet the challenges of a complex and changing world can be ours when we willingly obey the Lord’s commandments. I quote once again the words of the Lord: “He that keepeth [God’s] commandments receiveth truth and light, until he is glorified in truth and knoweth all things.”17
I promise you that the answer to every problem we face is centered upon a teaching of our Savior and his prophets. I testify that we have a prophet who speaks to us the words of our loving Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. IT is my hope that each of us will follow our Savior to the best of our ability. He doesn’t expect us to be sinless, that’s why we can repent, but he does expect us to do all we can to follow Him.
As the Star of David led the shepherds to the new born Christ child, the gospel of Jesus Christ leads us to Him as well. Through obedience, we can continue our journey through the dark and lonely paths with the Prince of Peace as our guiding light.
I finish my testimony with yet another hymn:
Let us govern by kindness and never by force,
All cheering and bright, like the Sun in its course,
Obedience will spring from each heart with a bound
And brotherhood flourish the wide world around.¨¨ (Come Along, Come Along)
Con amor,
Elder Risueño
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