Moving Forward

Dear Family and Friends,

 

This last week has been pretty good! Poring over the conference talks has been very renewing and invigorating. We also had a Zone Conference this last Friday. We are heavily effected by the Zone conferences when it comes to proselyting time, since we are so far a way from the meeting site. I am always glad that we get to go and participate though. It's good to be together with other missionaries and leaders who are here to support us. I feel that we have been instructed well. Our main focus in the conference was on planning and how to be more effective. This is something that I feel that I can definitely improve, as can we all. This week marks the third week of this transfer already which is crazy to me, but we all know ho time flies.

 

The thing that has stuck out to me this week the most is the resisting of evil. My verse of scripture that I ponderizing this week was Alma 61:14. It speaks of resisting evil and whatever evil we cannot resist with our words, let us resist with the sword. Through this we will be able to uphold our freedom to glory in our God and the Redemption of our Lord. This is given as Pahoran writes back to Moroni's chastening letter, and he so humbly offers this encouragement instead of taking offence to the bold and declarative letter. We have choice in this life to receive chastening from the Lord with patience and in the same spirit of love that it is given. Even if it is not given in a compassionate and loving manner, we are still able to choose to resist evil (Anything that is not exemplary of the fruits of the spirit illustrated in Galatians 5) by taking it and doing our best to apply it. Moving forward is a big part of that. The absence of progress is stagnancy, and in reality there is rarely ever any perfect stagnancy which means more commonly we regress. But moving forward is something that I have to remember to do. I am glad to have the chance to take the sacrament again after a two week lapse due to general conference. That is something that is taken for granted far too often. We talked about that at Zone conference too.

 

Overall the area is progressing. We had a big festival last weekend called Indian days. The biggest focus was that Columbus didn't find America, the Native people found Columbus. I could only wish to add one thing to that, which would be the Book of Mormon is the record of how the Native people came to America! We told several people that as they passed by our booth we had set up, but it all fell mostly on unwilling ears, and unseeing eyes. How blinded can we often be to what is staring us in the face. We have such little things that we need to just understand but we choose to keep looking for answers everywhere But where we need to look. President Uchtdorf hit so plainly on that in conference too. My verse of ponderization this week will be Helaman 3:35. I hope you all have a great week! I love you and wish you the best!

 

Ayoo' Aniinishni​

Elder McGarry 

Us and Elder Ahloy who was the last and only other Elder to​ be trained in Alamo

Bribing the Judges (Me and My companion with three others) Is totally ok at the Alamo Indian Day Parade ;) (Don't worry our judgments were not swayed by candy)