03 Mar 10 - 10 Mar 10

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 4:45 p.m.

Okay everyone, I managed to get on once again before P-Day was over. So here's the low down on what's been going on for the past couple of weeks. I'm once again serving in an old area but I can't see or teach any of my old investigators, recent converts, or anyone who mainly speaks or is english. One thing that's really been getting on my nerves is the "grapevine" or "telephone" or whatever you want to call it. Rules, information, and other stuff we need to know that's passed down from Mission President to the Assistants to the President to the Zone Lords to the District Lords stinks to no end. Here I am having to deal with rules and regulations that are like 95% watered down from what they actually are. Me and my comp get into little tiffs here and there about what we think the rules for things are and what they actually are. Generally, I'm usually right about them, but that doesn't mean we do them. So, the main point that I'm trying to get at is that I want to work with everyone. It's sort of like what it says in Preach My Gospel where it says we need to contact everyone. When we work with everyone, we see success. Right now, I'm only working with Spanish. Apparently they know where all the other spanish people are hiding in the stake. So needless to say (but I'm going to say it anyway) we do a lot of tracting.

I feel useless out here, and this time it's not from low self esteem. I don't teach at all because I can't speak the language. I related trying to learn spanish as like being dropped off in the middle of the ocean and trying to swim back to shore. Now I feel like it's like trying to see through 20 feet of lead. It can't be done. For me at least. I've tried everything that everyone's told me to do and I'm not progressing at all. I know that everything takes time, but time is what I don't have. I don't have time to learn a language while on the mission. I see why I was called English speaking. To think that when I filled out my mission papers I actually put that I moderately wanted to learn a language. Well... if it were Japanese I would probably be more anxiously engaged.

One thing that also gets me is when other missionaries talk about what they REALLY felt when they opened their call. Most of them (if not all of them) hated it, or checked to see if it was a joke, or checked to see if it was a mistake, or just flat out didn't think there was actually a Utah Salt Lake City Mission. Me? Course I laughed. I laughed at the sheer irony of it all. Most everyone thought that Heavenly Father was going to send me back to the "Motherland." Instead, he sends me to the heart of the church. No where in the rest of the world can one serve around the Prophet and Apostles. I get to watch Conference in person twice a year (and if I wanted to, I could see every session in person). Sure, finding people on our own is a little difficult. But we get lots of media and member referrals. Despite all of these, they weren't the reason why I was estatic at going to Salt Lake City. It was that the Lord called ME at all.

One verse that's impacted my life recently is D&C 4:3 "If ye have desires to serve God, ye are called to the work." There are very few people who actually know what my desires are. Sure I have wants, dreams, goals, and whatnot that others know about. But as for my desires, there a few who know how much I want to stretch for. There's a good chance that I can't even receive them, but that doesn't mean that I won't try. Like that saying goes, "If you shoot for the moon and miss, at least you'll reach the stars." Heavenly Father called me in my weakness to do a marvelous work and a wonder. It's a wonder that any of my works are marvelous! And yet I laughed when I opened my call. It's because as I've been serving here in the heart of the church, I've seen and met so many people who NEEDED me. ME!

And that's why I want to thank every single person who has ever walked with me down my Path of Fate (heh heh). Every experience, every moment, every trial, every hurt, every laugh, every adventure, prepared me and helped me become what these people needed me to be as well as what Heavenly Father saw that I could become. Everyday, a dozen experiences run through my mind that prepared me for that single moment in which I was needed. It baffles me as well as blows my mind how I was prepared. And I was prepared by everyone else.

So thank you. Thank you for what you've done for me.


Elder Garcia.