Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Elder Derek Keele- Oct. 15, 2012

Dear family
That is awesome to hear about Jordan! Use those contacting skills! 
I remember doing fast offerings and passing by Bob Lucas´s house. He had a little pug dog I think. He was always such a nice and charitable guy. 
I remember one of my favorite things that was said about Grandpa at his funeral was that he would always quietly walk out of the room if anybody was talking bad of somebody else. That is so true about dad too.
I still haven´t gotten the package yet for some reason. My Zone leader forgot to bring it last week. But we might go to Calama tomorrow and then I would get it. Elder Dixon, another missionary here in Tocopilla, got a package last week, but it was missing a few things. So hopefully mine is all still there :D
I didn´t think about the Peru Temple. I know there is one in Bolivia that is closer to us than Santiago, but we are still in the Santiago District. I´ll have to ask about that.
What a stud Nathan. 19 young men! What an army preparing! And what great examples!
Speaking of writing, I haven´t written all of you for a while, but I have a bunch of letters written. I was planning on sending them in a package, and hopefully I can do that soon. 
I heard from Nathan Gunnell! He sounds like he is doing well in Madagascar, even though he had gotten the ¨sickest he had been his whole life¨. Nathan, ask Justin how Nathan is doing these days. I think the letter I got was from a couple months ago.
María Anch went to church yesterday! She is an investigator we definitely found with the Lord´s help about two months ago. We had talked to a lot of people one day and not had any success at all. But as we were on our way to walk out to the North part of Tocopilla, we saw a lady sitting outside talking to her friend. I don´t know why, but when I saw her I just went directly for her nearly getting hit by a taxi while crossing the street too. We just talked with her for about 30 minutes, and it was mostly her telling us experiences of how the Lord has helped her. And that she had never gotten baptized in her life because she never found a church she liked, and she couldn´t stop smoking. She has progressed well and has a lot of faith in the Lord, and has lowered the amount of smoking a lot. And now she will have extra strength from the Lord because she made it to church! She also brought her two granddaughters and her daughter-in-law. They all seemed to enjoy church, especially because it was testimony meeting. Best meeting of the month! 
Transfers are next week, and we think Elder Díaz is leaving because he has been here over 4 months. He is such a genius and a really good friend. So I will be sad if we get changed. 
Last week I had a question about a scripture, Daniel 2:45. ¨A stone cut out of the mountain without hands¨. I thought, what in the world does that mean? I started off the day with reading a random chapter in the Book of Mormon, and turned to  2 Nephi 27. In verses 20 and 21 the Lord says ¨He is able to do His own work.¨ I am pretty sure that is what was meant by the stone cut without hands that would destroy the kingdoms of the world. The church is not a man´s church, it came about by the power of the Lord, and is so perfect that it really does astound the other churches. I love being able to talk to so many people of different ideas and religions, and see how the Lord has the answer to everything in His church. 
Something I found out and am not sure why or how they explain it, but in the Jehova´s Witnesses scriptures, they leave out verses. There is just a dash every once in a while. One very significant verse is Acts 8:37, which says that we only need faith to be baptized. The Jehova´s Witnesses always talk to us about how you need to study a lot before joining their church and being ready for baptism. Maybe because verses like these are taken out of their scriptures they don't understand how faith plays a role in it!
Well, I know the church is true because the Spirit confirms that to me. :) I love being able to share that every day with everyone. 
Have a great week!
Elder Keele 

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