Week #79, April 23, 2016

Hermana Barrerios and me! 

(mission president's wife)

Hey mom!! 

i hope you have had a great week! we just finished week 1 of this change, and man im so glad its over! we have so much stuff to do. but this week some awesome spiritual miracles happened and id love to share them!

first there is a guy from mine and elder deckers old ward [when they were companions several month ago in O'Higgins] that now lives here in our current ward! he is from el salvador and he has 3 family members that just moved from there! and they are going to go to church and they arent members! so we are going to start passing by their house to teach them and with the help of the Lord, they will feel the desire to be cleansed spiritually and be baptized :) and also another person in our ward gave us a referral for a family member that is also interested!! so even though we dont get too much time to work in the sector, Heavenly Father is doing it all still! im happy. 

Buying electric blankets in the Chilean Home Depot, haha good times!

i shed a few tears of gratitude this week because while we were doing an errand in downtown santiago, we found ´the candy shop´ where it sells REAL AMERICAN PRODUCTS like cherry coke, and root beer, and 100 grand. and tons of other stuff! its the best!!!! haha i also feel a lot more comfortable driving too. its like a natural thing now! ha the other day i was walking in the midst of a lot of people and i had to stop bc someone got in my way, and i instinctively thought, ´before breaking, put in the clutch´ hahahaha im weird huh. 

and yeah i have 18 months in my mission!! that is so so so surreal. it doesnt seem real but its cool!

i have been studying a lot in preach my gospel and its so amazing the gospel truths it has in there! 

I learned that after everything Christ did for us, he did not eliminate our personal responsibility. Like pres uchtdorf said in conference,´God will force no one into heaven´  we have 3 huge responsibilities as Children of God. first, to accept Christ. and that is more than just recognizing that he is Christ. because even Satan recognizes who he is. but he wont accept who He is. We have to accept Christ as our Redeemer so that we can be changed and saved. and then after we must repent. repentance is one of the greatest gifts we have in this life. and it is something that everyone needs every day. even the best people in the world need to repent. and after that, strive to keep his commandments. and we do that to show our gratitude and so that we can little by little be changed. God will not change us if we do not let him. and i love the knowledge that there is nothing in the world that we have done that cannot be forgiven. we can always turn to Him and repent. :)

i love you mom! 

love colton