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Monday, January 21, 2013

January 21, 2013--Week 47


Hello family :)                                                                                                

I hope everyone finds themselves well on this wonderful day.  So, we have a few new developments in our area!  We found an awesome family this week—and a couple of other good investigators too.  But, I´ll just tell you quickly about the family, and ask for your prayers on their behalf.  So, until now, we only had the chance to talk with the dad (but we´re going to have a lesson with them tonight and he told us that his wife and his kids would be available as well this time).  I think he´s about the same age as Mom and Dad.  His name is Antonio, and he´s one of the coolest people I´ve met here.  The first time we met him, he invited us in and showed us around his house/property.  He´s got a HUGE yard, which is awesome because most people here don´t have much of a yard.  He´s got like 60 rabbits, 14 doves, 3 squirrels, and some guinea pigs in the mix of rabbits.  And when we came back to teach him the first lesson, he had cooked us a rabbit.  And it was delicious.  But anyway, afterwards we explained to him about our purpose in being here.  Most people around here think that we just "give studies", so we always clarify what we really do.  We explained to him that we´re here to help him come closer to our Father in Heaven by coming to know that our message comes directly from Him, and then making sacred covenants with Him, such as baptism.  He told us, "Everyone around here is Catholic.  But we don´t really have any certainty about whether it´s really true or not.  I´d like to have that certainty in my life."  So, we left him a pamphlet about the Plan of Salvation and asked him to read it with his wife, and then pray about it together to know if what it contains is true.  And, he said he would.  So, we´re really excited to go back tonight.

I don´t have anything else to share, so I just want to bear my testimony.  I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that God lives and that He loves us.  He "so loved the world that He sent His Only Begotten Son" (John 3:16), knowing that He would be "despised and rejected of man" (Isaiah 53:3), but knowing that without an Atonement, all mankind would perish (Alma 34:9), He sent His Beloved Son, hoping that we would love and accept Him here below so that we could lay hold upon salvation.  I know that our Savior loves us as well, and that in every way He performed perfectly the duty that our Father in Heaven sent Him forth to do. He established His Church, and with everything necessary to bring about the salvation of those who lived in His dispensation.  He worked out a perfect Atonement, providing the only acceptable sacrifice that would give us the opportunity to be freed of our sins and return to live with our Father above. After the people rejected Him and the Church He established and caused it to fall, in our day He has established it once again through a living prophet, exactly as He had always done before.  I testify that that Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, truly is His.  It is "the only true and living church upon the face of the earth" (Doctrine and Covenants 1:30), because He stands at it´s head and directs it.  With it, salvation is available to every being who has ever lived upon the face of this earth.  His Kingdom is filling the earth (Daniel 2:44).  This is His work, and there is nothing that brings as much joy as being a part of it.  Something that I have realized here is that there is something that one can have only through the Gospel and that is peace.  By living the Gospel, it doesn´t mean that we´ll have a burning, I-want-to-sing-at-the-top-of-my-lungs-for-happiness type of happiness in every moment, but it does mean that we can always be at peace.  Of this I testify in the name of Jesus Christ.  Amen.

I hope you all have a wonderful week and do great on your finals and other stuff you may have going on!  I love you so much!

Con mucho amor,
Elder Andrew Nickerl

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