Week 58 In Ft. Lauderdale....

Here I am!

Mom, You need to make rootbeer... you guys will love this.

5-6 gallons of water

4 lbs of sweetener

6 oz rootbeer extract

7lbs of dry ice

mix it all together til the sweetener is gone then add the dry ice and let it sit for an hour fogging and "boiling" DONT put the lid on (DUH)

thats what we did halloween night.

Apparently, we have deprived our children of homemade rootbeer. We made a at lots of YM/YW Activities when Ryan and I were kids. Now I feel bad. We will need to make some with Leah and Garret.

Our ward had having a "Harvest Festival​" the day after Halloween, there was a pumpkin carving contest. I thought since we had to be home by 7pm on Halloween that I would carve a pumpkin for the contest... THERE WERE NO PUMPKINS ANYWHERE and so my dreams were squashed, but that was ok we ended up spending the night throwing stuff at Elder W******...

This week was a bit difficult we blessed a lot of people but... Nobody wanted to see us again. So we decided to just go talk to a bunch of our Part-member families this week and low and behold, we now have a ton of appointments for the next few days! Ladies with non-member husbands be wantin us around for dayz!

The ward Festival was really good we had a ton of Less-Actives and Non-members there and the Ramos family kids came too, slow but continuous progress with them. But all in all this was a slower week not alot went on, mainly because not alot of people wanted us to teach them but we are trying really hard this week to fix that and make it better. This week my studies have been a bit weird... I started seeing numbers and stuff! 7s,70 times 7, 12, 14, 144000, 3 and all kinds of colors and what knot White, purple, blue, Light, Dark, Black. And I realized that These things are all symbolic and represent much much more than what they appear. I felt all Davinci Code like.

But what I learned was about how much information there is in the scriptures and how the Lord wants us to find it so that we can return to him. That was really what I have leaned this week is that there is so much in the scriptures that we can never take it all in BUT that we must try!

Another thing that I learned was actually similar to what Dad noticed in sacrament meeting. Dad said; "A bunch of kids were getting up to bear their testimonies...but today I noticed something. EVERY ONE of the said “I like to bear me testimony…”. It struck me, most adults say, “I would like to bear…”. How cool that the kids LIKE to bear their testimonies. Even though I’m sure they don’t do it intentionally, how awesome will it be if they always “LIKE” to bear their testimonies and how great the missionaries they will be." I realized that there is a kind of un-said truth that if we all look at it will see where we need to change. You see sadly we don't often "LOVE" sacred or churchy things, we appreciate them and know that they are true, but because they are true causes some slight inconveniences of to some people large inconveniences. To most of us it is "our duty" to go to church, serve our callings, share the gospel. We do it because we know that we should, it becomes part of a checklist of items to do, I AM NOT SAYING THIS IS A BAD THING, because at least we KNOW  that it is true and are doing the things that we are required, but are we doing it out of love? Do we love the things of the Lord? Or are we doing them because we know we need to? I had this realization recently, I often have said "I didn't enjoy going to church before my mission" or something along those lines, and now I am starting to really love it and enjoy my time at church, now I am trying to learn to love the rest I KNOW that it is true now I am working on loving it. That is what I have learned this week, that I need to LOVE the Gospel and ALL of it to have it make a TRUE difference in my life and I challenge all of you to do the same! learn to LOVE the Gospel!

Stay Strong and Push ON!

ELDER PARQUE