The Law of Chastity

My beloved Family,

OH, HOW I LOVE YOU SO. Another day another dollar o sea, another week another week of miracles.

So, just like every transfer, I haven´t heard anything yet. I do have a feeling that I will be leaving because of what President Franco told me in my interview. (He mentioned how he likes when the new missionaries take control of their area) so I think leaving Elder Simmons with 9 people who are preparing to be baptized will help him keep control of it for a while. We´re planning Varia’s baptisms for this month of December and I think that we should have at least 4 for sure. The other 5 we´ll see because of marriage statuses.. if you get what I mean. ;)

And yes mom... I will go to institute with you. I´ll probably be looking for things to do, so you can even tell the elders that I’ll go out with them. 

So.. Something that I studied this week was in 4th Nephi the first few verses really stood out to me.

 2 And it came to pass in the thirty and sixth year, the people were ALL converted unto the Lord, upon ALL the face of the land, both Nephites and Lamanites, and there were no contentions and disputations among them, and every man did deal justly one with another.

The part that stood out to me was that EVERYONE was converted. I always think "wow. how great would the world be if EVERYONE just lived the gospel?" and that's how it was in this time.. for a few years too! There wasn´t a division of "nephites and lamanites" or black and white or republican and democrat... however you want to look at it, because they ALL looked to God´s law, never had to have contentions between them because there was never any indifferance. Now if we apply that to our families... if everyone in a family is living the gospel, there won’t be divisions between them. I just thought it was really cool to think about. :)

 But that’s my little spiritual thought in the middle of my letter ;)

So this week.. was awesome. Just like every week here in Clorinda. It’s been such a great time. If I leave this week, I’m going to be super, super sad to go. It’s so nice having great members to take care of us. We´ve eaten 2 asados this week and we have another for lunch today! :) Asado = steak, chicken, sausage, and some type of salad. SOOO goood.

We also had our District Meeting outside because it was raining and it felt so good. So we brought the tables outside underneath the roof that connects the two buildings of the chapel and taught outside. I talked a little bit on obedience and giving all to the Lord. I also asked each one of them who is their example of consecration? Who is your example of consecration? I had to say my parents definitely showed me what putting the Lord first really means.  So, thanks for that.

We also did a few service projects. We dug a hole for a guy to put his trash in to burn. (Not really sure why, but we did) and then we cut this lady´s grass with machetes. It was so funny, Elder Simmons was having the time of his life! His shoulder hurt after but we got a lot done.

We also heard about another neighborhood that is in my area but is a few kilometers away from Clorinda. So on Wednesday we decided to walk out there with Oscar. We walked for about 45 minutes on the side of the route and we got there. It’s called Barrio Aca. It was houses made of chapas and madera. Honestly, it was way cool. Elder Simmons was pretty shocked... but we had a good time talking to a few people there.

OH! And we had the BEST Chastity lesson ever! So we wanted to teach all the lessons to Nelson and Mariela and Eliam and Luciana before their baptisms and when we sat down I asked them "Okay, does anyone here know what chastity means?" And nobody knew... so anyways. I´ve learned that while teaching the law of chastity the best way to teach it so that it´s not awkward is just to be mature about it and say it like it is. So, we taught it, very frankly. And at the end we asked if anyone had any more questions and Mariela just shook her head and said "no. entiendo bien." (no, i understand well). I don’t know. I thought it was funny. It’s probably one of those "you had to be there" type of stories....

But the other day Elder Simmons did ask me after all of my time on the mission what is the one thing that I´ve learned. I thought for a minute then I responded "We have good days and we have bad days, but the gospel will always stay the same." The gospel is just a big map for us. It doesn´t tell us about all the little bumps in the road, just tells us how to get there. I´ve definitely learned to trust in the promise that the gospel will lead us to peace in this life and eternal life in the life to come.

That’s all the time that I got.

But I love you guys.

Have a good week!

Stay safe and keep the faith!

Elder Harris III