Transfers...I stay...he goes :)

So Elder Robinson is getting transferred this week.  On wednesday he'll be heading down to the border.  Then I'll be spearheading the operation here haha.  That should be pretty cool.  

 

Anyways, cool miracle this week:  We had a day where a bunch of random stuff happened and we ended up at all of our plans at different times, and we ended up knocking on the door of a guy whose wife is a very less active member (she's not on our records) and he just started reading the Book of Mormon a little bit ago and hasn't been able to put it down because he's felt the spirit so much from reading it.  His wife had just gotten back from the hospital, and wasn't feeling very good, so we set up a time to come back this week.  That should be pretty awesome.

  

So pretty soon in San Antonio the church is going to do this big media blitz to help raise awareness and stuff.  They are going to air commercials on the television and radio, put up bilboards, taxi cab toppers, and some other stuff I can't remember to advertise mormon.org.  The purpose is to raise awareness, dispell myths, and help people to learn about the church, so that's cool.  Aparrently it's been pretty successful in other places that they've done it, so that's exciting.  I'm glad to get to be a part of that.

 

Something I was reading inthe bible that's pretty nifty is right in the beginning; Genesis 19.

This is when Lot ends up leaving Sodom and Gomorrah.  So while he's living in Sodom, three "holy men" or angels or whoever they are (the only really important thing is that they are men of god) come by and end up staying in his house.  Then, all the bed people of Sodom come and demand the three men in order to do bad things to them.  Lot tries to resist, so they press hard and are about to break the door down when the three holy men grabbed him and his family by their hands and zipped them out of the city by the spirit.  This is the really good part.  When the set them outside the city they said, "Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.  So often, as humans, we find ourselves surrounded by the evil of the world, or living in Sodom, and trying to stay out of the badness, but its trying to "push our door down" and invade not only our lives but our very homes and families.  It is at these times that God extends His hand (often through one of his servants in the earth) and if we will take it, the spirit will carry us safely out of the sinister grasp of sin.  We aren't done yet, though.  Then we have to escape for our spiritual lives.  If we even falter for a moment to look back at what we're leaving we may falter and stop and fall back into destruction.  We can't even stay close to the Sodom we're leaving, we must get away into the mountain of the Lord, to his house, where we can be safe.  As missionaries we have a kind of special opportunity to do nothing but focus on sharing the gospel and helping people, but all members of the church have the chance to be the three holy men for those around us, and help to carry them out of the things that are holding them down spiritually, and show them the way to the Mountain of the Lord, where they will be safe.  We give the same admonition; "look not behind thee."  Move forward and progress, be done with the things that will bind you down.  It's a cool message.

 

So I'm running out of time now...  I love you and will talk to you soon.

 

 

General Conference...is coming!!

So yeah, not a lot to report this week.  We had some kinda cool stories this week, and lots of work, but it all ended with people choosing to disappear.  So we're back at square one pretty much.  Nobody to really tell you about...  Like I've kinda mentioned before, we've been doing a lot of work with the members lately, or at least trying.  The ward roster is kind of out of date and we've found a lot of less active people who have moved out or died or whatever else that causes them to be uncontactable.  That's good though, because we've been able to report to the bishop and clean up the records a lot.  We also got a list of children of record in the ward who have not been baptized, so that's really good, and there's some good potential there.

 

General conference coming up is way exciting! :)  Also the october ensign looks way cool.  Both good things to be shared.  The october ensign is a special Book of Mormon edition that explains all about the book, and conference is the opportunity to hear from God's prophets and apostles. :)  The first presidency message in this months Ensign has a really good thought about that.  A lot of us kind of take the prophet for granted (sorta like a lot of the ancient isrealites did with moses) and don't listen too intently to the messages or take them as very important, but we put so much emphasis on the ancient scriptures.  While it is true that the prophets of old saw our day, and the scriptures were put together to help us and be universally applicable to life, the mesasages shared at conference and in the Ensign are quite literally God's word to us, specifically, today.  They are one of the most valuable resources we have to build our testimony of the savior and his gospel and church, and to learn what his will for us is through study and personal prayer and revelation.  Not only that, but general conference is a fantastic time to invite the world to "come, listen to a prophet's voice."  What better way is there to help people gain a testimony of a living prophet than to listen to him?  That is one of the most awesome invitations we've been able to extend lately, and that we've been able to invite members to extend as well.

 

That's pretty much all I've got time for this time, so i'll talk to you later.  Thanks for everything.  Love you a ton :)

 

Elder Katzakian

Busy P-day

We're doing our best to plan out next p-day right now so we'll have more time.  So you should get a better email and we're going to try to go to "el mercado" after everything else is done.  There's this big, apparently pretty cool, mexican marketplace that isn't too far.

 

These last couple of weeks have been good.  We've taught a lot of people, but a lot of them have been defaulting on appointments and things , too.  There were going to be several families at church, who were going to get baptized in a few weeks, but everyone disappeared.  It's going well, though, and we're learning lots.  Anyways, I've got to go again.  Love you again!

 

Elder Katzakian