Transfer

Hi Everyone

Elder Katzakian was tranferred a few weeks ago and is now in Austin.  If you would like his apartment address please leave a comment with your email address and I will send it to you, otherwise you can mail letters to the mission home.

Thanks!

Baptism

So Cheeto was baptized on Saturday.  He was so excited!  I'll have to send some pictures.  I confirmed him on Sunday, and that was pretty intense because there were a bunch of people there who needed translation for the meeting, so I did that too.  It was all a little nerve-racking, but turned out well.

 

I also saw a kinda funny bumber sticker yesterday... It said, "God's original plan was to hang out in a garden with some naked vegetarians."  First, it made me laugh, but then it made me reflect on the purpose of life, and the plan that God has for us.  It seems to me that the world's declining morals are due mainly to a deficiency in understanding of the purpose of life.  If I thought we were here with all these challenges just because my great great great great great great great great great great great great grandpearents ate some magic fruit, and now we just had to kinda be good and learn about/accept Jesus so we could go back to some garden or heaven or whatever and hang out forever with some naked winged children in the clouds, I'd probably do bad stuff too.  I love God with all my heart, but if the purpose was for us all to leave him so only the good ones would come back, and then just sit there and sing about him for the rest of unending eternity, I probably wouldn't care a whole lot...  What would compell us to be good besides the fear of punishment?  It makes a lot more sense to me for the fall to have been part of the plan, because what do we do all of our life? We learn.  We constantly, involuntarily, take in, analyze, and store information, then base our actions off of that information.  progression and growth cannot happen until there is some sort of damage or retrogression first.  The way that every living thing in nature works, is that it does not become any stronger or better until it faces opposition.  Your skin doesn't get thicker until it's torn.  Your muscles don't get bigger until you tear them with work. Etc.  There was none of that in the garden.  That would've been a boring plan.  We would've stayed the same forever.  Life is only fun when you are accomplishing things...  And our capacity to learn and grow makes it obvious that God want's us to be more than we are now. What more would we be if we did less?  We have our families to help us learn about our relationship with him and his with us.  We don't raise children just so they can come back to our home and tell us how great we are so we'll take care of them for the rest of their lives.  We raise them to be self sufficient.  To be able to go out on their own and accomplish things.  God is the same.  He will always be or father, we will always be under his rule, but he wants us to grow up and become more. 

 

Elder Katzakain

! Me Voy!

I'm getting transferred this week.  Somewhere in san antonio or austin (or somewhere in between) but I don't know where yet.   

 

So the conference with Elder Zivic was cool.  He's from Argentina, so he spoke some spanish and that was kind of cool.  Unfortunately, not every missionary in the mission is Spanish speaking, so he had to speak English for most of it.

 

Yesterday something pretty funny happened.  Well, I guess it was a little sad... but it was funny.  There were a couple people who randomly showed up in the foyer of the church way early because they took the bus, and apparently the friend who invited them told them it was at ten, but it really started at ten thirty. Upon further investigation we figured out that they had been invited to another nearby church that fit a similar description... that's why they couldn't find their friend.  Anyways, we invited them to come in and sit with us until their friend got there, so there they were in their first fast and testimony meeting ever.  They seemed a little nervous, until someone mentioned the Book of Mormon, then they looked scared.  They got up and left immediately after the service, declining the offer to learn more.  It was mildly humorous, but sad st the same time because of how they changed as soon as they found out it was "the mormons."  Even though everything was centered on christ and on gaining a closer relation with our father in heaven so we could be happy, and how the family can be eternal (which was interesting; a lot of people talked about that, and the gentleman there had been invited to church by his friend because his dad had died recently and he was having a hard time), they stopped listening at the mention of the word "mormon."  I'm coming to really dislike the nickname and how so many people seem to think so negatively of the church.  I suppose I can understand disagreeing, but I have done my best to see it from an outsider's perspective, and to think about all of the things that could go agaainst it, but with the knowledge I have of the church, it just makes sense to be true, or at least good.  Not something to run from.  If God is important to a person at all, it's worth learning about.  I just wish I'd been more willing to share it before being a missionary.  I'd be better off now, and so would others.

 

Anyways, I've gotta jet now so I can get ready to ship out.  Thanks for everything,

 

Love Elder Katzakian

Another week..

This week I got to do some more service stuff.  We painted a bit, and got to clear and cut up some brush for a member of the church.  The best part was that we got to use machetes to do so, so it was very fun.  Doing basically anything with a sword is a riot :)

There's also a guy in the spanish ward who's getting ready to go on his mission, so we've been with him a bit helping him to get ready because he won't be able to go to the MTC, so he's going straight to the field.  It's been really cool to see his fire and have his help in a couple of lessons.

We did a lot of tracting this week and a lot of work with the people I mentioned last week, and hopefully they'll be able to make it to church next week.  I guess there's not anything too exciting to tell about, though.

So on November fourth we're going to have a conference with Elder Zivic of the Seventy, so that should be really cool.  It's pretty funny, on my mission, the things I look forward to the most have been church conferences and talking to strangers.  That's not how it was before haha.

Anyways, I'm not sure what else to say now... there's nothing too crazy to tell about.  I'll try to have some ridiculous experiences this next week so I can tell you about them.  Haha it's kinda funny because there's probably stuff that you'd think was crazy or cool but I'm so used to everything we do every day that nothing really sticks out... I'll tryto be better at that.  I love you millon millones.

 

Elder Katzakian

Working hard....

Everything is going well.  Sorry I wasn't able to email last week, the library was closed for the holiday. 

 

The work has been going okay.  Last night we went to go by a less active member of the spanish ward and it turns out they moved quite a while ago, but now there is a man living there who is very religeous and loves the bible and God, but has had trouble with churches.  He sees a lot of hipocrisy and doesn't agree with what they all teach.  He lives there with a little family and has a friend who is over often who wants to improve his choices in life and come closer to God ("agarrar el buen camino," he said), so we'll be teaching them tonight, and he said he'd like to come to our church to see if it feels right.  He likes the idea of a living prophet and another book of scripture to help clear up the confusion that has seemed to stem from the first one.  They should be cool to teach.

 

Also, we've finally been able to teach that man who was married to a less active member and had started reading the bookof mormon.  He's pretty awesome and his wife and daughter in law (who are both members) want to come back to church.  There is some very real, good potential there. We are also teaching them again tonight.

 

There is a sister in the ward who has always wanted the missionaries to stay at her hous, so she's been building a little apartment in the back, but her husband doesn't really like to work on it so the going has been slow.  We decided we should help out with that, and so we've been going over there to do some building and stuff.  I'm glad I've had some experience with it and I even got to do a little electrical work, which was cool.

 

There's another less active family that we are also doing some service for, who has some non-member friends that seem pretty interested and always want to be over there when we are.  We're going to be clearing a bunch of stuff out of his back yard and a little remodeling.  The father is also way into wolverine and has a bunch of old, original comics, which were tempting to spend some time with, but mostly kuct kinda cool to see.

 

That's pretty much what we're doing now, nothing too crazy or weird.  Oh, I was thinking about halloween and I remembered last year when I got a buch of candy, and, if it's not to late, just wanted to say I don't really need any candy.   I can't really think of anything I need or anything...  Really my favorite thing to get is stories about spiritual experiences and stuff.

 

 Love Elder Katzakian

General Conference

General Conference was awesome!  At the risk of being like every other missionary, my favorite talk was probably Elder Holland's in the priesthood session.  I also really, really enjoyed President Eyring's opening to the last session, though.  It's amazing to watch those leaders talk and feel the spirit testify that they are called of God. 

So Elder Robinson is now down in eagle pass.  My new companion is Elder Reid.  He's from a little suburb of Salt Lake City in Utah, and he's been out just a few months.  

 

So I don't really have much more time, and there isn't anything else too new or exciting to share about this week.  I did get to spend a little time working in stone oak after I dropped off elder robinson and waited for elder reid.  That was especially cool because the stone oak elders were having dinner with Louis Flores, so I got to see him again :)  I don't know if I mentioned that he got baptized in August.

 

So that's pretty much it.  Love you a tonelada too :)

 

Elder Katzakian

New pictures from Elder Katzakian

Looks like he is finding time to have a little fun!!!