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!!!

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