Righteous Anger

That's right, I made it to the 6th week, it's kinda like making it to grade 12, lots of social hierarchy in here. I got my filter bottle (first sign that your almost leaving and you're going to a cool mission) and tomorrow we have infield orientation which idk what that means but you get a sticker on your tag that means your almost out of here. So excited.

This week we didn't see any live talks from apostles but we watched old ones from Elder Bednar and Elder Holland on Sunday which were both awesome. 

The big thing from Elder Bednar was to "turn out", to stop thinking about yourself and purely just serve others like Christ did. I hope that by the end of my mission I will have the words "me" and "I" out of my vocab. It is hard but I just don't want to let my internal circumstances effect my external actions because that could be the difference between someones salvation. He also taught a new definition of conversion that I hadn't considered before: Your ability to stay true to the testimony you have gained or the things you know. It makes sense too that if we want to be effective teachers, we have to be converted, meaning that we live every single thing we teach. We need to be examples of what we know - hopefully that makes sense. 

Elder C was a great example of that to me this week. It was his birthday on Monday and he didn't tell anyone it was his birthday because he couldn't handle making a day be focused on him rather than the work of preparing to teach. So humble! Elder M remembered his bday though and so we did end up getting him a card and some treats and singing to him. Some elders in the district got pretty distracted by this and kinda stopped studying and were all fooling around. I was pretty frustrated because our goal of Christlike attribute this week was dilligence AND we had all had a very spiritual experience with Elder Bednar less than 24 hours before. It was getting really bad, like nobody would listen to me and they were like climbing on chairs and stuff so I finally got up and threw down. I experienced righteous anger for the first time in my life, I yelled at my district and it brought the spirit, SO WEIRD! I felt like Elder Holland! I pretty much asked them why they were on their missions if this is what they're gonna do with the Lord's time and reminded them of the conversations we had had the days before. At first I felt kinda bad for it, but then almost every single person in the district individually thanked me for it later on. They said that they could feel the power of the spirit working with me as I was doing that as well, it was a super cool experience. It is ok and very necessary to call people to repentance if you're doing it in the right spirit. They need to know you love them and that you are doing it for their benefit. It is rare to yell at people and then have them thank you, but I am so grateful to have been the means whereby the spirit could work on the hearts of my district in that moment. It was very powerful. I hope that didn't come across as prideful at all but it was a very cool experience for me. 

We have a great district, I will miss them all so much, and learn so much from them every day. Wish I had time to talk about them more. I will be in Puebla 4 days from now - can not wait. 

So grateful to be here and to be on the Lords errand

Dios nos ama,

Elder Lethaby

Classic!!!