Elder Kyle Reynolds: Recognize Our Blessings Each Day!

~Missionaries of Santo Domingo~
Elder Reynolds' District

Hello Everyone!

Well, this was the last week of the change (transfers)! So I am going to be staying here and another Elder named Elder Villacorta is going to come! He was my old Zone leader and he is so awesome! He is ending his mission this change so hopefully, I can help him end it with no regrets! Elder Yanqui is going to return to Quito haha. Every single Monday we get an email from President Barlow and it always says how the time is going by fast! How true that is! This week more than any other week I realized really how time is so critical. And how crucial it is for us to use it to the best of our ability. It is weird how every day of the mission is the exact same, yet so so different. It is nice that way because we are constantly being challenged to become something we have never become or even thought to become.

With the changes, it was interesting to take a step back and look at all that has happened here in Santo Domingo. We have not had a baptism yet and honestly, we were a bit bummed. There are so many people so close to baptism and it is sooo sad to see that people are so close to receiving the most prized blessings in their life. Truly when we as missionaries or as members feel and see the blessings of baptism, we will have a greater desire to share it. I am so grateful for the opportunity to have these blessings all due to the compania (company) of the spirit.

This week my comp and I studied patience. Man, I am always so hesitant to study patience haha. It was interesting though because we discussed how probably we are going to be seeing lots of difficulties this week and it made me realize more than ever how these difficulties are blessings in disguise. We ask Heavenly Father for something and really He gives it to us. We just don't recognize it in the way He gives it to us. I am so grateful for the wisdom of an all-knowing God. To start off our week of patience, our lunch was with soup and crab haha. I never really ate crab at home but eating crab here...requires an adequate amount of patience lol. We just laughed as they brought out the plate of soup and crab and I was just thinking...and so it begins...lol. Along with the lunch, it was truly a week of patience as we realized Halloween here or as they call it, Day of the Dead, is where they go visit the cemetery practically the whole week and really the city shuts down. NO ONE was in their house!! It was a vacation for everyone except the missionaries lol. It was extremely hard to do visits, but here we are still alive! We tried our best!

Just wanted to share something that Elder Godoy said in his visit with us that goes along with the blessings in disguise. President Barlow also shared this with us...Talking about when he was a young missionary, he said, I loved it when my investigators said they weren't ready to be baptized because that meant they were understanding what they were learning. They were understanding the importance of that step. We took it as a sign of a truly sincere investigator - it was a wonderful blessing and opportunity to really help a searching soul. " I think sometimes we give up too quickly and consider the response, "I'm not ready" a rejection when, in reality, it's an invitation to help an investigator through an iceberg or come to realize they really are ready.

I thought about this a lot and how we always look at things with a perspective of our own conscience but really how we should be looking nd praying for how Heavenly Father sees it and how we can take it to our advantage! I invite all of us to take a step back and realize all the blessings we have, even if they are in disguise. Things seem to appear a lot happier when we do that! I love you all so much and am so excited to keep up with this amazing life!

Elder Reynolds