Elder Kyle Reynolds: To be Offended is a CHOICE we make!

"Thank you for showing us the way"

The Valencia Family

Hello Everyone!
This week was another great week to be a missionary. Being with Elder Manwaring was quite the learning experience. It is awesome being able to share with various missionaries with various talents and gifts. He sure is an answer to a lot of my prayers! One of the things I was struggling with over these past few weeks was the balance between ministering and administering. As the assistants described it, being too far over to the side of ministering you are simply just a cheerleader. To the contrary, being too far over to the administering you are simply just an inspector or a dictator. And right there in the middle is being a real minister (what God has not told us to be!). So I feel I was way over to the side of being a cheerleader with no real boldness in my teachings. Just simply making people feel good about themselves without pushing them to their real divine potential. And justamente (justly), Elder Manwaring shows up! He is an amazing missionary. He has that administering side down! haha We were at the Valencia's and they are on track to get baptized...the only problem is they are not married. So in this specific lesson we planned to teach the Law of Chastity and get them on the road to marriage! We started off as usual with small talk and then we moved on to the actual lesson and then its like the hammer dropped...Boldly and clearly, my companion taught that they need to get married because they were breaking a commandment. Not going to lie, I was pretty dang shocked. I was thinking "Well there goes months of work down the drain...they are never going to let us back in the house." So I tried to compensate for what I thought was the lack of love on my companions part and then all of a sudden it hit me...its for that exact reason that my companion was speaking so boldly! Because he did love them and he wanted the very best for them and wasn't going to let them settle for anything less. As the lesson went on, I was still uneasy about us talking so boldly, but I felt the spirit so strongly as I didn't feel a lack of love in the room...rather more love! It was amazing to see my eyes open to probably how Jesus Christ really taught! As it says in the Bible when he talks with one having authority. It was amazing learning that lesson from my companion. At the end of the lesson I was wanting to hug every single one of them for their humbleness. Because through our boldness, they accepted it and wanted to live it. I was so amazed how they weren't offended. I love this quote by Elder Bednar--And Nothing Shall Offend Them--"When we believe or say we have been offended, we usually mean we feel insulted, mistreated, snubbed, or disrespected. And certainly clumsy, embarrassing, unprincipled, and mean-spirited things do occur in our interactions with other people that would allow us to take offense. However, it ultimately is impossible for another person to offend you or to offend me. Indeed, believing that another person offended us is fundamentally false. To be offended is a choice we make; it is not a condition inflicted or imposed upon us by someone or something else." The Valencia family was truly a living example of this. Instead of choosing to be offended as I thought they would, they surprised me, as they always do, with their humbleness. At the end when we were shaking hands to leave, the mom leaned over to me to whisper into my ear "Thank you so much for showing us the way." It confirmed this way of teach was the way to go. Man I am continually falling in love with the Valencia family. Probably from here on out, I will be sharing something that happened with them.

We are traveling like crazy! This week we had a lot of viajes (travels) and were in and out of our sector every single day. I like it, but at the same time I feel super fat and unproductive ha. This bread of Ecuador is getting to me. We were in Pelileo this weekend and attended their sacrament service. It was awesome! One thing the Stake President said that hit me pretty hard had to do with ministering. (By the way, I love this new approach that President Nelson received) But what he said struck me really hard, he said something along the lines of...we didn't come to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, rather we came to live it. He told of his many experiences in his mission and how he always thought of his mission in that way. I love that! This gospel isn't something just to be taught, rather to be lived! I am loving it out here in the mission field. It truly is the best years. I know it's not because of the mission, it's because I am living the gospel. Truly living it. If we aren't enjoying our lives, I am positive we are doing something wrong. I love how simple yet complex the gospel is. Amazing right? I love you all. I hope we can all have the happiness we should and can have as we continue along!
Elder Reynolds