Elder Kyle Reynolds: LIVE IN THE MOMENT!!

Round 2 of WORMS!!

Elder Reynolds and Elder Peña

Hello Everyone!
This was a superb week with Elder Peña! He is super cool. He pretty much knows English so it's nice to have a walking dictionary-translator with me the whole day if I want to know a word or something haha. He is from the Dominican Republic. Like always, we traveled a lot this week. Some interesting thing that happened to us was there was a big change as the other Elders in our ward got taken out and now there are Sisters...wahooo...haha just kidding. They are the best. They are real hard workers.

We also had to take a bed to Tena which was 2 hours away. It was super awkward carrying a bed around to the bus and then when we got there to Tena, they weren't there yet so we just camped out by the terminal with this random bed. I could only imagine what people were thinking! haha Now thinking about it, I wish I would've taken pictures because we straight up looked like hobos lol. We have to take a desk from Baños to Tena. So for sure, I'll be taking pictures of that adventure, but we got everything done! Well for now.

I learned something very very useful in my scripture study this week. "Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient is the day unto the evil thereof." I don't know if I interpret this scripture correctly but basically Jesus is saying LIVE IN THE MOMENT! Because tomorrow there's going to be a lot more that's going to go down...That has been my motto for this past week. Whenever a missionary ends the mission, it makes it that much harder for the other missionary to carry on. I think I touched on this last week but it really stuck this week. I found myself wishing away the days. Which I think every missionary or every person has found themselves doing at some point in their lives. But as we all know, even if we don't feel like it, cause I know it sure didn't, it's the worse thing we can do! Sometimes we want to live life seeing miles ahead in the future, or maybe even a few yards ahead or even a few feet! But I think an essential part of God's plan is obviously trusting and only being able to see a few inches in the future at a time. Not going to lie, I would loooove to see what's going to happen in these coming months and then what's going to happen after the mission...but what I can control and what my role is right now is to travel inch by inch in this path to eternal life. And sure enough like Jesus said LIVE IN THE MOMENT! haha Tomorrow is going to have its trials and its "stuff," so why do we worry so much about something we can't change? Easier said than done for sure...

We also had an amazing experience with an investigator this week. She has been investigating the church for about 3 1/2 months now. She has had a baptismal date once, but it fell. She had all the reasons and "symptoms" for us to drop her for a bit...but there was something that was telling us that we shouldn't. Finally...FINALLY, as Heavenly Father always comes through, we saw the light. It was a simple lesson as we entered the lesson at 8:35pm. Not having much time to teach. We didn't have a lesson plan.We were obviously wanting to talk about baptism but we have shared that topic about 20 times with her so we were sure it was something she understood haha. We simply shared John 14:27 "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." We asked a simple question "Before knowing the church, have you felt this peace that Jesus talks about?" She answered "No." Then we asked "When was the last time you have felt this peace?" She said "When I read the Book of Mormon. Despite my problems, my many many problems, whenever I read your book it seems as everything disappears for a small moment and I can escape from realty." We then asked "Would you like to feel this peace for the rest of your life, even when not readying the Book of Mormon?" Obviously her answer was "yes." And this is where for the first time in my mission, I know I am a little slow..that it clicked. My purpose as a missionary is to invite people to come unto Christ. To be honest I thought I could help people whether or not they came unto Christ and were baptized..which is true to a certain point but finally, FINALLY it clicked! The best way I know how to help people is inviting them to Christ...BEING BAPTIZED. It finally clicked!!!I opened my mouth and said "Sister, I can't tell you how much I care for you. I want the best for you. And the best thing I can offer you, believe it or not is the invitation to be baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. I could offer you a million dollars and I am sure that would solve the majority of your problems. But believe it or not, that would be nothing compared to what we offer as representatives of Jesus Christ." It was amazing. We handed her a calendar and boldly said "We want you to pick a date for your baptism, Sister." She did her usual laugh and tried to dodge it with questions and concerns but we remained completely silent...looking straight into her soul. For what it seemed like 30 minutes. But the spirit entered the room and in these 30 minutes (honestly probably 5 minutes) she faced her wall of faith and climbed it like a champ and picked the 11th of August to be baptized! And then the hardest thing about the baptismal invitation is you can't jump for joy and scream and go and hug the investigator. So we just sat there smiling trying to keep it cool haha. Man I love this work!!! This truly is the best way to help people. Hopefully other missionaries and all of you will realize this right now, so it may become something natural to bring up to our friends and families. I love you all. I want the absolute best for you. I wish I could hug you all. I love you! Keep on this path and never look back!
Elder Reynolds