Hey everyone hope everyone had a great week! Just finished my third week here in the Guatemala MTC. This week flew by. After the first week everything has been going by super fast.
The MTC is very repetitive. I think I've said that a million times but it's been way better this week. This week I was called as the District Leader of my district! President Cox called me in his office last wednesday and he interviewed me and said he wanted to extend me the call of district leader! So I thought that was cool. It has it's extra responsibilities for sure, but I think I've been handling it well thus far.
Sunday we had our first district meeting and it went great! I got a few of the guys to open up and share some life experiences that have built their testimony and lets just say there isn't a single missionary here who doesn't have a story. Elder C, my hitta, wasn't a very active member of the church for most of his life. By his senior year he had already committed to West Point for soccer but didn't have the ACT scores to get in. He needed a 24. Even though he had spent thousands of dollars on ACT tutoring, he got a 20 on his ACT FIVE TIMES IN A ROW. Elder C is the hardest worker I know and he mentioned all the extra hours he was spending during the day trying to learn the ACT test taking skills. Finally, he called his dad one night and his dad told him "I want you to stop studying for the ACT and, for this next month before your final chance, I want you to spend all that time you would usually spend test studying, studying your scriptures and doing personal prayer." So Elder C took his dad's challenge. After the test, he felt horrible about it and felt he did worse than usual, but upon checking his scores a month later he saw he had jumped to a 24 in every single subject and even got a 25 in another, thus allowing him to play soccer at his dream school. Shows you the power of scripture study and personal prayer!
Elder Mg is definitely my best bud here. He's the coolest dude and we're planning on rooming together at BYU when we get back. He didn't think he wanted to go there but after we talked he told his mom to help him work on his application and he is absolutely set on getting in. He's a convert and was baptized a year ago. His parents and his whole family had always gone to a Christian church but he never believed in the trinity and always thought that Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit were different people. So he asked to go to church with his best friend who was Mormon. Long story short his family didn't support him and his dad doesn't even talk to him anymore. The day of his baptism his family members and people he didn't know were calling him all day and calling him ridiculous names and telling him you're stupid and wrong for doing this. So he was questioning it a little bit and went to this mountain to go pray about it. He asked Heavenly Father to help him to know if this was the true church and as soon as he said amen he said he felt the greatest feeling of peace and joy he'd ever felt in his life. He knew without a doubt he was supposed to be baptized and now here he his! He's one of those guys you just know you're going to be friends for life with. He's awesome.
Another thing that I've been so grateful for this whole time are my teachers. I lucked out. Hermana Estrada is so loving and teaches us really well. Hermano Ruiz is the coolest guy I've ever met. You can just feel his love for you and for everyone else. He truly cares about everyone. He's also the most knowledgeable person in the gospel I've ever met and has taught us some pretty cool things!! He was the youngest AP in his mission ever and baptized over 3 times the average amount in his mission in Long Beach, CA. I'm thankful for him so much and he's already planning a district get together at his beach house after the mission cause he's filthy rich jaja.
One thing I've also learned this week is there is no such thing as a good Latino singer... Our whole church service is in spanish and when we sing hymns it's literally deafening like I don't understand. It's hard not to cry laughing honestly jaja
Last night was probably my best night at the MTC. I had the idea of all three of our districts having a combined districts meeting and we all got together after watching a live devotional from M. Russel Ballard. We all went around and talked about what we learned and at the end I thought it'd be a good idea to just give everyone the opportunity to say something nice or something you admire about a person in a different district than your own. It was really spiritual and so awesome. I told Elder D how I thought he's such a great "lead by example" type of zone leader and is an example to all of us. And i don't remember if I told y'all about Elder M but yeah Elder M's companion punched him in the face and knocked him out like the 4th day in the MTC. idk must've slipped my mind jaja! But he handled it so well after his companion got sent home. Then I told Elder Mg about how much I respected him for going through what he's gone through for this gospel. It was just a great experience to boost everyone's morale and everyone was just super happy after the meeting.
I was reading in 2 Corinthians this week and a lot of what I was reading was talking about charity. I don't remember exactly what the scripture said but 2 Cor 9:7 basically says 'If you do not give charity cheerfully, then it is like you are not giving charity at all'. So I applied that to myself and thought about my attitude about this next two years. Am I a cheerful giver of these two years of my life? Honestly, when I first left, not at all. I had the feeling of "alright let's go do this and pray it goes by fast." But my attitude has definitely changed since reading that scripture. 1 Cor 13 the whole chapter is about charity. And the last one was James 2:17 which says Faith without Works is dead. People often question us about believing in works but theres so many verses in the bible like that. We are first saved through Faith in Jesus Christ. We must have faith in his Atoning for our sins and we must have faith that if we repent of our sins we can live with him again. But if that's all we do and we are not kind to others, then it's not showing faith at all. But at the same time, we don't do works because we think it'll help ourselves, we do works because we want to bless the lives of others and make others happy.
Anyways, not too many crazy stories that were appropriate for a mass email this week haha but I felt like sharing some of those stories that have inspired me recently.
Love all y'all! 1/30 of the way done ;)
Adios and Texas Forever,
Elder Gurksnis
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