Jesus the Christ

So I am currently reading Jesus the Christ. Lets just say, my love and appreciate of the Savior has grown tremendously. Every day when I read, I am amazed at how much He really loves us- every single one of us. I don’t remember what chapter it is in but I was reading about Christ's ministry and there was one instance when Mary and his brethren went to visit Christ to speak with Him. When Christ heard that they inquired to speak with Him, his response was the following "Who is my mother? And who are my brethren?" He then answers his own question saying and pointing to His disciples: "Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in Heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother." Here we see once again how perfect Christ is. He understood the plan of salvation. His Father's work took precedence over the claims of His own family. He let all trivial matters wait. Now I am not saying this by any means to belittle my love for my own family but I am saying this because it hit me. I am to be fully engaged in my Father's work- the salvation of souls. It is His will that I am here. I must put all other things aside and work, just as Christ did. The promise then is that these people here will become my family. That is my two cents. There is just so much more expected of us as Disciples of Christ. I am literally representing Jesus Christ out here- not myself. I need to teach and be as He was and is. The gospel is the means of changing who we are. 

Sorry I hope that made sense. I just started typing and all that came out. I am learning bastantisimo out here and just want to share it with you! But I hope you know that I still love you guys. I think I just needed a reminder about whose I was first. 

All right area report. Well, please pray for Emilze Barrera. Maybe you can even take a break from this letter and just pray. She needs all the strength and powers of Heaven with her right now. As you know, her baptism is this Saturday- Oct. 19th. But that date is pretty tentative right now. Please pray for her! Anyways, this past week she really made some pivotal changes and steps to more fully give herself to God. We had some really stellar lessons with her and she has a testimony that this is the truth. It is just so hard when her family, boyfriend, and friends are very hateful towards the church. Her biggest problem was keeping the Sabbath Day holy. She was so sad because she understands that it is also a family day and her family always goes out and does fun activities. But we just told her to pray about it. We told her that everything falls into place when you put God first and make sacrifices to do His will. So she prayed and she got her answer. Her birthday was the 13th and her dad was planning on taking her to the Cheesecake factory but she told her dad that she wanted to celebrate her birthday on another day so that she could go to church. Amazing right? Well Sunday came along and Emilze did not show up. We texted her and found out that she decided to stay at home and be with her family. I mean I guess that is kind of ok. At least I was trying to make myself feel ok about it because it was the middle of church and I didn't want to make a scene. After church, we visited her to cut the cake and meet all her friends. Everyone was so rude and cold to us. It broke my heart a little bit but then I remember, its ok, not everyone liked Jesus. So we kept smiling and trying to be funny and get to know the people. Eventually we left and later that night we got a text from Emilze asking if she could still get baptized. We replied and told her we might have to move it and then we talked a little bit more and she said that she doesn’t know if she wants this anymore and all this other stuff. So if you could, please just keep her in your prayers. She knows its true. Satan is just trying to convince her that happiness is found in the word! 

Also Elder Ballard has invited ALL of us to find one person to whom we can bring the joy of the gospel. We must do this before Christmas. He promised that there will be people to teach for years if we all do this. So this is just a friendly reminder: Everyone pray and try to recognize the opportunities that God has put in your path. He is always putting people in our path; we just need to have the eyes to see them. I know that your missionaries in your ward will be greatly appreciative too! We all love referrals:) 

I think that is all I have to say this week! I love you all! I am happy to be on the Lord's errand. There is so much joy serving Him. I literally am healing hearts. 

Keep smiling, 

Hermana Parry

PS. Mom I forgot to tell you another thing I loved about this week: We went to visit Hermana Morales on Thursday after weekly planning and we only had a few minutes because we had a cita with Emilze. We clearly told her that when we got there too so she didn’t get too comfortable. Anyways, we start talking and we see that it is getting close to when we should leave so we try ending the conversation and every single time we do she starts talking about the most random of things so that we don’t leave. This went on for 45 minutes... I can’t complain though because it just showed me how much she loves us!