HOLA FAMILIA!
first off
happy fathers day to the best dad ever and my awesome grandpa jay! Hope you
know how much i love you both.
I've read
almost all of the emails, but not quite all of them. you all are so awesome! i
got so many birthday emails and i appreciate it a lot. I sure am one loved
missionary, thats one thing I've never doubted. Love you all so much. I don't
have packages yet but I'm sure that we will have a conference end of june or
beginning of july, so ill get them soon. no worries :)
THis week has
been a very humbling week. I definitely had to take a bit of humble pie this
week as i went to visit all of the menos activos. I know some of you think your
assistance at church is bad, but wow...haha out of 690 members, we have 50 go
to church. 50. haha there is quite a bit of work to do! i really like it
though. As i went to visit them, i just realized there was so much that my
pride had been impeding me to see in peoples lives. so many stories, so many
broken hearts, so many attacking families that destroy burning testimonies. its
really hard. and also the fact that so many of these people have 0 knowledge
about what the gospel is. So many houses we entered into where they were
baptized when they were 8 or 9, and haven't been taught anything since then.
Like some people i asked what the spirit was, what the sacrament
was....nothing. people told me they just don't know. like its incredibly sad. i
read a talk today too that talked about "if they understood, they would do
anything". really taught me a lot about our responsibility as members.
true doctrine understood brings action. there are VERY few people in the world,
mainly the most rebellious and people like laman and lemuel, who disobey when
they understand true doctrine. The MAJORITY of members that are inactive ARE
inactive because they truly don't understand the gospel. They don't know what
an eternal family is. THere just some name on a registro that missionaries
don't want to go by because they've been called to baptize, not reactivate.
Well not anymore haha. It wasn't a week of too much success in bringing them to
church because we had to just get to know a lot of them, but now we have
big group we are working with and have numbers and everything. It will be
a good experience helping them out and i think it will really strengthen my
testimony in the idea of the gospel being a group effort. Salvation is
individual...but not unless someone helps you to get there and stay there. I
mean just looking at the 35 baptisms from last 2 years, and 2 were in church on
sunday? really? thats just awful. SO I've had to take some really personal
repentance and realize the lord needs us to work better.
Anyway, that
was the big thing of the week. Not too much else is going on. We participated
in a charity event for Coaniquem, for kids with burn victims. Which i ended up
seeing one two days later. I walked into a recent convert house 2 days after
the event (the event we had to say the phrase "Donation for a burnt
kid?" like thats the spanish translation. isn't that so harsh?! haha i was
like is there anything more politically correct we could say?) i walked into a
house with a kid who has down syndrome and some other problems, and he was
running around naked. the family is SO poor, like the room was all smokey
because their chimney pipe is broken, the couches were just infested with
pulgas and everything, and this poor kid has BURNS all over his stomach because
he has caught his clothes on fire so many times. THats why he runs around naked
now. Nobody had cleaned him up after he had use the bathroom and he was just
filthy. I felt so bad for this poor family and realized, as i taught the 15
year old son, who actually is pretty smart, i just realized if no one teaches
him what potential he really has, he will think this is what his future has to
be like. he wont go on a mission, change his life, and do stuff like
that. But its good, because now we have someone who is in charge of him. US!
Good stuff. It'll be a good week.
Thanks for all
the birthday shoutouts! I sure love all of you and am so grateful for all that
you do for me. Im one blessed person and one blessed missionary. Victoria is
turning out to be a lot different than i thought, but its good. The Lord needs
us here.
Elder Tengberg
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