Monday, September 24, 2012 - Corrective Lenses??

Well this week was a very interesting and yet at the same time very aggravating! THe good thing was that the weather was great other than the two days it rained!

 

As I read Acts 19:2-7 and Acts 26:2-23; 25-29 you find a lot of great things! Paul actually refuses to take the crazy plea that one of the Roman goveranantes gives him to take so that he doesnt have to appear before Ceasar! Paul basically chooses to be imprisoned and talks exactly about what needs to be done and how the people are not following what they know they should do.

  

My favorite part of this whole week were verses 25-29 in Acts chapter 26 where Paul asks a retorical question and tells Aggripas the fact of the matter and the best part is that Aggripas doesnt deny it. He just states that Paul almost convinced him to be a Christian! That is HUGE!!!

  

I actually used this scripture with some of our investigators after bearing a testimony and it just seemed like it didnt sink in so I gave them a little bit more weight to the topic.

  

I am pretty sure people think we are blind, because as we come walking down the street we watch them go from the sidewalk to the inside of their houses. Frustrating? I think so! Not only that but we talk to people and they truly need or want what we have but when we come to GIVE it to them they just dont want it anymore!

  

Luckily we have one family that is super sweet and has a lot of promise if only they will fulfill their compromises!

  

Love You All!!

Elder Hendrixson!

Monday, September 17, 2012 - Analogy of the Plan of Salvation

Imagine as if we were born into a school. A school where we have to pass tests and difficulties and learn a certain core curriculum but that we all had our memories wiped like they do in Men in Black. Yup that is basically life for all of us here on earth. We all made a choice to come here because we believed in the PLAN that our Father made so that we could all graduate and return back to our home and live with him again as a family. We forgot everything because if we knew everything it would be easy to pass the test and that wouldnt make a test very good, now would it?

  

Well in this school you dont have as many choices as you want to make, who you want to be and who you want to affiliate with. You get to choose how you make a living, living amongst your family here in the world or ignoring the fact that they are your family and seek to gain from what they lose. I mean there is a famous saying that I have heard a lot in my life, "All is fair in love and war." The only thing we have to know for certain is that there was one Son of our Father who came here to school and passed with flying colors and 100% in order to create a way for us to find that path which we had forgotten. Luckily he lefted us many instructions on how to follow and know what were the markers and coordinates that we could use to return to our Heavenly Home. One problem is that some of our brothers tampered with our instructions o that they are semi-incomplete. Well that is not fair! Luckily like I said, "He was a 100% perfect," and knew that some conspiring men would come along and try to live on the high horse so that they could benifit for very little-not working for their bread by the sweat of thy brow!

 

 As we all walk along our various and wandering pathways in life often times we come accross a marker that is not of our path or of what we are accustomed to and should pause to stop and think about what these markers could be. Could it be that this marker will lead me back to what will sustain me for more than this mortal time period to where my body with rot and quite only to leave me where I have no knowlegde of what is happening? Well this would be where our tests and trials come in and how much attention we gave to what was happening around us. There is one major test to enter into the right path where you can gain all the knowledge you want and even have a personal tutor. This would be entering in by the sheep gate (John 10:1-10). If we enter by this gate we then have a promis to be given a tutor that is all knowing and very wise who as long as we do what was asked by the books of direction we have he will stay but if we dont do our homework nor follow the rules we have no promises. Yes, we have various texts that will tell us about all the rules and guidlines by which all of our final projects should follow. Generally we have 5 main sources of these rules and guidlines who were published by many and various Presidents of the Entire School. Yet there is one major problem. How can you complete an assignment without the books necessary to procure the necessities? There are two standard works that are very common and is published widely and many peopl read it but the sad part is that they only usually read the parts that are trivial and poetic. And dont really read and understand the entire book in the correct concept because the class assasinated the President of the School and his councilors so that they could have a mutiny and alter the two main texts in order to make money and have worldly gain from the failure of their fellow peers.

  

How do we expect to pass the test? It would be nearly impossible without other texts that would complete the rest of the information necessary to pass the test. ONLY the first test. We can do what we want during our mortal life but if we never complete the first test our our time bell rings, you go to detention. Why procrastinate finding the test and preparing for it? Many people will end up going to detention for the pure fact of laziness to conform to the very basic and simple core curriculum. Life has so much more to give to us than just the basic but it is our choice if we want the good, better or best! If you dont pass the test you go to detention and will complain about how unfair life is and you will swear and gnash your teeth and wish that you had passed the test the first time. Luckily, many friends who passed the test and went to recess will return and help their friends who didnt pass to pass the test so that they can come and have recess with them to.

  

Family & Friends a second test is not necessary. It is very possible for all of you to excel beyond just the core curriculum and help those around you and to help yourselves become masters of this life we have hear on this earth so that we are ever more prepared to help those around us from the wisdom which we have gained.

  

Stay firm in the Gospel and seek to broaden and increase your testimony individually every day so that we can become professionals and the bests students of the class and not the kid at the back of the classroom!

  

Love,

Elder Hendrixson!

Monday, September 10, 2012 - Corn Flakes that never get soggy!!

Can you believe it? I actually found a brand of corn flakes that never get soggy! I was pretty sure that it was impossible but I bought some here and you could leave them in the milk for like 2 hours and they were still crunchy! Can you believe that, its almost unatural!

Well I got to thinking about this radical anomily-I am pretty sure I spelled that wrong but oh well-that shouldnt happen so I got to thinking about it before I went to bed one night and I had dreams of corn flakes. I had two.

The First was about how the pargaguayans had made them out of some sort of alien plastic that was edible but later on in the future it would give them the ability to control our appetite. Or that they had made them out of corn that was soft and luscious like california corn because we all know that the best food in the world comes from the San Juaquin Valley or your own personal garden. Did I mention that I like food and that I woke up super hungry at about 4am! That was terrible so I drank about a liter of milk and flopped back down on the floor.

The Second was related to the Gospel of Christ. Now I know that those of you who are reading this are going how in the world does a baked chip of corn that then recieved a sugar coating hav anything to do with the Gospel of Christ? Well then allow me to explain my semi conscious reasoning and corn flake addition! I eat about 3-5lbs a week :) Yum! So the gospel of Christ is like a corn flake that never looses its crunch because the atonement of Christ never looses its freshness and well we all know that repenting sucks and that in return we recieve a sugar coating in the blessings and peace and cleaness of conscience that we recieve and well the milk would represent being completely immersed and practically drownded in a world of terrible things that are around us.
Yet we who use the repentance proccess add a little bit of sweetness so that the worlds doesnt seem to be a bad of a place and that we are here to make a difference. If you think about it, just think if we had more members in the world just how much sweeter the milk would be and all of that good stuuff!

Well that was my sugar coated corn flake analysis, a little crazy but hey missionary = creative with whatever he has on hand!

Thought for the week: Why does the world seem so small within the church?

1) John 17

2) E PLURIBUS UNUM

3) The God Head

These all have references to being one! All of them are completely different sources! Well why would this make the world a smaller place.

Lidership would be the key phrase in the fact that if you have leaders on all levels until you get up to the superiors then you all have a relation at some point within the chain but then you create a spider web by sending the leadership all over the place to talk or help in some way. Then you have the fact that young missionaries are being sent all around the world and then you have the example of where your normal life will take you and the congregations that you might frequent only once but this is yet another link to complete the web. The coolest part is that if we actually were to become one and to have only righteousness here on the earth-which will not happen within the fallen state-we would accomplish so much more and have a quality of life stupendous but we have a war of good and eavil and well as the famous conquerers of the world knew. Divide and conquer or you even have the Roman Empire that united under Catholicism because the leaders knew that religion held a stronger and more meaningful bond for people rather than just a political commitment.

Let us all bring the true Gospel of Christ into those around us! That we all may be united as one as Brothers and Sisters in these Latter Days that our trials may be as the dust that the Apostles shook from their feet when a city did not accept the message of Christ!

Love you all and pray for you daily,

Elder Kyle Hendrixson

 

P.S Until next week!

Monday, September 3, 2012 - The Week of BEEF!!

Alright well I litterally laughed a ton this week! We had many a hilarious thing happen and we have been working super hard and I think that littereally everyday we spent over niine hours standing and talking to people. To the point where my companion started complaining about his knees hurting and well I have to admit, I need to lose some weight cause my feet hurt. OR it could be because I have feet that are as flat as a pancake!

ONe day this week my companion and I had our lunch fall through so we had to buy our own and well we both didnt have our wallets so luckily we scrounged up 10 bucks from change and our reserves we keep in case of emergencies and well we bought what looked like a log, made of bread and stuffed with super yummy sausage and bacon and cheese! We ate that and then sat down in the shade to take a nap and well we were both so tired, we had a great nap!

We made quite a few contacts and really we just had a really great time laughing at our stories from life and well lets just say that you see some really funny stuff happen here in Brazil.

Probably my favorite visit we made this week was with a less active mom who has two teenage daughters. No, it is not my favorite because they are beautiful but it sure is easy on the eyes. It was my favorite because she had grilled up a quarter half of beef just for her self in hopes that some other people would come along and visit and have some to eat and talk to her. WHich I am sure the Holy Spirit led us there or as Reed would say, "THis boy can smell tri-tip a mile a way!" One sad thing is that Thanksgiving is coming and well lets just say I dont think that it is a holiday here in Brazil . . . bummer!

The story about the less active is that her first husband died-here in Brazil having a husband is rare, she only lived with him. Oh and she only had like 40 years. Then she grabbed another one after becoming a member of the church and was planning on marrying and all the arrangements were set. They were a month away and he died in a mortorcylce accident to leave her alone and pregnant! SO she has been having a really tough time so we have been visiting a lot to try and get her to come back to church and so that we can baptise here 14 year old daughter because the 19 year old is already baptized and somewhat active but her family is keeping her from that because they go on vacation together and they are really united which is awesome. I just wish that they were united together in the church. Oh and her beef was really good and not to mention that we were really hungry!

Other than that this week was pretty awesome in and of the fact that we had a second lesson with a very special daughter of god who will be baptised this next weekend but she doesnt live in our area but she is the girlfriend of one of our members and she is just well probably one of the best people I have met here in Brazil but I do have a conviction that it was me and my companion specifically that needed to teach her and not anyone else!

My phrase this week was either "Akuna Matata" or bring on the heat! Man was it hot thisweek or what! I mean I literally felt like I was back to a St. George summer which I am pretty sure that Willford Woodruff said that it is like hell on earth but I could be wrong! ;) It was a great week of sun and heat and man I am liking it. In about January I will be saying the exact opposite!

I love you all very much and miss you lots and hope that life is going well for all of you! Not to let you think I am slacking or anything but I will admit I pray for all of you everyday except for one time this week when I fell asleep in my prayer before I got to family and friends because you always save the best for last! I woke up in a very uncomfortable posittion . . . moral, just skip the prayer and go to bed? No just summarize a lot faster and dont rest your head on the pillow while saying your prayer! :D

Love,

Elder Hendrixson

Monday, August 27, 2012

Dear Family&Friends,

This week was a good week! We worked like crazy and well lets just say missionary work is no joke and I would love to be able to ride a bike! I miss driving like crazy but luckily it will be back within my abilities to drive again in only a little over a year. Then you have the fact that the harder you work the more miracles the Lord puts in your pathway. :D

 We had a couple miracles this week like the fact that I got out of bed ontime and was able to study awake even though you wake up feeling like you have been beaten everyday because we have very few people we teach everyday so we spent the entire day standing and talking to people and it only ends after 9 at night. We found some people who really have promise and seem to have a least a piece of desire somewhere in their heart to hear what we have to say with real intention.

The best miracle was that we had a member that asked us to teach one of his friends. HE forgot to tell us that she is drop dead gorgeous and super smart. It was pretty awesome! The best thing is that she has to be one of God´s elect just by the fact that her light of Christ is well tended. My companion and I gave one of the fastest and information filled lessons of the RESTORATION than I have ever given and she was just taking it all in. Luckily she was super smart and well I gave her a great analogy of why both the Bible and The Book of Mormon are super important and how it applies with all the rest of the Gospel principles that help us follow the pathway that Christ has shown us! THe analogy was one I learned from scouting: If we dont have a reference point we will always end up walking in a circle that never ends, but if we have a point of reference then we know how to follow that path, the exact pathway that Christ showed us. THat is why the Book of Mormon is so important, entirely.

Yup I gave a talk in Sacrament meeting this week and I actually got nervous. It was the weirdest thing. I ended up finishing all of my material in five minutes which I didnt even think was possible by the fact that in portuguese I usually talk a little slower but man I blew right through it flawlessly and was able to more fully explain the importance of using the Holy Ghost more often so that we can testify to the entire world not only through our words but the words that will touch even the hardest heart through the gift that we have recieved (see 2Nephi33:1).

Remember to stay strong and that even the strongest among us needs to have support and that those who are weak should always have a helping hand ready and there for when they decide that they want to return but have temporarily lost their compass and sense of direction. These are they who need a guide more than anything else. May we be friends to everyone and especially those who are our neighbors because they are the closest to our homes. Oh and remember that if you never start, you can never finish!

Love,

Elder Hendrixson