This week went by quickly!

 

Date: November 11, 2013 at 1:42:42 PM PST
To: Jim And Sandy Bever <jsbever@molalla.net>
Subject: ... I´m fine, how about you?

This week went by pretty quickly. Here´s some things that are going on right now for me: the rain is starting to calm down a little but until January it gets a little cooler so that´s nice, I realized that gas prices here are the most expensive in all of north and south america so its nice to not have to drive, transfers are Wednesday so we´ll see if I stay or go but I feel like I´ll be here for a little while longer (this next change is only 4 weeks long so that the missionaries that are leaving can go home before Christmas), and I got your package!

Thanks for the shirts and candy. I listened to the CD the first chance I got (I even robbed a CD player from the sisters here so that I could listen to it). Elder Velásquez thinks I´m a dork every time I press the button on the stuffed animal thing, but I like it.

Oh and thinking about Christmas, you could send me a bunch of those little cards you sent me last year with the photos of Christ and stuff, everyone likes those. Be sure to put something in there for my companion too. I could use some more of those socks (I like the bamboo fiber is what I think they´re called) but they have lasted me a long time and now I could use a couple more. TUMS are helpful. you could send me another pair of insoles too but they have to be thin so they can fit in my shoes. I could always use a couple more shirts, and I think that´s about it. Its just hard sometimes to get some of these things here. My shoes could use new soles but its hard to find a place to do it where I am now, but I think I´ll send them to Managua soon, so I´ll have to take money out for that. But my shoes themselves are holding up well.

Anyway enough about me. This week I was thinking a lot about a man we´ve been teaching. About a week ago he told us about a dream that he had and it helped me to understand better what I do as a missionary. He told me that he had seen in his dream two men like us walking quickly on a trail where he was walking. He said that it was a difficult trail and that the two men invited him to walk with them. They passed him up and kept walking at the faster pace. I started to think about that and I realized that the gospel is like that trail. I already hiked the majority of it by exercising faith, repenting, being baptized, receiving the holy ghost, and then I got to the endure until the end. When got there I realized that it really is worth it to live the gospel and then I realized that the only other thing that would make it more worth it would be to help others get there to. So I left on my mission and headed back to the beginning with each of my investigators. I´ve just about got that first part with the faith memorized and the rest are easier now too. We are just like trail guides and I realize too that Christ would have been the first. I think that Christ still and also walks up and down this same trail helping others as I am enduring to the end, and I think if we walk frequently enough on the same trail that our paths will one day cross. That´s what I said anyway in a talk I had to give yesterday in Sacrament Meeting when they told me the day before that I´d have to give a talk.

I hope everything goes well for you this week,´

Love, Elder Bever

P.S. I never heard how Audrey and her team did on their state game which means one of two things. They lost or they won. Either way I prayed for them.