8/31/15

Well, I hope you all are taking my advice to heart! So this week has been quite AMAZING... As usual. We enjoyed a baptism on Saturday of a Spanish Man! YES! The Spanish work is going to start rolling people! We also had a zone conference and it was AMAZING! It is weird how excited I get about things that would have bore me to death before my mission. But it really was quite amazing... President Sweeney is an AMAZING man. I love him, but I am pretty sure that mission presidents do not get called by themselves, when the quorum of the Twelve Apostles decide to call a mission President I am pretty sure that that half of it is due to how amazing their wife is. I have a testimony that sister Sweeney was called of God, just as President Sweeney was! Women are powerful tools in God's hands as well. Sister Sweeney is an amazingly powerful and bold speaker as well! Zone conference was in Eager this time around and so The night before Zone Conference there were about 17 elders in our cute little cottage hime for four. It was a party. It was so crazy even the assistants to president were at our house. This week has been wonderful, the Spanish work is really picking up, but is sometimes difficult without transportation, but most of the time we can get rides. It is just that our Spanish speaking members are limited as well. But the Lord has provided, and we have been having a lot of success with the Spanish of the area. We are planning on getting most of our progressing investigators on date very soon! I gave a talk in Spanish, and have been singing a tun, and have been riding a bike a ton (during flash floods), and have been crying a ton just because I love God.

I have been thinking a lot this week about Jesus Christ, and what we really have to do to follow him and what it actually means to follow him. And I found out that it is all about OBEDIENCE. The other day me and Elder Strike ended up reading the entire Gospel of John, and in it we found that the entire purpose of Jesus Christ and the most prevalent doctrine that He taught was to do the will of the Father! And if Everyone in this world strives, as they claim to, to be like Jesus Christ... Then they must submit to the will of the Father... JUST LIKE JESUS THE CHRIST DID. But submitting entirely to Gods will is SO HARD, and he tests us to prove our obedience!... Think of Nephi having to kill Laban! Nephi didn't want to kill anybody! He was such a good boy, and he had never killed anyone before, so why did God tell him to kill Laban? Surely He could have killed Laban Himself and Surely He could have made some other way for Nephi to accomplish his purposes, but He asked Nephi to kill Laban. I believe that that was the hardest thing that the Lord could have asked of Nephi. For Nephi, I do not believe there could HAVE POSSIBLE been a greater test of faith and OBEDIENCE. But Nephi did it, he PROVED himself, and he saw God and became a POWERFUL prophet because of it. We all are going to have times to prove ourselves! God said that that is the purpose of life! "And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them;" THAT IS WHY WE ARE HERE! To subject ourselves to God. And if we do that we will be powerful. We will be able to do miracles. We can work miracles as long as they according to the will of God. So the more that we will line up our will with the will of God, the more miracles we will be permitted to perform. That is the reason why Jesus Christ was able to perform so many mighty miracles! Because His will was PERFECTLY in line with the will of the Father. He was able to raise from the dead, and perform miracle after miracle, BECAUSE day after day He did the Fathers will. As missionaries and Priesthood holders we hold the same power that was in Jesus Christ. MIRACLES ARE POSSIBLE. I HAVE ALREADY SEEN MANY! If we can just show unto God that He can trust us, by being EXACTLY OBEDIENT to the commandments He has already given AND EXACTLY OBEDIENT TO THE SPIRIT, Then He will work miracles through you for the benefit of OTHERS. So I decided that most of the time I am basically Deaf to the spirit, but more so I am just Blind to RECOGNIZING when that soft-spoken-member of the Godhead is talking to me. SO I HAVE DECIDED THAT EVERYTHING THAT I THINK COULD EVEN POSSIBLE BE THE SPIRIT I WILL FOLLOW. That way I don't risk ever doing or ever not doing something that God would have me do. Try it! It is awesome! Miracles will come your way, and you will learn how much your Heavenly Father loves you more than ever before! 

I love you! And this mission thingy is going by WAY TO FAST!

Love, Elder Flake