week 3, epiphany

So hey everyone. I got rachael´s and todd´s emails, and todd that story is making me really proud to be me, as well as some letters from mom cherie and such (wink). Haha i´m sure everyone knows what I mean when i say that but i still find it easier to just pretend that i´m really sneaky. Anywho this week was pretty rad. Thanks mom for the cookies that you may or may not know you sent me, but here is how the week went: So I´m not sure if I said anything about this or not, but we have beans and rice twice a day every day. That is to be expected, and honestly i love it because these aren´t your run of the mill mexican rice and beans blandness. These babies have every kind of meat that the people could think of or get their hands on cooked into it. I think there are is a lot of italian influence in the culture down here, because a lot of it is sausage type meats and what not. Also they tend to do things like strogonoff (SPELLING?!) and pasta really realllllly legitly. Needless to say I weighed in at 101 kilos the other day, but i´m already noticebly less athletic. YES. getting chubby. But here is the real reason why this week was legt.

I was having a bit of trouble getting myself to know deep down that I was supposed to be here. I mean there are 50,000 missionaries, why would I be the one that is right to go and try to share the gospel with people? especially since i´m just some random kid from washington who doesn´t know portugues and gets sunburned a lot. So that was kind of my goal this week is to get an answer to that question. So then flash forward to this morning. We are doing our normal tuesday thing at the São Paulo temple and my mind started to just get pulled towards reflectiing on the atonement. While I was thinking about that, I first thought about how impersonal the fall was. Like one action from someone i don´t even know made every person on planet earth need a savior. But then as I started to reflect on the other side of things I found my reason. The atonement is so personal. Not only did He have to die and rise again just so that I could do the same, but he took every individual thing I´ve done wrong and will do wrong upon himself. He alone bore my pains and infirmities. We hear this all the time, but i mean seriously, how many of those drops of blood were because of me individually? Obviously there isn´t a definite answer to that question but you kind of start to feel the magnitude of this all as you think about it. At least I did. Especially as I thought about the effects on someones life if this is soemthing that they´ve honestly never heard of. There are so many questions of the soul that would go unanswered for eternity if you were never to hear even a 5 minute message about Christ. Things that, even if you got an answer in your mind, you may never feel settled in your heart. And by this time you can imagine that I have been crying uncontrollably for a good 5 minutes just because that is a sad thought and people are staring at me. but it was really driven home as I looked out my bus window and just wondered if every individual person we passed had any questions in their soul that they didn´t understand that the Gosepl could answer. Especially as we passed the lower income parts that have homeless people just sitting on the sidewalk eating their breakfast off of a blanket, or 5 stories of shack built upon shack that were built by some lone man one brick at a time. Surely as people go through their days in any location they must wonder from time to time when they get a second to look introspectively what everything is here for. Why are they going to a job if they´ll just die someday? Why should they care what anyone thinks about them if ultimately we all return to the dust? Without the atonement the answers to these questions would suck. So i ultimately came to the conclusion through the impressions I was having that A) I am supposed to be here and B) that is why. Because in my own life I´ve been blessed to know and grow close to a heavenly father that cares about me like he does everyone, and not everyone understands this. Not everyone even thinks about this. So it´s my job to go find the people that are supposed to hear it from me and tell them so that maybe I can make a difference in just one life. Basically Mosiah 28:1-4. Anyways, untill next week.