Email 2/25/13

Sounds like it was a rough week for Elder Beatty, but the testimony at the end is priceless!  Thank you for your prayers and love and support!

Hello everyone.

Well, really I feel like this week I just have existed and not really done anything. This week was a little harder for us. We spent the majority of the week just looking for people to teach. We started out the week really really excited and we were pumped to just go out and find some new golden people who were going to be baptized. We were doing pretty well until Wednesday.

Really to tell you the truth I went on divisions to another area on Tuesday and so I wasn´t in my area. They had found 2 people and put them with a baptismal date and so I came back and we were pretty excited to start working. We went and visited first our investigators that were supposed to get baptized next week. We talked with them about the sacrament and why it is just such an important thing in our lives to show our faith and to be cleaned of our sins.

At the end of the lesson the dad just kind of starts sending us some weird signals. He kept on saying stuff about how his family is not to happy with us coming by and that he doesn´t want to have any problems within his family. It went on like this for about 10 minutes when finally I just felt that I needed to ask him if he wanted us to come back or not. He spilled the beans in that his wife and daughter have been talking a lot with their neighbors and that the people have been telling them not to let us come by and not to listen to us because we are only here to steal their money and to make them go to jail and all sorts of crap. He said that he didn´t believe that it was true but that his wife did and that his daughter did as well. That the rest of his family says that it is his fault that we keep coming by and visiting them. He said that he wanted to avoid any conflict with his family and so it was just better that we didn´t come back.

 We talked with him about how he felt while he was reading the Book of Mormon and going to church and praying. He said that he felt great and loves what we teach him. We asked him if he felt that those feelings he felt came from God or from Satan. He said from God. So we told him to ponder in his heart if really GOD wanted him to stop listening to us or if he should stop. He said that he felt good but he didn´t want to have problems with his family. That it’s better if we just forgot the whole thing.

At the beginning of the experience I felt a lot of Anger, anger towards the people who lied to this man who was simply trying to find God and be obedient. Then after seeing that I couldn´t convince him to keep listening to us and to be baptized I felt Sadness. I felt that really this child of God was going to lose so many blessings that come from the Gospel. After attempting several times I finally bore my testimony of the greatness of God and that God loves him and wants him to be in his church and I asked him if we could come back. He said no.

I was torn apart that my testimony had no affect on his heart at all. I left that lesson very very heartbroken and discouraged. I got to the point where really I questioned my testimony and if I really was doing the right thing. The rest of the week was a disaster. I really wasn´t focused at all the rest of the week. Everything just seemed to spiral down into a never-ending disaster of problems. We were supposed to have 10 baptisms in the zone this week and tons of the missionaries lost their focus and we only had 4. The Assistants were all up in my face because so many baptisms fell and my comp as well was depressed because I was depressed and everything was just dead.

For the first time in my mission I didn´t feel like doing anything and didn´t know what to do to get out of this hole. We got to church and no one had come to church and we had a super super small attendance at church. Everything was going down until we sang the first song in the sacrament meeting. We sang “Choose the Right”.   I really didn´t pay too much attention because I was so preoccupied with how pitiful my life seemed like.

During the sacrament I wasn´t all that focused either until I realized that I still had the hymn book open to that same song. I looked down and began to see the words. The whole song is about doing the things that the Lord asks us to do. It was about being obedient. It doesn´t mention in the song that everything will be all songs and roses and happy days, but it does say that the Lord will bless us.

I realized in that moment that I had a decision to make. I could decide to be happy. Sometimes it’s hard to realize that the Lord gives people their agency even when they reject something good. President Callan would always say that the Lord is going to give us our agency even if we kill ourselves. It is exactly that way. After reflecting on the words of the hymn I really came to realize the love the Lord has for me. I realized that everything is true that I had testified earlier that week. After taking the sacrament the words of a famous scripture came to my head. ¨ And if you shall bring but one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my father¨ That one soul that matters most that I bring unto Christ is my own.

I HAVE a testimony of this work that it is the glory and work of God. I KNOW that I am important to Him........ I have much of my life to live still but I WILL do His will and I WILL follow Him so that I can be with Him someday. I will continue to testify of His divinity, His love, and that He lives. I will invite all to come unto Him and be transformed as I have been transformed. I LOVE HIM, The Prince of Peace, the great Jehovah of the earth and heaven, the Savior of the world.

I am grateful to Him that I can be His servant and do His will and help all people find His light and love even in the darkness of this world. I hope that we can all find a new desire to follow Him. He was perfect, and we too must become perfect. Only by following Him we can find that path that will lead us to an Everlasting Glory.

Rohaihu

Elder Beatty

Email 2/18/13

Email 2/11/13

We have a friend who is teaching a lesson about Paul and wanted to ask some questions, so we used her questions for this week!

Hey Family and Friends,

Wow another week has come and flown by. Its been insane how hot it has been this last few weeks. We have gone about 3 weeks without rain and its really starting to get to my brain because of how hot it is getting. I know that there are a lot of people praying for rain as well. I know that it really isn´t that big of a deal, in the end I don´t know why I pray for rain because it makes the missionary work harder. Maybe I should just learn to take things as they come and not hope for things over which I have no control hahaha ok problem solved.

This last week we had another baptism of a daughter of a family we are teaching. The mom and all the rest of the familyw ants to get baptized but the dad doesn´t want to stop drinking and doesn´t want to get married. We are still working with the dad about his problems. He is reading the BOM and loves sharing with us but when it comes to coming to church he just can´t because he wakes up on Sunday with a huge hangover from how much he drank the night before. The mom was a little sad during the week knowing that her daughter was gonna get baptized without her but during the baptism and during church the next day she was as bright as the sun. She could feel the spirit as to what her daughter had done. That it was the right thing. We are praying and fasting a ton for the dad so that he can change.

Here are my answers for the questions you sent:

--Could you relate an example of challenges that missionaries sometimes encounter on their missions?
 A lot of challenges that missionaries face down here in Paraguay is not learning to interact with the people. People have a specific way of existing and living life. We can´t expect to invite people to do something when we can´t imagine ourselves in their own shoes. So many missionaries are scared of getting rejected and not having any success, when really it just comes down to loving the people and adapting the way that we teach to the needs of the people. When we can learn to teach people the gospel in such a way that they will want to be a part of it, there will be a tremendous amount of growth in the church. People will stay active and want to participate in the gospel.

--Has anything specifically happened to you that has been especially challenging as you have attempted to share the
gospel on your mission?
One thing that has been very hard for me to overcome as a missionary has been the temptation of idleness. Starting my mission I found out that it is very very easy to just go throughout the day seeing all the cool sights and just soaking up the culture and meeting new people. It was hard for me to really come realize the purpose as to why I was there. I wasn´t called in come into Paraguay to be a tourist. I was called to bring people to salvation through the gospel of the Lamb. After a year in the mission I came to fully realize the importance of my calling as a missionary and how I have such a huge influence on the lives of the people that surround me. If I will just thrust in my sickle with all the might, mind, and strength, I will be able to see miracles every day.

--If so, how did you overcome or deal with the particular challenge?
Well in the end it was with the help of one of my companions. He showed me really what the mission is all about. We didn´t get any baptisms, but we worked our butts off. We were happy because we could come back at the end of the day and say that we had given our all for the Lord. That we had testified to everyone and we had invited everyone to hear this great message of the gospel. After working with that missionary not only my mission was changed but my perspective on life. I have been called to fulfill a great purpose. I cannot give up, I cannot wait, and I cannot be altered in my attitude. I will complete with the Lord and His calling. I love the mission. I love it because I have come to realize that being a missionary is more than just leaving your home and carrying a missionary plack. It’s about loving what you’re doing and loving it because you love the Lord.


--How did this challenge affect your ability to share the gospel with others?
I was in the world and I was of the world. I wasn´t truly focused in what was MORE important. I could feel that with time my testimony was growing and that I was helping others come unto Christ, but not in the most productive way. I was too prideful to let go of my own desire and surrender myself to the will of the Lord. Sometimes as people, we don´t like to hear the words, surrender, or lose, or submit because it show signs of weakness. But if we surrender, lose and submit ourselves to the Lord, we will come out victorious.

--What do you do if you have troubles getting along with your missionary companion?
It takes lots and lots of prayer. And it’s all about your attitude. We can wake up thinking that we have to grin and bear it (our day) because our companion is a jerk. Or we can wake up and make the decision to grin and change it. We have to learn to really love and to become united in purpose. Yeah, we may have differences and we may not get along, but in the end we are serving the same people for the same reason. It’s all a matter of being able to give up what you want for sometimes the sake of showing love. I have also learned that it’s not enough to say that you love someone. You have to show it as well. Simple acts of service to your companion will help you forget your own problems and form a love for him or her.


Well, that's it for now.  Hope you all have a great week!
Rohayhu
Elder Beatty

Email 2/4/13

Well wow another week has come and gone in a flash. I got 15 minutes to try and squeeze in all the details from the week. Sometimes I feel bad because I am not really taking any pictures to send home to you guys, but then I realize that I don´t take pictures because I don´t have time. We are working too much and finding too many people that I don´t have time to take pictures. In a sense it’s a good thing, and a bad thing. So don´t get mad at me mom for not sending any pictures. It’s just because I am working so gosh dang hard hahaha.

So this last week we had another baptism. Wow, it was probably one of the hardest baptisms I have ever seen, heard of, or imagined. So we have been teaching this older Lady Named Alva. She is the mom of a recent convert in our ward. She is super super nice. She used to be a helper for the fathers of the Catholic Church and so she really has a good knowledge about the bible. At first she really didn´t want to listen and said we could go and read to her from the bible because she is blind.

So we started going and reading little sections out of the bible with her and soon we started teaching her the restoration of the gospel. She really liked it a lot. We had to teach it a little slow because she was just super hardcore in the bible. But in the end we asked her to pray to God to see if our message was true. She did and she got her answer that yes, it is all true. Wow, that was easy. So we continued to teach her. It was great because we could have some recent converts help us in teaching her because they lived in the same house. So there really weren´t any problems with teaching her. She did have a problem with modern day prophets and how she thought that there weren´t any more prophets. We asked her to pray about it, she did, and she got her answer. Wow, that was easy.

So her baptismal day finally came. So you have to know that about 5 years ago Alva had a brain tumor. She had to have surgery to get it out or she would die. So after they took it out, she came out of the surgery practically blind and was a little crazy. So Try and picture this, Trying to put a blind half crazy lady in the water. She was scared to death of the water because she didn´t want to drown. Technically I don´t blame her. If I was blind I would be scared to death of drowning.

So we wanted to have a member baptized her but really we didn´t think that a member would be able to handle this one so I was elected. I helped lower her into the water and she was practically grasping onto me and plugging her nose. She would just hunch over and was waiting for me to say the prayer. So she thought that I was going to put her into the water in the front. So the first time I completely surprised her when I threw her over backwards that her legs came popping out. Wow she was mad when I got her back out.

She didn´t want to do it anymore. She said that she didn´t want to and that she couldn´t do it. So I tried again but we were going to do it her way. So I said the prayer and tried to help her kneel down in the water, oh by the way we had filled up the font to where there was only 3 inches before it was overflowing. So when I tried to push her under front way she wouldn’t even budge.

Ok… so this time I just closed my eyes and said a prayer that this would be the time that I would get her. So I told her we would do it one more time, and that we would go in front way. So I said the prayer and I threw her backwards. While she was under I had to check her feet to make sure that they went under as well. She was good. I brought her up. Boy was she mad at me. I helped her get out of the water and then I saw her back in the Sacrament room. She had calmed down a little bit and when I told her that there was a cake waiting for her after she was happy.

Wow....... That was probably the craziest baptism that I have seen. She really didn´t want to do it anymore. But we got her in whoooohooooo. Really I was able to see the power of prayer. The whole week I had been praying that there wouldn´t be any problems with her baptism. And ya it really didn´t end super super super spiritual, but hey we got the ordinance done. I know that sometimes that’s how we can see things in the world. The Lord wants us to do something and we try our best and sometimes it doesn´t go as best as we think it will, but in the end the Lord will help us complete His commandment. I love you all and hope you have an amazing week.


Rohayhu Paraguay ha che familia avei
Elder Beatty
--

Email 1/28/13

January 28, 2013

Hello all,

This week has really been an adventure of the whole zone because it has been changes. It’s always a sweet adventure when we have new missionaries that come and its always a sweet adventure to see what happens with them when they get in their areas. We still have the biggest zone and it’s only gonna get bigger as President sends more sister missionaries here in Nemby. AHHHHHH Sometimes I feel like I am turning into my own mission President and that I’m gonna be able to open up my little own mission down here in Nemby if he keeps sending us more and more missionaries. hahahah No its good. It’s always great to be able to meet more missionaries. I hope that they like it here in Nemby and just keep going with their mentality towards baptism. So that is pretty sweet that Jesse Katzenbach is gonna be coming down here. He lucked out in that he is going to come when things are getting cold so that he doesn´t have to suffer very much. Tell him that he is gonna be coming down to the best mission in the world. Where the people are the “bomb” and just love being baptized. hahahaha

So me and my comp got separated. Ugh. I thought for once that I was going to be able to stay with a companion for more than 2 changes that I actually got along with. He got a call from President Agazzani to go to the office to work as the missionary that is in charge of the records. Ya it was a huge surprise to him and he was a little bummed to find out that he was going to leave. We had just got the ward turned around and the zone baptizing and now he has to leave. It was a little bit of a sad day on Wednesday when we went to the bus terminal and had to say goodbye. I got my new companion there as well. Elder Velasquez. He is a short stocky baseball kid from Guatemala. Yes they do play baseball there. He is a cool guy. Funny story is that when I went out to CDE my first change he was in the zone and I was his zone leader. We did divisions once and we learned a lot together. I told him that he was probably going to be a District and zone leader some day for his attitude towards the work and for his baptisms. And it was funny when I learned that he was gonna be my comp and he was gonna be the Zone leader with me. So I guess that I was just seeing the future when I told him that. hahaha jk. Well this week has been one super super full of adventures and awesome people.

So we headed out on Wednesday and we had decided and had set some goals as to what we wanted to accomplish as a companionship this change. We decided that we wanted to baptize every single week starting next week. Well ok it was fine by me. We left our first day and we found 5 people that are super super cool. It was a weird experience because when we started talking to those people they really weren´t very interested and didn´t want to hear our message and when we left their house they had a baptismal date and wanted to come to church. Ohhh yeahh the spirit is the teacher. We had a sweet experience in that they actually came to church as well. The two kids that came are Jose Maria, and his little bro Lucas. Jose is on course to be drafted as a professional soccer player in Paraguay. So that will be pretty sweet. He said that he has a lot of dreams and wants to do lots of great things in his life. He said that we had helped him see that if he doesn´t do what God wants him to, he is never going to complete his dreams. It was sweet to see his faith. He had a bunch of soccer training commitments that he had been given to do on Sunday but he decided to come to church instead with his bro. He loved church and wants to come again. He says that every single time that we come to teach him he feels super good and he wants to get baptized super super bad. Ok sweet.

We also had a super sweet experience this week in finding a family. We are starting to work in a part of our area that is super super far away from everything. We had found some pretty sweet people out there when I was with Elder Hugie so we decided to start putting in a bigger amount of time to work there. We went out and one of the people that we had found dropped us. Their dad said that we were liars and that he would get all beat up if he joined our church. Wow, harsh. So we were a little sad because we lost a good investigator. While we were deciding what to do I looked over and saw a guy that looked pretty angry walk into his house. I decided to go over and see why he was so angry and to see if I could help him. One thing is that with Paraguans when they are angry or offended it is very very difficult to get them to leave their houses so I knew that I couldn´t be the one that was gonna get this guy to leave his house, it was gonna be the spirit. So we clapped the house and he sent out his two kids to see what we wanted. We asked them to go get their dad. So he didn´t want to let us in but somehow we got in and we started talking to him. We talked to him about the family and about the restoration of the gospel. Really it was such an awesome lesson. We started out just teaching him, and by the time that we had finished the lesson there were six people there listening to us. It was awesome. Really I had no idea how we did it. We invited them to be baptized and they all accepted. At the end of the lesson when we were about to leave the guy stopped us and said ¨hey right now thanks to you guys I feel soo much better, I don´t know why, but I am super super glad that I let you into my house to share with my family, when are you gonna come back.¨ Wow, we told him that he was feeling that spirit and that he will be able to always feel that with his family if they live what we will teach them. He was super super pumped to share with us again. We haven´t been able to find the guy again but I know they will get baptized. I know from that experience that it is the spirit that will guide us and help people feel the truth of our message. We need to teach them in such a manner that they can understand what we are teaching and that they can understand the importance of what we are teaching. That is why we can´t be lazy in our teaching. I know that if we follow the prompting of the spirit He will guide us. He will let us know what to say in the precise moment that we need it and He will guide us to the people that are being prepared by the Lord to accept this grand gospel message. I love the mission. I love this area. I love the work and I know that we are gonna have great and large amounts of success in this area with my companion.

I love you all and hope that you have a super super deduper week. Love you all.

Elder Beatty

Email 1/21/13

January 21, 2013

Wow this week has been crazy. I think that I stepped foot in my area to work maybe two days but really this has been the best week that we have had so far as far as the progress of our investigators and teaching good new people. But before all that I got some questions to answer.

1. Tell us about one baptismal challenge you made this week. Why was it special? So one crazy baptismal challenge that we had this week was that we were on divisions with some other elders and we were on fire. In less than 3 hours we had taught 4 people and had taught 3 lessons. We had found and taught this one family about the restoration of the gospel and they were super super interested and wanted to know about the true church. We invited them to pray and ask about it. They said they would. Then we began to talk about baptism and the reason why we are baptized. It was so amazing to see the light go into their eyes when they actually came to understand the doctrine of baptism. That they could be cleaned of their sins and enter into the path that will lead them into eternal life as a family. We read a scripture that is in Doctrine and Covenants section 35 verse 19 I think? Its the one were the Lord is inviting someone to be baptized. It says something like this. The hour of your freedom has come. Arise, Repent and be Baptized and you will receive the gift of the Holy Ghost which is the greatest gift that you have every come to know. Wow it was a sweet baptismal invite. The family was like ¨yes of course we will be baptized¨ It was a sweet lesson that helped the other missionary raise up his confidence.
2. Do you see many insects or bugs this time of year? Yes there are tons and tons and tons and tons of mosquitoes. Don´t worry mom I am using repellant. Right now is the season when people get something called dengue. It is a disease carried around by the mosquitoes. It’s called the bone crushing disease because when you have it, it feels like your bones are getting crushed. I hear that it is miserable. Pretty much all year around there are bugs because it’s always hot. There is a way cool grasshopper here that looks like an Indian warrior in the sense that it is all painted bright cool looking colors. I will try and get a picture of one. What is the pesky-est? I would have to say that the bug that is the worst would be the fruit flies. There are always always fruitflies all over our faces in our ears and they get super super annoying when I am trying to teach someone.
3. What is your favorite lesson to teach to investigators? I love teaching people lesson #1. It is the lesson about the restoration and then inviting them to be baptized. I love teaching them and asking questions to help them come to the conclusion for themselves that they need to be in the gospel to be saved. Also that they need to know if our message is true and that they need to be baptized again so that they can repent. We usually end up teaching lesson one about 3 or 4 times a day and so good thing it’s my favorite. I would have to say that my other favorite lesson is the Keeping the Sabbath day holy.

Wow so this week we had a huge conference with the zone. It is something that we have started doing when president Agazzani came to the mission. Hey I’m sorry I gotta bounce. We ran out of time because we got a call from the Assistants. I love you guys and hope you have an amazing week. I´m loving the mission!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

--
Elder Beatty

Email 1/14/13

Wow what a week. I am still as exhausted as ever but we are still chugging along. Sometimes I have to joke around with my companion that I am getting so old and tired that he has to buy me a walker to scoot around in. Really my companion and I are doing great. We have formed a great bond of work and understanding. It’s been a great change from what I have seen in the mission before. I feel that right now we are working as a great team and we are going to get tons of things done. We have already accomplished a ton as far as getting the zone moving. I know that we are going to continue seeing a change as we continue pushing and getting things done according to the revelation and goals that we receive and set.
As far as other stuff that has been going on this week. We had interviews on Tuesday. It was a super super crazy day. So we had district meeting from 10 thirty until noon. And then the interviews started at one and ended at eight. The whole time we had to be there and trying to keep the missionaries busy and focused. It’s crazy when you have 26 missionaries in your zone trying to keep them all focused on things that are important. We were able to share with them a few things and ideas that we have to help the zone get going. But I think in the end it was a great thing that we had the interviews with president. A lot of the missionaries came out and they were a lot more focused and felt better and ready to work harder. I just love president. He just has this type of attitude that is super super contagious. He can help pretty much anyone bring the best out of themselves. Finally at the end it came to me. I wanted Elder Hugie to go last but I am supposedly the Senior companion of the two so I had to go last. I had a really good talk with President. It’s been great to form this relationship with him. I feel that he really trusts my opinion and views on missionaries and how the zone is doing. He talked with me about some of the missionaries and what is going on with them so that we can help them have more success and then I was able to ask him a few questions. I asked him what was his purpose in sending me to zone 3. He told me that it looks like the Lord trusts me to be able to handle the largest zone in the mission and to get it baptizing again. It made me feel good to know that President, and the Lord trusts me enough to send me out here. A few other things that we talked about were that I am probably going to be ending my mission here in Nemby. President said that he is probably going to leave me here so that I can finish hard and finish strong without having to worry about going anywhere. It was a great talk that really helped me build my confidence and raise my spirit. I really just love this Argentinean man so much. He has so much love and fire in him.

So other things that have been going on in the zone is that we are starting to get things rolling as far as baptisms. So far in the month of January every district has been getting a baptism and until this point in January we are the zone with the highest amount of baptisms. We have lots of people in our plans to baptize the last few weeks of this month. We are going to keep getting the missionaries excited to keep on baptizing through this month.

One other thing that has really touched me this last week is that I have really been focusing on listening. I have decided that listening is one thing that I need to better before I end up coming home. Elder Hugie is helping me learn to listen more so that I can let the spirit guide me. Really Elder Hugie is a great missionary. He is focused and he loves the people. I have really enjoyed my time with him so far and hope that we can keep working together the next change. Well that is all I got folks I hope you have a great week. The gospel is true and I love preaching it.

Rohaihu mi familia

Elder Beatty