Life is good here! I sometimes think about my future and have decided that it's ok to live a life short on money, haha. It's how I exist down here. When I get home I hope to be a seminary teacher and a football coach. I'm pretty firm in that decision, that still is the dream. Living here I think is helping me to be ok with the income associated with that choice. Seeing on how little this people live here in Los Olmos gives me hope that really we don´t need a whole lot to live haha. There is a family in our ward who, with 4 kids, all lived in one room, with a bathroom and a kitchen. The Dad was in the bishopric for awhile here and the mom just had another kid. Other people just build 2nd stories to their houses by watching videos on YouTube, ha it´s crazy. The "impossible" of The States are the living conditions of the majority of the people here in Los Olmos. And they´re all happy, you wouldn´t know any of these things if ya didn´t ask, they all seem normal to me!
I've had more thoughts on Faith and Humility, and how they are almost interchangeable, as we kind of read in Alma 31 and 32? I was thinking about that, as we watched the video "finding faith in Christ" with a family this week, and in the question "do you have the faith to be healed?" I couldn´t help but think about the other implied question "are you sufficiently humble to be made whole?" and thought about the purpose of confession, and the ultimate sign of humility that confession shows, allowing us to be healed. I also thought about the talk "the tongue of angels" by Jeffery R Holland...
The Prophet Joseph Smith deepened our understanding of the power of speech when he taught, “It is by words … [that] every being works when he works by faith. God said, ‘Let there be light: and there was light.’ Joshua spake, and the great lights which God had created stood still. Elijah commanded, and the heavens were stayed for the space of three years and six months, so that it did not rain. … All this was done by faith. … Faith, then, works by words; and with [words] its mightiest works have been, and will be, performed.” Like all gifts “which cometh from above,” words are “sacred, and must be spoken with care, and by constraint of the Spirit.”
Also helps us understand the need for verbal confession, as all great miracles are preceeded by verbal words.
Last thought: In the story of the paralytic who was lowered through the roof by his friends, we shared the story with Karla and her family this week. Everybody was waiting for some kind of great sign to accompany the forgiveness of sins, and Christ reprimanded them for such expectations. He gave them a sign by the physical healing, but the problem really was that sometimes we also expect angels to come down from the heavens to proclaim to us our forgiveness, when really, it is as simple as in the story of the paralytic. Christ says it, our leaders tell us we are forgiven, and we ARE. End of story. President Gwilliam told me in an interview that being forgiven and being healed are two separate things (we also see that in the story of the paralytic).
Sorry about my random rants. These are my thoughts as I write this week. Another fun week! Happy happy happy in Los Olmos. Pretty sure I am going to stay in Los Olmos, but we´ll see!
Elder Hixon
