Hey everyone! I'd love to hear how you're all doing! We had a super good week down here in this part of the world. Tuesday I had to go to Curico along with a whole lotta other gringos here in our mission to get fingerprinted so we don't all get deported. It was cool to go see more of the mission and get to know some more missionaries, although we did lose a full day of work. The next day we had interviews with President Doxey and it was super good. I'm not sure how else I can say this but, my mission president has to be the best there ever was, like this guy is sent straight from heaven, it's crazy. He has helped me so much throughout the mission! In the rest of the week we found a guy named Mario knocking doors in an apartment building and we have had 3 lessons with him now and he's progressing really well and reading the Book of Mormon! We also were able to get Luz Maria on a date for baptism later this month and we are soo excited for that! She suddenly got all these desires after we taught her the Plan of Salvation and now she really wants to be a member of the church, she was very happy in the church yesterday. Again this Sunday we had well over 50 people in church which is incredible when we usually have like 30. There are so many people coming now that we've been able to help activate. It's been incredible to see the difference here in this branch in Chimbarongo.
I have been learning a lot about faith lately, I've wanted to understand it better and it's been a process that I'm still in and will probably always be in. I've learned a lot about faith in the sense of obviously believing in God, and also the importance of truly trusting in him and his will. We believe that God has power to do all things, and he obviously does, but do we have the faith to know he loves us even in times of trial or if something goes in a way that we don't want it to? Is our faith strong enough to be unshaken when the will of God is different from ours? True faith is believing and placing confidence in the Lord and his will at all times, and no matter what happens, we trust that it's God's will and we always seek the counsel he's trying to send us. This is the faith we want to grow into, believing completely in the Lord and knowing that he knows us more than we know ourselves and being willing to accept his will with faith and confidence. I love Alma 32 and I've studied it a lot lately, I love the counsel he gives about faith, in these verses he says,
17 Yea
, there are many who do say: If thou wilt show unto us a asign from heaven, then we shall know of a surety; then we shall believe. 18 Now I ask, is this faith? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for if a man knoweth a thing he hath no cause to abelieve, for he knoweth it. I have come to learn that everyone loves to say that they have tons of faith and that they believe in God, but do you have enough faith to accept God's will especially when it's different from your own? Faith is a process, we're either growing or dying, so I hope we can all ask ourselves are we increasing our faith in God through our actions everyday, or are we dying. This is a process and will be this whole life, I am so grateful for the chance our loving father in heaven has given us to strengthen our faith instead of just showing us everything, I know that this will help us become who God want's us to be.
I hope you all know that my life isn't always exactly sunshine and rainbows just because I'm a missionary and seeing miracles everyday. I'm still very human and have to learn so much and have to work to strengthen my faith each and every day. I know most my emails just focus on all the miracles and incredible things that are happening, but I don't ever say anything about the rejection we face, or the daily disappointment, or being so tired I almost fall asleep walking down the road, and even missing home super bad sometimes, there is a lot of hard things we have to go through as missionaries, but these moments help us exercise our faith so that we are able to see and experience the miracles that outweigh the difficult moments. I love the mission even though it's hard sometimes, and we can all love our lives even if they are hard at times.
I would love to hear from some of you this week! Hope you all know that God loves you perfectly!
-Elder Micheli
#GoBills
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