8-2-10

Wowee!
¿Another week already huh?

What a mind blower! Wow, everybodys off to yellowstone! im so jealous, you better not do all this cool stuff while im gone and then be all cool stuffed out on my return! But i guess im getting a tad more than my fare share of cool stuff, entonces...at ease. YELLOWSTONE! have fun huh?
good ol america!
anywho, thats pretty neat that kelly rhodes has returned triumphant, i remember when he left, as if it were two years ago! say hello to him! and to all those other neat people. k thanks!
i dont know whats happening with the letter! but we´ll be patient i reckon.
The Sam wolf celebration sounds like the best thing ever, with the cake, and william breaking the slide, and the minnesotans represented and all.
Happy birthday again Wolf! and happy Celebration and yellowstone to everybody else!
I have basically conquered the bathroom, i think i did so with the power of cereal. I command you all to count your blessings in flakes or balls or crumbs of cereal every day! The comforts we have back home! Carpet? what? water you can drink? huh? I dont know if the language is coming along, i think i have just gotten better at guessing what people are saying, i dont know, but what the heck, i guess ill keep practicing.

Fun stuff that happened this week...
one sunny happy day we hitched a total of 3 rides! to that little old ranch i believe i talked about before...and one of them was in a BIG RIG TRUCK! yeah, it was something. I totally sat on the bed in the back too. I couldn´t understand what the guy was dragging behind him, but it sure was cool.
Then after we got out, it started to pour (rain), and then hail, and we were days from our house, and by the time we got back we were drenched and had walked in streets with water up to our arrodillos! knees! But yeah, they have fat rain in mexico, that apparates out of thin air, or clouds, but you never know when its going to happen. My cousin JuanCarlos can be a second witness to that!
But its always a blast

Im going to tell you about someone!
his name is Julio, he´s old, lives with a ton of family in this little house on this little road of mud, has tubes coming out of his chest so when he goes to the doctors three times a week for 6 hours every time they can purify his bloodstream. We only found him last week, but he´s something. He always appears ticked off or just depressed, is always feeling cruddy, and told us that he believes in God, but only when he needs to.
He doesnt want it to be that way. he wants to change.

I reckon i was just thinking as i wrote this, that this man, who is going to die anytime, has reason to seek God. that he needs God. And then as im sure we all do, though me not quite as often as i would like, i realized how dumb that thought was.

Julio regrets much in his life, he expressed a little in words, even fewer that i could understand, but you can see it in the way he sits, with his shoulders slumped and his head bowed low, in his face, and most of all, in his eyes. More than just being old and stricken with this terrible sickness, he knows there is more, something that he has of yet missed out on, and for this, he welcomes us. not because we can help him, but because of He whom we are sent can.

How clearly can the atonement of Christ, the love of Christ raise this man in this life and in the next?
but what, are our necessities blurred?
how different are we? Waiting for a reason to come and lay our burdens down at the feet of the Savior? We need not wait so long. And i say this because its darn flustering, cause i do it all the time, forget the purpose of the gospel of Christ that is, the purpose of life. I don´t know why as humans we don´t desire happiness. We do, of course, and yet we are so resistent!

and he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind;
and this that the word might be fulfilled which he saith he will take upon him
the pains and the sicknesses of his people
alma 7:11
These things i have spoken unto you,
that in me ye might have peace.
In the world ye shall have tribulation:
but be of good cheer;
I have overcome the world.
Juan 16:33
The words of the Savior, probably like the most beautiful of all scripture, i don´t know, i like it a lot. Be of good cheer! dangit!
Its funny, in a way that is not funny at all, how tough it is for us to accept the gift of peace that Christ offers us. Christ has felt everything, has taken upon himself everything, our sorrow, pain, fears.
we are unhappy without the His hope.
and everyone everywhere is trying to fill these holes with all manner of garbage. but we can only fill holes with garbage for so long! It starts to smell really bad! (i live in mexico, where i don´t know why, but everyone, including my companion throws their trash on the ground, anywho!)
the really the holes don´t fill, until we come unto Christ. Seriously, we neednt wait. and there is never a time when we don´t have to, even after we have made an intial choice, or recieved a testimony, or been bapttzed.
Los doy mi testimonio!
I hadn´t planned on talking about this at all! (not that i ever plan on anything, but especially not on this!) Sorry its so long!

Anyways.
I love you all, know this!
and wish you all the best, and mi familia a super incredible trip to yellowstone.
until we meet,
adios!
Elder ALBANO!