Scriptures equal power

January 18, 2010
Familia,

Transfers came and went. Ha. McNeil and I will be staying for another transfer here! I´m pretty excited about it. We have great investigators and they are becoming converted to the gospel.

Yesterday was the second round of voting here in Chile. We were on our way to pick up Rosa and Hector for church when a lady stopped us in the street to do an interview. She is from tvn 24 a cable channel here in Chile. She asked if the elections here are different from those in the United States. They really are different, it is mandatory to vote and everything is closed during the voting. So....I might have been on national television last night.

What happened this week....I thought of a lot of things to tell you last night, but I have already forgotten. I have written everyday in my journal for three weeks now. I was pretty bad about writing before, but as I have been telling Ha. McNeil stories from earlier in my mission, I have found that I am starting to forget things. I do not like that! I don´t want to forget anything! So I changed and now I write about a page every night. A lot of things have changed this transfer. I have been able to reference scriptures a lot more during lessons, I have thought less about home, I am actually talking to my Heavenly Father while praying, I am setting goals something that I always hated before, and I have sworn off anger. Anger free is the way to go and I hope to never go back. I read a quote from a talk by Pres. Monson that says, "Anger doesn´t solve anything. It builds nothing and can destroy everything." Lawrence Douglas Wilder So every time I am tempted to get angry I just say that in my head and the anger is gone.

I finished studying the scriptures Ben sent me for Christmas. They are about apostasy, authority, and restoration. They exploded my testimony that this is the church of Jesus Christ. This week I was testifying like crazy that I don´t know how a person can study the Bible, really study it and not think our church is true. Who else has a prophet? Twelve apostles? Quorums of the seventy? Who saw Elijah and received the keys to attach in the heavens what is attached in the earth? I love the power that we find in the scriptures.

Robinson´s dad said no. But he is going home for a month in February and will talk more about it with his family and take them to church there. So maybe he will get baptized there or when he gets back in March. Yesterday we taught him after church and in his closing prayer he said, "Forgive me for lying to my parents about where I am, but I think this is the path I should take." It hit me hard.

We started teaching Ernesto´s schizophrenic friend. His name is Rodrigo, and his case is worse than Ernesto´s. He has a baptismal date for the 7 of February.

The mission is Sooooo good right now. It can´t end. Not now.

I love you,
Hermana Arnold