September 14, 2015 Mate

September 14, 2015  Better than Drugs

so this week we started out interestingly. Remember L the investigator of the week a couple weeks ago. well her son turned 3 years old on monday. we didn’t know but we passed by, and they were a bit busy so we just kinda said hi and left. she had had to work, so they hadn’t really done anything for him. so later elder M had the idea that we buy him a pinguino (like a hostess cupcake) and some candles and go throw him a little makeshift party, so we did. he was super happy. we didn’t get to teach them, but it just goes to show you that it’s always good to do service, even when you don’t get anything immediately in return. but hopefully this will help them organize their priorities so that they can progress a little bit more. she has tried reading the book of mormon with her son, but he hasn’t really listened, but we also gave them one of those book of mormon stories books with pictures to help them.

after that we had exchanges with the other elders in our district. i was with elder MA, who just arrived here and has has like a year in the mission. he is from brazil, but lives on the border of argentina, which means he drinks, and has all the equipment for... mate! so we may have drank a lot of mate in  the exchanges, including, dad, mate dulce. which is drunk with juice or something else sweet, we drank it with sprite. (but if you do that dad do it in the metal cup or a normal cup because it will ruin the other one. i forgot my camera today, but for those of you who don’t know what mate is, you can look up pictures but i swear it’s not drugs. but when we got back elder M asked me, "elder... why do we have drugs sitting on our counter?" but it’s not. its better

you know what else is better than drugs? temples. we had the rededication of the mexico city temple this week. saturday we watched an awesome cultural celebration, and sunday the dedication. it was nice because i have really been wanting to go to the temple recently, and we didn’t, but the stake center was considered an extension of the temple, we needed a recommend to enter, and the spirit was very very close.

 elder eyering and elder holland came, and gave some awesome talks. one thing that really struck me is that elder holland said, "i thank all of you for your dedication to this gospel, or in this instance, your rededication." and it’s true. we are also temples of God. we have dedicated ourselves through covenants (well, the majority of those reading this) but we all must find times to rededicate ourselves. we can all look for what else we can do, and like the temples before their rededication, what we can change. the sacrament is something that is for our rededication every week. we learned that may times we don’t appreciate temples until they are closed, and i would add that many times we don’t appreciate the magnitude of this rededication that we all partake of every week. just something to think about.

well. that’s all for now. be good, love you guys

elder gandola