The New Year Could Not Have Started Off Better

Good morning everyone! I'm hoping you all had a fantastic week and a wonderful New Years! New year, new you. I remember last year during this time, the gym was absolutely packed... for about one a half weeks. Make some goals are actually stick to them this year!

This week was such a great week! I've felt so happy, so intuned with the spirit, saw some miracles, and probably had the best exchange that I will have on my mission! 

But I'll talk about that later, let's get back to our New Years goals and the weekly spiritual thought that I hope that you guys actually read. 

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT

This week in my reading, I found two pretty cool scriptures that can help us with our goal setting this year. 

Alma 37: 6-7 reads...

6. Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.

7. And the Lord God doth work by means to bring about his great and eternal purpose; and by very small means the Lord doth confound the wise and bringeth about the salvation of many souls.

We learn two things from these scriptures about setting goals...

First, our goals don't all need to be insanely big! Small and simple goals with bring forth great results in our lives. This is literally what God did when creating his plan for us. Yes, one of my goals is to become fluent in Portuguese this year (don't know if that will ever happen), but without small and simple daily goals to learn 10 new words a day, I will never get fluent. 

Second, keep an eternal purpose. I was listening to a talk this week and it gave a fire analogy that I like. When driving, do we look straight down at the pavements in front of our car, or do we look down the road and see what's coming up in the future? Hopefully you didn't say the first one because you likely wouldn't have long to live. Looking straight now and being focused on the things directly in front of you would lead to a swerving car and a scared passenger. We always need to be looking ahead at what's coming. When setting goals, it's important to have a purpose for our goals. If we're setting blind goals, we will never actually see the result of these goals.  

I'm keeping this spritual thought short and simple, because I have so much more to write about. But please take 5-10 minutes to make and write down some goals! And please stick to these goals! If you don't have confidence in yourself, send me your goals and I will keep you accountable!

God loves you, he knows you, he created you, and he is more than capable of helping you keep your goals this year!

HIGHLIGHTS

- I made some chocolate chip cookies with my bishop and his family on New Years Eve and know they are obsessed! And I guess the word got out and know we're getting a couple messenges a day from different members of our chapel asking if we can come over and make cookies with them!

- We had a New Years party with our church and they were blasting the Sing 2 soundtrack and JustDance videos in english. I don't ever like these song but there's just something different about listening to a song in english! Also besst thing I've ever seen. Bisphop's 3 year old boy, with the cutest bowl-cut, dancing to justdance in front of the TV alone while everyone was eating! Most precisous thing I've ever seen. 

- One of our friends, who has already experienced so many challenges this month, got into a motorcycle accident this week and couldn't move his arms for three days. He also hurt his ankle, and has deep gashes all over his body. He missed last sunday because he was being hunted down, but was determined to come this past sunday. He and his sister skipped their New Years Eve party so they could come to church. He also managed to walk all the way to church! Such a miracle!

- NOW TIME FOR THE BEST EXCHANGE OF MY LIFE (please read). This is the day that I've literally been waiting for since the first day of my mission: my exchange will Elder Bradford. For those of you who don't know what an exchange is, it's when you switch companions for a day to learn some new skills. Well... Elder Bradford came to my area today and we absolutely worked our tails off. We talked to literally every person that we could see on the street. Counted 34 contacts, 11 Book of Mormons handed out, and 3 baptismal dates set. And I know numbers mean absolutely nothing, so I'll talk about some cool miracles. First off, I'm clueless when it comes to direction. Always have been. So there were many, many times where I would take us 20 minutes in the opposite direction, or to places in my area that I have never seen before. But... every time that I made a "wrong turn" or took us in the "wrong direction", I always had the strongest feeling that that is exactly where we needed to be. First story: We were trying to get to an appointment and got to what looked like a dead end. About to turn back, Elder Bradford says, "Looks pretty cool, let's check it out!" When then find this small little path that was next to a pretty cool lookout stop over a mountain. While walking on the path we met Ezequiel. Talked for a little bit, were about to hand him a Book of Mormon, when we felt prompted to teach him a full on lesson on the side of the trail. We had made many contacts prior and never did this. So we go about teaching our lesson, spirit was insanely strong, and these two other guys pull up. I ask them if they want to join and they gladly accept. The one dude knew absolutely everything, and it turns out that he's been looking for Christ's true church for many years and he stumbled across another church that he said had everything except he had one doubt with his church. He doubted the power and authority they had. Literally a missionaries dream scenerio. What made matters even cooler, he has never taken that path before in his life, and wasn't planning on it take day either, but felt prompted to take it. And when we saw us missionaries, and knew we had to talk to them. So there we were, teaching a lessons to three wonderful people, and we were about to invite them all to be baptized, when all of a sudden some dude absolutley eats it on his motorcycle down the street. We rush over to help him, and quickly put ice on his toe. (It was so broken, literally flopping around like a fish). We felt prompted to say a prayer to help comfort him and the crowd that had gathered to watch us. After 15 minutes, we returned to our lesson and the three dudes we still chilling there waiting for us. Miracle. We ended the lesson, invited baptism, they all accepted, and the spirit literally felt tangible. Then, all of a sudden, the motorcycle dude, gets up and walks to us, shakes our hand, and goes on his way! Litterally incredible! I can't ever describe how I felt! Second Story: So after all of this, we went our own way, making more contacts and met this dude smoking a blunt. Super high. We talked to him, and Elder Bradford gave him a book of mormon, but soon felt prompted to take it back. He's never felt prompted before to take a book back. But he did. Then a couple other things happened, we talked with him for a bit, some prayers were said, and some pretty cool things happened, but I won't talk about all of it. Then we left, walked passed this other dude. We made it all of the way down the road, both felt super strongly we needed to talk to him, looked at each other, and started sprinting own the road to catch this man. We talked for a bit, and bore our testimonies. He literally told us that he was feeling the spirit so strong. We also told us, just like the other guys, he has never taken that way home from work before, but felt something tell him to go that way. God works in wonderful ways! We also had one more book of mormon to give this man, and this was because Elder Bradford took back the last Book of Mormon. Truly a miracle! 

Sorry this email is super long and long me forever to write, but I hope y'all enjoyed. So much more happened this week, so I've you want to know just send me an email and I'll get back to you in like a month or two :)

Love you all and hope you have an amazing week!

Elder Ware