March 19, 2012

A staircase. I think I´ve climbed this one about three times now... it´s pretty typical for the area we are in right now.

Dear Mom and Dad,

Great week! But I wanted to start off, before talking about what happened, by thanking mom. When I was about 6, you decided that, because I knew how to read, I was going to start singing the hymns with you in church. I resented it and tried to talk you out of it, and when I thougth you weren´t looking sometimes I wouldn´t sing, but finally I gave in and began to sing the hymns in church. Thirteen years later, the hymns are a powerful part of my testimony, and every time I sing a hymn to start out a lesson and can feel the spirit flowing into the room, or every time I am able to serve in the ward because I know how to lead music, I am so thankful that, when I was six, my mom made me sing in church.

On a slightly less serious note, I have developed a new way to shake hands with kids. I take their hand and immediately start to throw it up and down as hard as I can, which is either funny because they go limp arm and just giggle, or because they start to throw their hand up and down as hard as I am throwing mine and I pretend that they are really strong and that they are about to rip my arm out. It´s quite fun, and I think it´s a trick that might work in English, too!

This Sunday, we had lunch with a really young new family in the ward. They got married and moved into the ward a few weeks after I got here--she now works in the Primary and he is in the Elder´s Quorum. Lunch was great, we talked about funny stories from his mission and about the atonement. I was left thinking that we had just had lunch with the promise of the church in Chile, that these two newleyweds would grow to be the leaders and shapers of the church, all because they had made the first few steps right--he served a mission, they got married in the temple, they magnify their callings and share the gospel with their neighbors. I was left thinking that that was how I wanted to be, that those were the types of choices I wanted to make.

After lunch, we shared with another family in the ward, Hermana V and her three children. We had never really shared with them before, but it was wonderful to get to know them better. The husband/father of the family was inactive, and had been for some time, but the mom and three kids faithfully went to church every week. The 12 year old S is now working on visiting other members of his group to help them get back to church, and 15 year old M brought one of her friends with her to seminary (D, a little more about him later). The whole day left me feeling really content and happy with the faith and hope that there is in and for the church, it was a good day.

Earlier on in the week, we met a kid named E (well, I say ´kid´ but he´s 19--who am I to talk), who had recently moved in from another ward. He got baptized a little under a year ago, and when we asked him what we thought the church was, he gave the most inspired and inspiring reply I had ever heard. "The church is everything. You can go there to meet people, play sports, eat some food sometimes, but you also go to learn things, to make and renew covenants, to learn about God and work towards heaven. It´s like a big family, everybody helping each other and lifting each other, everybody moving together towards salvation." We are hoping that the next stop for him will be a mission, because he´d be great as a missionary.

Final news of the week--D, the friend of a member who started going to seminary about a week before we met him. We went to seminary one day to get to know him, and it turned out it was someone we already knew from the street--a kid who had lived in North Carolina for 5 years and is our neighbor. The next day we went over to get to know him a little better. We ended up in a very serious conversation with his mom (he got home a few minutes in) about her hopes and fears for her son. He had a traumatic moment several months ago where he decided that he absolutely needed to meet his biological parents (he is adopted). His adoptive family started looking and arranged a meeting. After meeting his mom, he was really struck by her style of life, and began to think that his destiny, as well, was to end up living on the street, stealing to pay for drugs. His parent´s pleas hadn´t been able to reach him, and they weren´t really sure what they could do. We started talking about the gospel, about repentance, about Alma the Younger going from "the very vilest of sinners" to an amazing prophet. I felt like I was being taught, as well, about what the gospel can do, about how the church really will give D the happiness and peace he needs, that he has thought of looking for in absolutely the other direction. He came to church with us yesterday and played soccer with us this morning, and he seems to be loving it all.

This Gospel is amazing. This Church is too.

Viviendo el sueño,

Elder Jason ray

March 12, 2012

Dear Mom and Dad,

Great week! Some great personal growth experiences, as well the baptism of a truly amazing sister named A. I´ll start from the beginning.

Last Monday I had a few minutes extra while I was waiting for my companion to finish up writing his family, so I looked up a recent talk given by Elder Bednar on LDS.org. In it he said something about missionaries, as an example, but in a different context--towards the faith needed for people to make big life decisions such as school and marriage. He said, "Missionaries are taught from the scriptures to open their mouth--act--and it will be filled. That sequence is critical. Many of us pray for the power so we can open our mouth. That doesn´t work too well." I first thought about that in a literal interpretation, and resolved to talk to more people. Then I thought about how true that is for all of life. My tendancy is to be a little bit hesitant, to want to think something out really well, have a plan A and a plan B, and then take a tentative step forward. But if I am moving forward with faith, trusting in God to help me in my choices and to provide pathways where there are none, I will keep planning and thinking, but I´ll take out the hesitance, the tentativeness. I´ll go. I´ll push foreward trusting in God and, sometimes, just like walking up to someone in the street and asking them if they want to hear a message that will change their life, I just have to open my mouth, step forward, and go Good life message.

Great day of interchanges with Elder M. When I first came into the Zone six months ago, we hoped we would be able to do interchanges--and it finally happened! We started out eating lunch with one of the old member families of Chile. The grandmother was baptized when she was 8, not as a convert, and her children are now leaders in the church all over the place. Her granddaughter told us about her life plan, and how important it is for her to marry a return missionary. She stated it pretty well: "I am doing things right, striving to keep the commandments, and I know God will help me to have the life I want, to marry a return missionary." "My son, give ear to my words; for I swear unto you, that inasmuch as ye shall keep the commandments of God ye shall prosper in the land" (Alma 36:1). It makes me happy to see such faith here in Chile.

After lunch, we did some service, building a dirt staircase leading up from the sidewalk into somebody´s yard so that they would stop falling down every time they entered their yard from the street. For tools we had an ancient pickaxe with a loose head and two long pike-like something-or-others that were slightly sharp on the ends and could be used for digging. It ended up as quite a masterpiece, if I do say so myself, and I think I want to go into dirt construction now. To finish off the day, we taught a great new family who we found outside admiring their cactus collection. I was especially impressed by the son, V, a sharp-looking 14 year old kid who was paying more attention than I did when I was 14. He seemed to understand everything perfectly. I hope to hear in a couple more years that he ended up serving an awesome mission.

We taught a member this week, trying to help him get back to church after a month of not going. As we shared with him and as he talked, it came out that the problem was not just an offense that someone had given him four weeks ago, but that his personal gospel study, his personal relationship with God, had fallen a bit to the side. We are trying to help him get back to his past firmness in the gospel now, but it was a great reminder that the little, daily things make all the difference in the end.

Fantastic Conference this week, we talked a whole lot about the Book of Mormon. Because the Book of Mormon comes with such an amazing promise, that everyone who reads it and prays about it sincerely will receive an answer that it is true, it should be the entire basis in our teaching, the point on which everything else rests. To help us to gain our own testimony of the Book of Mormon, we decided to start reading it as a mission, in the same amount of time in which it was translated. I´m now reading 8 pages a day, in addition to the chapter-by-chapter study I was doing before. Considering that I do my chapter-by-chapter study in both English and Spanish to help me focus, and that I read a chapter out loud a few times a week to help my pronunciation, I am now reading the Book of Mormon four times at once!

Finally, to end the week--A was baptized on Saturday and confirmed on Sunday. From the very first day we met her, she has been an absolute miracle. We ran into her one day in interchanges, and she told us to come back another day when she wasn´t leaving for dialysis. She later told us that time after time she had rejected the missionaries, but that that day something iluminated her and she let us come by. Since that moment she has been absolutely faithful in reading the Book of Mormon, praying, going to church, everything. Every time we would ask her how she was and how she felt about everything that she was learning, she would say, "I can tell this is right, I just feel it. This has all been so wonderful for me." She invited her entire family to her baptisimal service, with the result that 2 kids, a daughter-in-law, and 7 grandkids all came to see their grandma baptized. Now she is already talking to us about how, even though it would be too late for her kids, she wants to send her grandkids out on missions.

This is it, this is where I am supposed to be and what I should be doing. God is behind it all, guiding our footsteps, because we are really His servants. Isn´t that crazy, that God trusts 19 year old kids to be his personal representatives? I fell blessed beyond measure.

Viviendo el sueño,

Elder Jason Ray

March 5, 2012

Dear Mom and Dad,

Dad told me that he got the superman joke, but it fell kind of flat with everybody else (try saying it out loud). Just to dig my humor hole even deeper, here are a few more superman jokes.
¿Qué es el fruto favorito de Superman? Supermanzana.
¿Qué pone Superman en su pan? Supermantequilla.
¿Qué es el otro nombre de Superman? Clark Kent.

Last Monday, I picked up my Chilean ID, meaning that I have moved passed the short-term-tourist stage and am now in the long-term-visitor stage. My companion managed to convince me that "M" stood for "Mujer" and not for "Masculino" and they must have made a mistake when they were filling out my information, and I believed him for about three days until one of the zone leaders showed me his. After picking up my Carnet (that is what the ID is called), we went by Pizza Hut for lunch. There really is nothing quite like a Gringa Pizza.

That night, I got to teach a family home evening lesson with a family in the ward--the Hermana´s sister was in town with her kids, they all live in Santiago and are not members of the church. (The Hermana was baptized when the Hermano got back from his mission to the south of Chile and started telling mission stories to his girlfriend, they now have two kids and stake callings). After a 20 minute conversation about things that we like, but that scare us (me gusta, pero me asusta) I got to teach a bit about the Holy Ghost and the Restoration. The whole family agreed that they need to read and pray about the Book of Mormon, it was a pretty special moment.

Then a few days later I had a very humbling moment where I realized how far I still have to go in learning the language. With my past two companions, both gringos, my spanish has looked alright. On Interchanges with Elder B, de Honduras, I realized how little I really understand/can communicate compared to latinos! He was a very outgoing, talkative Elder, and when he got going in spanish I had to work to keep up. I guess little moments like that are good--they show me how hard I should still be working!

I learned a pretty big lesson from a couple of experience on Friday. At the request of a member of the bishopric, we went by to visit an excommunicated member. We didn´t ask questions and he didn´t really tell us his story, we just talked about this and that for a few minutes, but the pain and sadness in his eyes was obvious. He was a return missionary, had been where we were, but at that moment in time he only had a faint hope to slowly struggle back to the church. A few hours later, Hermano V acompanied us to a lesson. Just by the powerful, honest, humble, spiritual person he was, he asked a couple of questions and made a couple of comments that brought the spirit powerfully to the lesson and taught everyone there more about God. I thought about his family, as well--a wife and three great kids, one of those families that really show how the home can compare to the temple in sacredness. He, too, was a return missionary. The message was pretty clear, sobering and yet incredibly hopefull at the same time. Elder Ray, you are doing pretty well right now, but make sure to keep it up 2, 5, 10 years from now. The future is too important to not make the right choices.

G, my very first convert ever, called us up early in the week and told us he had a problem. He had had an interview with the stake president on Sunday about receiving the Melchizedek Priesthood, but he didn´t think he was ready to become an Elder and commit himself to teaching the gospel like we did. First, we explained that Elder didn´t always mean Missionary, that he wouldn´t be asked to walk around in the sun all day. Then we talked a lot about the help and support that God is willing to offer him. We talked about God´s words to Enoch, "Open your mouth and it will be filled." Yesterday in stake conference, G was sustained to become an Elder.

And, final story for the week--AF is going to get baptized this week! She came out of her baptizmal interview beaming from ear to ear, absolutely estatic. She has already invited all of her family, three kids and a handful of grandkids, to come out and see it.

I absolutely love my job (or calling, I guess, since in a job you get paid with boring things like money). Viviendo el sueño.

Elder Jason Ray

February 27, 2012

Dear Mom and Dad,

Great week this week! I´m really excited to send you some pictures from this week. They still don´t capture the deep, wide, enormous beauty of Valparaíso, but they are pretty good anyway. Editor's Note: I'll add the pictures tonight, can't do that from work

First story of the week comes from M, the 10 year old daughter of A and R. M was the first one in the family to get baptized. After that she had a huge part in R´s baptism, which included that R had to quit smoking. Both of them together contributed to A finally deciding to be baptized, which happened when I got here. I´m pretty sure that, just by M´s faith and incredible spirit--both her grandparents and the missionaries always refer to her as an angel--her entire family is going to join the church, in one moment or another. This week we taught a lesson to M´s mom. At this point in time she doesn´t want to keep going, but I was incredibly impressed that, while we were talking about the Restoration of the Gospel, M pulled out her Book of Mormon and found a scripture to share with her mom. Like we say in Valparaíso, ¡Puro Poder! (Pure Power! or maybe Plain Power!)

In our Zone Meeting this week we had a visit from the Stake President. He talked about working with the members to help them to do missionary work, shared a story about a group of missionaries that passed by his house to help him plan out how to share the gospel with his friends. He said that the vision of this stake is that the members are the ones responsible for the missionary work, because if every member of the stake is sharing the gospel, it will be about a hundred times more effective than missionaries knocking doors. We had to change our approach a bit after hearing this, since the Zone Meeting on Tuesday we have gone by a couple of the leaders in the ward to share about missionary work and invite them to share the gospel with their friends. More than anything, though, I think I learned a lot this week about what my responsability towards missionary work will be after my mission. As a missionary, I´m willing to go out and knock doors all week long, and I´ll probably have some success. But as a missionary, I come and go in periods of a few months. Intersting thoughts...

On Wednesday I had an interchange with the Zone Leaders. For this first time in either of our missions, we challenged a woman to stop smoking--in a time span of 2 weeks--so that she could get baptized. We put together a plan for her to drop off one more cigarrete every three days, and then made a list of other things she can do when she feels like smoking, such as reading the Book of Mormon and praying. It was a pretty awesome experience.

One family we are teaching is made up of a mother and her son, S and C--the son is already baptized, the mother wants to get baptized but first has to get divorced and remarried (which is quite a process here in Chile). She is making all the necessary arrangements to get divorced and married, so I have no doubt that she will get baptized some day. But we had a lesson this week where she related some experiences showing how involved God really is in her life. When C was born, he had leukemia. She was really angry at God for a long time, but after several months of almost hating God, she realized the only way she could possibly save her son´s life would be to give him over to God. She went into a chapel and said a prayer, saying that she would accept whatever was the will of God. C had recovered within the week. After that, C always had a leaning towards religion and God, but never made any major steps until meeting the missionaries. He asked his parents if he could be baptized. S wasn´t sure at first, but after praying about it, she knew it was what C needed and what she should work towards, too. As I write this she is meeting with a lawyer to finalize her divorce arangements. If all goes well, she could be baptized within the year. Wonderful reminder that, once again, this is God´s work and not mine, His children and His plan.

I got to give a talk in church yesterday, It was neat to see my progress in Spanish from the last time I gave a talk, three months ago, to yesterday. I talked about why it is important to do missionary work, the promises in the scriptures that God will help us to do it, and a couple of ways to get started. The point that stuck out to me the most strongly while I was preparing this talk was the power of prayer, praying for opportunities to share the gospel, praying for the people I know, praying for inactive members, etc. I have seen miracles in missionary work through prayer, it´s powerful stuff.

P, Ce´s dad (Ce is a priest in the ward who goes around with us a couple of times a week) just got called as the first councilor in the Elder´s Quorum. This is pretty cool, because he just got baptized in August. He conducted a meeting for the first time yesterday (he was nervous but he did great), and helped to set apart the 2nd councilor, who was also recently called. It´s amazing, because I can already imagine him going through the temple in a few more months, sending Ce out as an amazing missionary, one day serving his own mission with his wife... and he only got baptized a few months ago!

Great week. Hand of the Lord all over the place helping us and everyone around us. I love this work.

Viviendo el Sueño,

Elder Jason Ray

February 20, 2012

Dear Mom and Dad,

¿Por qué nunca se enojan los hijos de Superman?
Porque son supermancitos.
(Hay que contarlo en voz alta).

In other funny news, the stake president asked me yesterday if I was running for bishop, since I´ve been here for so long :D I told him I was putting together my campaign.

This week has probably been one of the highlights of my life. As I will explain shortly, this week I have been able to see that I am not just Elder Ray, working right along in Chile, but that I am an instrument of a loving Heavenly Father who is working miracles in this place, and who is using me to further this great work.

But first off--the new Elder in the pension! Elder R, from Argentina. He came into the mission at the same time as me, which means he is six weeks behind because he already knew Spanish. He is a convert from age 11, was inactive for several years, but then reactivated on his own and decided to serve a mission. At the present time most of his family has also reactivated, and the still-inactives are about to make the switch any minute.

Now, on to the stories. First off, a few years ago a woman named Y was baptized. She had a really tough time adjusting to the ward, but she new that the gospel was true and stuck through it for a long time, but went inactive about a year ago. We found her while heading to a different appointment in her same street. The sense that both my companion and I got is that she has an amazingly strong testimony, but that she needs some help remembering it. We believe that, if after meeting with us she chooses to reactivate, she will become an absolute rock in the church, the kind of person whose descendants will praise her name for generations. More news pending, I´m excited :D

Second off, another less-active member. Early in the week, we talked to someone random who gave us the address of an inactive family that we had heard of before (the 15-year-old son goes to church on his own, he has since I got here, but we didn´t know anyone else in the family). We passed by there, once again, on our way to another appointment, and they let us in. What followed was incredible. This family had been driven inactive by some really ugly circumstances. The mother, especially, was bitter and angry for years and years. We talked about repentance, about the light of the gospel, about the blessings still in store for them if they continued faithful. At the end of the lesson, the mom and one of the daughters bore their testimonies, in tears, about the church. They talked about their family, about the 15 year old´s future mission, about the power of the Book of Mormon. The final comment of the lessons, made by the mother of the family, was, "I think recess time is over." This family came to church on Sunday, the whole family. They participated actively in Sunday School, embraced old friends that they hadn´t seen in years, took the sacrament for the first time in years. They are now on their way to eternal life, and I feel privileged to have been one of God´s hands helping it happen. I definitely don´t believe that we, the missionaries, did anything other than walk in the door while wearing ties and name badges. But God and the Holy Ghost worked some miracles in there.

The next day, with the memory still fresh in our minds, we started knocking doors. We were let in by a lady who then told us that, for a period of some six months, she had gone to church with the same sister who so powerfully bore testimony just the day before. After we taught about baptism and the Holy Ghost, she and her 15 year old daughter immediately said that they wanted to be baptized.

Like I said before, I can tell that I´m just an instrument in a much, much bigger story.

Viviendo el sueño,

Elder Jason Ray

February 13, 2012

Dear Mom and Dad,

I am staying in Barrio O´Higgins for another change! I am really quite excited, this next change will be pretty incredible, I am sure. That means I am staying together with Elder B, of the cheesy jokes and awesome conversion story. The zone as a whole is hardly changing at all--only three out of eighteen elders are leaving, which is hardly anything! But, one of those three is Elder U, my Canadian friend whose mother knows Mom through the missionary mom´s list. He will be missed.

Cool story about member missionary work. We watched a church movie with two friends of the Gospel Principles teacher, they both enjoyed it and I think we´ll start teaching them when the teacher gets back from vacation in two weeks. However, one of these friends just had a nephew pass away. Smart, talented kid of 24, sad story. Hermana R, the teacher, was talking to us about the tragedy before her friends arrived, and we recommended that she share with him a conference talk, "The Songs they Could Not Sing," about tragedies and people who die young. She shared this talk with him, and he used it in the funeral address he gave. All from a borrowed Ensign.

Another cool story from the Ensign that´s a little more internal. All of my past life I´ve been pretty ni allí (ni allí means apathetic or uncaring) about family history work. I had always assumed I would get involved in it when I was old and retired, but that for the foreseeable future I would serve by going to the temple and being a good member missionary. A few days ago I was thinking about how I hope and pray that my investigators will do certain things--read the Book of Mormon, pray to ask if it is true, go to church, get baptized--and how there are other things that God hopes I will do all of my life--regularly go to the temple, magnify my calling, read the scriptures and pray with my family, etc. Then I read an Ensign article about family history, and how this generation has all of the technological skills to do amazing family history work. While reading I decided that, even though it doesn´t excite me hugely right now, God probably hopes that I will do family history work--Him and several thousand ancestors who want to be a forever family, too. I decided I would be involved in family history started from right when I get back.

Then I decided that I always need to make the Ensign a part of my gospel study. If I had never read that Ensign article, how long would it have taken for me to come to this realization? How many ancestors would have had to wait months or years more for their saving work to be done?

Final story for the week, A. We just barely started teaching her about two weeks ago, she came to church last week, and she continues to awe and amaze me with her miraculous faith. We taught a lesson to her this week that played out like the ideal of every lesson we ever teach--she answered all of our questions like an MTC teacher, and always asked just the right question to keep the lesson flowing in the right direction. A few days ago she said that she wanted to learn more about the living prophets so she could know how to follow them better, and she is as set--or more so--on getting baptized the 3 of March than we are. A is amazing, and God is amazing. I´m so grateful to be a missionary, to be here "with a front row seat to the biggest miracle on earth" (an MTC staff member said that a few times), working for the salvation of God´s children.

Mucho amor,

Elder Jason Ray

February 6, 2012

Jason says this was brought back from a Youth Conference by one of the youth

Dear Mom and Dad,

If I fall asleep in the middle of typing this letter, it´s because we played soccer for two hours this morning and I ran my heart out. But it was worth it--I can actually play soccer now, that´s pretty awesome :D

First miracle of the week, I got my triple combination back! About two months ago it fell out of my back while we were running back to the apartment to get in on time. A week ago, I ran into someone on the street who said they had a book that belonged to a member of our church. We went by on Tuesday, and now I am back to teaching with all four standard works! When I think of the journey that this book took in the last four months (bag to ground, ground to this house about ten minutes away, person who lives in the house to meet us, we went by the house), I am ridiculously grateful to have it back.

Second miracle is AF. A while back we ran into her while we were touching doors down a street, and she invited us right up, but didn´t have time to listen to us because she was on her way to the hospital. This week we went by and taught a few times. She said that, throughout here life, she had rejected and turned away more missionaries than she could count, but that something spoke to her--the words she used were something illuminated her--when we passed by this time. She came to church this Sunday, loved it, and is already planned out how she is going to tell her Catholic family that she is going to get baptized. I have always heard, there are people who are prepared out there. She is living proof of this, a true miracle.

Hermana R, the Gospel Principles teacher, is catching some fire. She set up a church-movie-night with a couple of her friends this next week, and invited us to come present the movie with a hymn and a prayer. She says her friends are really catholic (as opposed to "catholic, but in my own way" (en Español es "catolica catolica" en vezde "catolica, pero a mi manera")) but she is excited to introduce them to the restored gospel.

This Friday we had a church activity, a celebration of music through the ages. The missionaries got the assignment to prepare something from the nineties, so of course we danced something to Backstreet Boys. The dance was pretty great, but you´ll have to take my word for it until I send you my camera card, because the file is way to big to send with email.

After the activity I started talking to P and A, the parents of C, a priest that goes out with us all the time. They asked me if, as couple missionaries, they could go to Utah. I said they would probably have to learn English beforehand, but that I definitely believe they could. The best part is, Pedro is a recent convert, he got baptized about when I entered the MTC in August. Even past their sealing in the temple in this coming August, they are already planning on a senior mission! To Utah! I love people. I´m pretty sure they would be amazing missionaries, too.

Saturday we had interchanges, I went to Casablanca. Highlight of the day was doing service--we cleaned out a vacant lot where someone wants to build a house, mostly lifting big wooden pallets and throwing them over a wall. At the end of the project the Hermana in charge gave us each a pair of gloves as a reminder. A little bit later, at lunch, a 15 year old kid who reminds me incredible of my brother J explained all the tricks that he can do on ripstik, scateboard, and bike. We made a deal that I´d come back after my mission so that he can teach me.

Last story of the week. I´ve known for a while how important the spirit would be in guiding our teaching, so that we could help a wide variety of people with an even wider variety of needs, but I have also realized here how important the spirit is to guide where we go. Last night, we had used up all of our plans and had two ideas of who to pass by. We thought about it for a few seconds then, based on a feeling more than anything, we decided to pass up the person who lives right next to our apartment and walk a few minutes to a family of recent converts (L, D, and F) to see how they were doing. Turns out we passed by in the only moment in the entire week when they were all three together. We shared a bit about reading in the Book of Mormon and congratulated them for what they were doing (L has already finished the Book of Mormon, just a few months after being baptized!)

Being guided by the Lord to bless His children really is the best experience. I love my mission, love my life.

Viviendo el sueño.

Love you,

Elder Jason Ray

Editor's note: We have re-enabled comments. If any of you want to post a comment, we will collect them and send to Jason.