August 29, 2016 TRIALS with FAITH VS. TRIALS without

This week finishing the book of mormon i was reading in the book of Ether and i loved chapter 12.

it talks about faith. and for some of us faith can be something hard. especially because of the way it is described in verse 6 of the chapter, it says "that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen"

sometimes the fact that we can't see something makes us hesitant about trusting in it. 

and so i really like how the rest of the same verse goes saying 

"wherefore,dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your  faith"

obviously faith is not a perfect knowledge of things, it requires us putting our trust and hoping in something that we are not 100% sure of but we have the hope that it will happen or that it is true.

but what is the point of having faith in something that we can't see? like jesus christ for example.. well reading verse 9 we can see that "wherefore, ye may also have hope, and be partakers of the GIFT, if ye will but have faith."

it is talking of some kind of gift. what kind of gift do we get through our faith in Jesus Christ though? well, there are tons of things, but focusing on what it says in this chapter in verse 12 it says "for if there be no faith among the children of men God can do no miracle among them; wherefore, he showed not himself until after their faith."

OH... snap. 

No faith = No miracles.

and so that means god can't do miracles for us, he can't truly give us what we ask for in our prayers, or give us what we need, until after the trial of their faith. 

We shouldn't be praying for things, we shouldn't be wanting god to show us miracles in our lives, unless we are ready to show our faith, unless we are ready to go out and do something ourselves about it. im not sure if i shared last time with you guys this quote, but it ways "pray as if everything depended on god, and work as if everything depended on you" 

thats good stuff..

well have a good week! ill try and do the same here with my african homies.

peace,

Elder Fuchs

August 22, 2016 SAME OLD

Well there are 2 things that are getting hotter here, and I'm neither one of them.

The work is going super well we found a ton of new people this week and gave baptismal dates to some prepared families!!

the other thing is the temperature. its starting to warm up, and soon it will be BLAZING up in here. so im not really excited for that.

we are halfway through the transfer now and im not sure how much longer ill stay in this area! but i really want to... mostly because come november it will be Mango season.. and the city where we live is called MANGA.. which translates to mango. because almost 90 percent of the trees that are everywhere are giant mango trees. so im gonna pray that i stay, sorry i'm really hungry right now. i didnt have breakfast so thats probably why im thinking of food...

This week was a great one! first one with my new comp. he is a really nice kid. i like him a lot! 

Not too much to say this week! but read chapter 6 and 7 of mathew in the new testament. they are super good some of my favs there.

Also in internet here kinda blows today. sorry ill send pics next week and my email won't be so lame!

maybe.

Stay sweet.

Elder Fuchs

August 15, 2016 1 YEAR OUT

this week I will hit my 1 year mark since i entered the MTC.. woah.

this week was great with my NEW companion. Elder Allsop. he is a sweet guy! 

well this week in my studies i wanna share a story about this guy Mahonri Moriancumr. he's a pretty dope guy. 

So the Lord is guiding them to get to the promised land. and he is told that he needs to build these boats that are to be sealed air tight so that no water or light can get in. after he finishes building them with his people he says, " O Lord, i have performed the work which thou hast commanded me." and continues to pretty much say BUT, we don't have any light or air in our boats for the long trip, how will we survive? the lord have him answers to the easy questions that were pretty obvious. he was to make a hole in the top and a hole in the bottom for air and water. 

After he does that he prays again "Lord, will you still make us travel in the dark?"

the Lord responds pretty much saying.. "What do you want me to do? you can't have a fire, and you can't have windows or the boat will flood and sink. so what do you want me to do?"

Mahonri decided to do something about it. he went to a mountain and carved out some stones and prayed to the lord to touch the stones so they could light up and that way they could have light inside their ships over the journey.

After that, because of his faith, he literally saw the Lord and at that moment his faith was no longer faith. (ether chapter 3:19) "and he had faith no longer, for he knew, nothing doubting."

What can we do, so that like Mahonri (ether 3: 9), we can see the Lord?

because yeah, the lord is going to answer some of our prayers, but what about those prayers that he responds saying (ether 2:23) "what do you want me to do abou it?

This is where that faith part comes in, because we know that faith (james 2:17) is not faith at all without works. so it requires us getting off our bums and finding a solution! THEN asking the lord or telling him what we need him to do.

If we would quit asking for solutions and start looking for them, the lord will bless us on our path to find the right answers! and like Elder Nelson of the 12 said, we must pray as if everything depends on the lord, and then work, as if everything depends on us.

Have a great week!

Elder Fuchs

August 8, 2016 Mr. LONELY

so my companion still hasn't arrived. he is stuck in the southern part of mozambique because of some documents that he needs to be able to travel up here. So because of that I'm walking with Elder Johnson who lives in the same house i do. it's just us 2 because he will also be training.. so what we have to do is just run around from his area to mine every day hahah so it's a little weird!

This week has been good though! Just excited to get my new comp. 

We got a new family to Church this week! Antonio and Maimuna. they are a referral from a different investigator family that is getting close to their marriage and baptism as well. he said that he usually can't make it to church on sundays because he has to work. 

so we asked if he could ask his boss for sundays off. he thought for a little, then it kinda just clicked in his head and he said that he would talk with him. 

Doesn't hurt to ask i guess!

in Elder Johnson's area we passed by a new family he met the other day to teach the Restoration, and it was very interesting what happened. the wife wasn't there at first but she walked in when we were talking about prophets back in the day and we asked if she would sit with us, and she hard core rejected and got pretty pissed, but since it's not the first time i've been rejected, we just carried on with the lesson. as we taught. i noticed she would sometimes stop what she was doing in the room and listen for a little bit.. then keep doing something around the house, and by the time we started talking about the great apostasy, she was sitting down in the chair with her husband. we asked a few questions to her and she just gave us dirty looks and didn't answer, but you could tell she was still interested because she stayed there. She stayed all the way until the end of the lesson. 

Now i'm not sure if she is going to accept the invitation to pray that she rejected at the end. but i know that regardless of what she said to us, she felt the spirit. 

How many of us are like this lady and feel the spirit strongly and even listen to it, but we are too prideful of hard-hearted to act on anything that we feel we should change or feel we should do? if we don't listen to the promptings of the spirit, the promptings will slowly become weaker and weaker and we will further distance ourselves from where God is trying to help us be. I know I do this a lot as well and can do better just as everyone else! so this week try and see what you can do better and act on what you feel!

Also i forgot the cord for my camera.. so.. can't send you guys any pictures this week!

Elder Fuchs

August 1, 2016 NEW TRANSFER #9

New things happening this transfer! I found out i am training a new missionary! but he won't be here until Tuesday. but what i do know is that he is from bountiful, Utah. Plus i'm staying in the same area so im suuper pumped about that. Also i'll miss my old comp Elder Verde, he was a pretty sweet dude.

sooooo studying chapter 9 in Mormon, in the book of Mormon, this week and it has become my new favorite chapter ever created. It prretty much  just like confirms everything that we believe. So if you've been having some doubts about things in the church try to really read and understand it.

It talks about revelations and miracles and these kinds of things that still happen, and if we deny them then we are Denying who God really is and imagining up some other kind of God. Because if we believe in God, we must believe in the prophets of old who taught of him and made him known to us, right? and if we believe in them, then we believe in Jesus christ because they also taught of him. and if we believe that then we also believe that they and their doctrine are unchanging like they say they are. If we believe in an unchanging God and Doctrine then we must believe that Christs church today, if it were on the earth, should be the same now as it were in those times. ephesians 2:20 we know that Christs church is founded on the teaching of having a Prophet and 12 apostles. does anyone know a church that has that? and what about baptism? Christ himself showed us this by being baptized by someone who had authority when he walked i think it was 3 days to get to john the baptist. plus the bible tells us that he came out of the water, implying that he should have been in it. In Ephesians 4:4,5 it confirms that this is the only way to do so... sooo why the heck are there so many ways? lol.

If you are looking for Christs church nowadays, look for a church that looks like, smells like, tastes like, and does everything the same way that his church did back in the day. He doesn't change so neither will his Doctrine.

so pretty much if you believe in the bible and Christ, you therefore believe everything the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints believes and you should be super happy and get baptized right now!

These scriptures are dope! read them!

Have a great week, ill let you know some more about my new companion next week!

Elder Fuchs