BLESSINGS & MIRACLES
Date
December 4, 2024
Area
Esteli
Companion
Elder Dubon
BLESSINGS & MIRACLES
Elder Heckroth sent me a voice message to send out to everyone on Monday. Sorry about the delay, you can read his message below.
Que Onda! What's up, how is everyone doing? Sorry it has been a long time since I have been able to write an email. I am pretty short on time, so I sent my mom an audio message to send out. Everything is good, I am in an area called Esteli, which is in the middle of Nicaragua. It's pretty cold here, because we are in the mountains. But, I am enjoying the cold weather, especially as it gets closer to Christmas. I am in a trio, one of my companions is Elder Dubon, he is from Guatemala. My other companion is Elder Stocel from Panama. We are doing good and have seen many miracles here. A couple of Sundays ago we were able to help a family get baptized which was an incredible experience. This is a great family that we met on our second day here in the area. We opened up this area and were out contacting people when we found this really cool guy. We were pretty far out in the corner of our area, in the middle of nowhere on the mountain. We saw him on his farm with his cows. We introduced ourselves and started helping him with his cows and planting crops. He was really interested and liked learning about the gospel of Jesus Christ. We continued to teach him, his wife and his kids. After a while, we invited them to follow our Savior and be baptized. They said yes, and ended up getting married and baptized two and a half weeks later! The husband's name is Ezekial, he is a great guy and his wife's name is Maria, they are awesome.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints organizes its members into congregations geographically. If they have a bigger group of members that attend church every week, they are called a "ward". If there is a smaller group of members that attend church, they are called a "branch". All of my time here in Nicaragua, I have served in branches or small congregations. Here is Esteli, our branch is pretty small. But, it's a great branch and it's improving a lot. We have been trying to do a lot of activities. One of the things that we started was a soccer league. For those of you that don't know, I love sports. But, I am terrible at soccer, haha. So it's been pretty fun. We have our own team and play games on Mondays during our p-day or free time. Some of the other teams play on Saturdays. It's been really good, we have seen a lot of results from it and have 70-80 people investigating and playing in the league.
On my mission, I have also enjoyed learning different languages. When I was in Puerto Cabezas, I learned a language called Miskito. Here there are a lot of people from Puerto Cabezas that moved to work at the tobacco factories. It's been really cool to be able to continue to speak Miskito. Also, there is a big deaf community here that uses sign language to communicate. It's not ASL, which we use in the United States. I am doing my best to learn it and it's been really cool learning how to sign and communicate with them. I like how much you have to express yourself in sign language. Some of my favorite people here in Nicaragua are from the deaf community in Esteli. They are so humble, so nice and so kind. They express a lot with their face and you can tell if they are happy or concerned for you. It's really cool.
Spiritual Thought
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the blessing that we receive here on the mission and throughout our lives. Life can be difficult at times, because we all have problems. But no matter the problem, there is always a solution that we can find in the scriptures. One of the things I was thinking about this week is how obedience to the Commandments of God brings blessings. There is a scripture that I would like to share in D&C 82:10 "I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise." I like this scripture a lot, not just for what it says, but for what God is promising to you. When we promise something to God, he honors His promises to us. We can take comfort in knowing that as we show our love for God and keep his commandments, He will bless us. God gives us the comfort that we need and the help we need so we can move on and keep progressing. God will always come through for us. Throughout our lives we need to focus on what we are doing, sometimes we do things that make us move further away from the Spirit. If we can start with the small things, and work towards being 100% obedient, we will see miracles and take comfort in God's promises. I have been fortunate enough to see a lot of blessings in my life and I want everyone else to have the same blessings that I have.
The mission is great! I can't believe that I have already been here 17 months and only have 7 months left. It's gone by so fast. I will keep working hard and giving it my all.
I hope everyone has a great week, I love you all. Sorry I don't have a lot of time to write.I hope everyone is doing all right. The link to my Google photos is below so that way you can see the pictures I upload every week.
Adios
Elder Heckroth
Que Onda! What's up, how is everyone doing? Sorry it has been a long time since I have been able to write an email. I am pretty short on time, so I sent my mom an audio message to send out. Everything is good, I am in an area called Esteli, which is in the middle of Nicaragua. It's pretty cold here, because we are in the mountains. But, I am enjoying the cold weather, especially as it gets closer to Christmas. I am in a trio, one of my companions is Elder Dubon, he is from Guatemala. My other companion is Elder Stocel from Panama. We are doing good and have seen many miracles here. A couple of Sundays ago we were able to help a family get baptized which was an incredible experience. This is a great family that we met on our second day here in the area. We opened up this area and were out contacting people when we found this really cool guy. We were pretty far out in the corner of our area, in the middle of nowhere on the mountain. We saw him on his farm with his cows. We introduced ourselves and started helping him with his cows and planting crops. He was really interested and liked learning about the gospel of Jesus Christ. We continued to teach him, his wife and his kids. After a while, we invited them to follow our Savior and be baptized. They said yes, and ended up getting married and baptized two and a half weeks later! The husband's name is Ezekial, he is a great guy and his wife's name is Maria, they are awesome.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints organizes its members into congregations geographically. If they have a bigger group of members that attend church every week, they are called a "ward". If there is a smaller group of members that attend church, they are called a "branch". All of my time here in Nicaragua, I have served in branches or small congregations. Here is Esteli, our branch is pretty small. But, it's a great branch and it's improving a lot. We have been trying to do a lot of activities. One of the things that we started was a soccer league. For those of you that don't know, I love sports. But, I am terrible at soccer, haha. So it's been pretty fun. We have our own team and play games on Mondays during our p-day or free time. Some of the other teams play on Saturdays. It's been really good, we have seen a lot of results from it and have 70-80 people investigating and playing in the league.
On my mission, I have also enjoyed learning different languages. When I was in Puerto Cabezas, I learned a language called Miskito. Here there are a lot of people from Puerto Cabezas that moved to work at the tobacco factories. It's been really cool to be able to continue to speak Miskito. Also, there is a big deaf community here that uses sign language to communicate. It's not ASL, which we use in the United States. I am doing my best to learn it and it's been really cool learning how to sign and communicate with them. I like how much you have to express yourself in sign language. Some of my favorite people here in Nicaragua are from the deaf community in Esteli. They are so humble, so nice and so kind. They express a lot with their face and you can tell if they are happy or concerned for you. It's really cool.
Spiritual Thought
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the blessing that we receive here on the mission and throughout our lives. Life can be difficult at times, because we all have problems. But no matter the problem, there is always a solution that we can find in the scriptures. One of the things I was thinking about this week is how obedience to the Commandments of God brings blessings. There is a scripture that I would like to share in D&C 82:10 "I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise." I like this scripture a lot, not just for what it says, but for what God is promising to you. When we promise something to God, he honors His promises to us. We can take comfort in knowing that as we show our love for God and keep his commandments, He will bless us. God gives us the comfort that we need and the help we need so we can move on and keep progressing. God will always come through for us. Throughout our lives we need to focus on what we are doing, sometimes we do things that make us move further away from the Spirit. If we can start with the small things, and work towards being 100% obedient, we will see miracles and take comfort in God's promises. I have been fortunate enough to see a lot of blessings in my life and I want everyone else to have the same blessings that I have.
The mission is great! I can't believe that I have already been here 17 months and only have 7 months left. It's gone by so fast. I will keep working hard and giving it my all.
I hope everyone has a great week, I love you all. Sorry I don't have a lot of time to write.I hope everyone is doing all right. The link to my Google photos is below so that way you can see the pictures I upload every week.
Adios
Elder Heckroth
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