9/26/11

Family,
 I can´t believe that Katherine leaves tomorrow!!! Ah, two months for her already!! And I passed my 4 month mark if you can believe it!! OH YEAH! I am hummin right along baby. I love this work!
We had another baptism on Friday! It was great! The guy who baptized him is like his second dad and practically raises the kid! So he baptized and confirmed him. It was a great experience and I really enjoyed teaching him and working with him. We have so much more success with members and their friends because the investigator already has a built-in friend in the church and a person to help them if they fall. Both of our baptisms were from the help of members! So we do our best to work with them.

The work is going well. Really well. We have another baptism planned for this Saturday, in between the conference sessions!! It is the lady I talked about with the cheater husband. But she wants to be baptized and we are going to do our best to do it this week! We also have more planned for the month of October. Don´t worry, I´ll keep you in the loop! I hope everything is going really well at home. It is interesting to think that I´ve already been out for 4 months. For me, the time flies. Literally. I really like what I am doing. It is amazing! Sometimes the word fun isn´t the word to describe some situations in the work of missionaries, but the word satisfying ALWAYS applies. I really feel so satisfied with the investigators, and with myself when I see them progressing toward baptism!

Hah, it is getting harder for me to type and talk in English without saying Spanish words, so if I say something in Spanish or type something wrong, forgive me! Dad will probably understand. :)

Mom, thank you so much for everything! You´re the best mom ever!!!! I couldn´t have picked a better mom up in heaven. I know that I chose correctly!! :) I hope that everything goes well with Katherine on her trip! I´m so excited for her! She is about to embark on a journey that will take the whole of her, every single fiber of her being!!! She will have moments when she wants to cry. She will have moments when she wants to to jump for joy! And she will have moments when she wants to shake the investigators until they do what she asks haha. I´m very excited for her and excited to hear her experiences. I love this work. I don´t think that any mission is the exact same. There are similar experiences, but this mission is my very own. Ups and downs, ins and outs, with twists and turns at every corner. It really is a big adventure! And I LOVE it!!!! I am so grateful for a family who loves and supports me. Thanks so much.

Dad, I hope everything is going well at work! You are a huge example to me of a person who works hard! You spend so many hours working every day so that our family can have everything we need, and basically everything we want too. Thank you so much for your example over these 19 and a half years. I hope that I have made you proud. :) I´m so proud to call you my dad!!

Chris, keep up the studies and keep enjoying life! Enjoy your friends and treat everyone kindly. You never know how much of an influence you can have in someones life. Just a simple hello from you will change someones day. Remember to smile that big ol´ smile of yours a lot because it brings light to the room!!! I love you bro. Thanks for your example and strength.

Dave and Jac, I love you tooooooo! I have the picture that David drew in my room and the scribbles of Jac still haha. It makes me laugh and reminds me of the beauty of young children. :)

Well, it is time to work!! I love you all and will write you next week! Onward and upward!!

Your son,
Elder Michael Biggs

September 19, 2011

Mom,

Hahaha you make me laugh! I am taking pictures, don´t worry! I have them all on my picture card and will be sending it to you when it gets full! So you´ll have plenty of photos. I don´t carry my camera everywhere with me because I don´t want it to get stolen, so I only carry it when I know I´m going to take a picture or something! But don´t worry, you´ll have plenty of pictures in the future! :)

And Dad actually got the motorcycle huh? That is awesome! I bet the boys will have a lot of fun with it! I can already picture Dave on the motorcycle with his hair blowing in the wind. Oh yeah!! And Jac won´t even get on? hahaha that is so funny! At least you don´t have to worry about her then! Are you going to ride it too?

 As of last week, all of my roommates are out on their missions! Ammon and I are in the field already and Nate, Tre, Will, and Max are all in the MTC! That is so awesome! And I seriously can´t believe that Kat will be in the Philippines in 2 weeks! Crazy

The work here is going great! We are such a studly companionship and we work well together. We have our problems here and there because we are both alpha males (but baddd) and we are both stubborn. So there have been a few...loud moments if you kow what I mean. But we are doing great and we are loving every second of our time together. We have another baptism this week!! His name is Sergio and he is 13. He is a friend of a new convert family and he loves to meet with us. We are going to have his baptism on Friday, so expect more pictures next week! :) I love what I am doing!!!

There is a quote that I love by President Eyring: Yo creo con todo mi corazón que Dios está por bendecirnos. Dios hará el gran milagro si pagamos el precio. Los milagros no ocurren porque Dios quiere sino porque nosotros hemos hecho nuestra parte. Dad, you can translate for them :) I know that God wants to bless us. He has so much in store for us if we just obey His commandments and do what He asks! Obedience is such a huge part of the gospel. I am learning that obedience to the laws of God bring blessings. Some are immediate, some are in the future. But I have been so blessed these last few weeks here with people who are ready to accept the gospel!

Yes, I have finalized my Christmas list. Short and sweet. I want 6-8 new, paisley, SUPER bright and vibrant ties. That is my biggest desire. Second, I would love if you could send ¨Mormon Doctrine¨ by Bruce R. McConkie. I don´t know how much that will cost to mail though. So if you could put it on a flash drive or something that would work great. Otherwise, just mail me the book. Third, could you send me another camera card? Like 4 gigs or 8 gigs, whatever you choose works so you can have more pictures :) That is it. Not a lot. I have everything I need! Thanks for everything! I love you all!

Your son and brother,

Elder Michael Biggs

9/12/2011

Yes, Max is a great Elder, and a great friend. He will do great things in Ukraine and I know that he will influence a lot of people for good! Thanks for reaching out to him. I know that he appreciated it a lot! Wish him well for me, and pray for his success.

Nate Wooden got called to Japan??? That´s awesome!!! I´m so glad that he is going to serve! His family will definitely receive many blessings. That is so awesome. The mission will change his life.

The baptism of Eliseo was amazing (picture below). It was so spiritual for me. I felt so honored and so grateful to the Lord for letting me feel a little bit of what He feels like when a soul comes to a knowledge of the truth and decides to make covenants with the Lord. Missionary work is so great!! This week was a kind of bitter/sweet week. Another family was destroyed because of the husband. A family that we (as missionaries) have been teaching for five months was destroyed because the man cheated on the woman and she found out through messages on his phone. They have a little 4 year old daughter. I want to throttle him. He isn´t living with them anymore, and she is a mess emotionally. We aren´t allowed to give any counsel to women, so that makes the situation even harder. However, it is going to be a blessing for her in the long run, even though it doesn´t seem like it right now. The saddest part is that we thought he was ready to be baptized and everything. He even had the guts to lie to us and say that everything was perfect and he had no problems with the law of chastity. There is a lot for all of us to learn from this experience. First of all, get married before you have children. Second, get married in the temple. Third, stay FAITHFUL to your spouse!! Ah, there are so many families down here who have been destroyed because the men cheat on their women. It is so WRONG. SO WRONG. But, the great news is that we had an amazing baptism! Also, we got permission from the father of another boy we are teaching who is 13, and his dad gave us permission to baptize him! So we are super stoked. We also found another family who has two daughters who want to be baptized. I really feel the help of the Lord is leading us to people who are ready to listen. This week was amazing for me and I learned a ton. I really love missionary work! The joy I felt at the baptism and confirmation of Eliseo is hard to match with anything worldly- impossible in fact. All the greatest joys in my life have come to me because of the Lord and the church: my family, the priesthood, my friends, my mission, and many other things!

Mom and Dad, thank you for being wonderful examples to me, always. I am so grateful for parents who love and honor each other. Dad, thanks for the example you set for me in being the type of man I want to be. Mom, thank you so much for all the love and support you´ve given to me, always. All the hours you put into helping me become better were not in vain! So thank you :) I love you all! Que les vaya bien!

Mission Update 3 Sept 4th, 2011

Mom, Dad, Broseph, Dave, Jac, and my dear Sister in the MTC,

How are we?!?! ¿Cómo estamos? I am doing fantastic!!! We have two baptisms officially planned for September, with a really good possibility of more, so we are excited to see the fruits of our labors! I´m glad to hear that Katherine is doing well in the MTC and loving it. Of course Dave and Jac love school. I´m excited for Jac to be starting Pre-School and Dave in Kindergarten. I can still remember little snippets of my kindergarten experience. Great :) Chris, I´m glad to hear that you are enjoying school and tearing it up. Continue that trend, and email me of any stories that you have! (you know what I´m talking about, heheh) Mom, thanks for the little email. I´m pretty sure that you just send the box through the USPS. Not anything else because they say it won´t get here. So just send a box through them. If you have any more questions, let me know and i´ll ask. Dad, thanks for your advice. I really appreciate it!!

The work is progressing and we are finding better investigators and thinning out our numbers of bad ones, which is really good. It takes a lot of work!! But, I love it anyway. Eliseo is ready to be baptized, but we have to wait until the 10 of September to baptize him because of some stake primary activity on Saturday! Ah, we weren´t very happy but the bishop made us wait until the 10. But, that´s ok. I am enjoying all the time I have teaching investigators. There are so many funny stories that I could tell, but there is never enough time. So I write down in my journal little pieces to remember for when I come home to tell all of you!

There isn´t a lot to report on this week. Mom, I had Carpincho on Thursday (carpincho looks like the ROUS in the movie Princess Bride) and it was... ok. Haha. The meat was ok but there was a layer of straight up fat, and you all know how I feel about fat on my meat. Nevertheless, I ate it anyway. I´m figuring out ways to force food down and I am basically a garbage disposal. If you put something on my plate, you don´t get it back! You´ll be happy to hear that I know voluntarily eat tomatoes AND onions! Yes, alert the media that I like those two foods now!! My companion and I are low on money, I mean WAY low, so we put together everything that we had for lunch today: eggs, milanesa, rice with veggies, mashed potatoes, peaches, and bread with Dulce de Leche. We are getting really good at cooking up meals with the most random stuff. I feel like a real chef. Ok, not really but at least I can survive! Life in the mission field keeps plowing on at an unbelievably fast rate! It feels like last week that I got into the MTC!

I really appreciate all of the love and support and prayers! Thank you so much. When the drunk on the corner tries to pick a fight with us, I can feel the guidance and prayers helping to keep me calm. I´d be lying if I admitted that I haven´t wanted to fight a few people, but I have always been calm and smiled my way through it, so be proud of me :) I love you all so much! ¡Que les vaya bien!

Love, your son and warrior,

Elder Michael Biggs

Mission Update 2 Sept 4th, 2011

Familia mía,

This past week was a tough one! We committed over 10 people to come to church, but only 1 of them actually came! AH! It is so sad to see people miss out on blessings simply because they don´t want to wake up. Sacrament starts at 11 and people here still can´t get out of bed for it. It is weird to me haha. But, nonetheless, I will continue loving them. We probably walked over 60 kilometers this week, because we walked at least 10 each day. We had to find new investigators and make contacts.

The area we are in is the largest in the zone. Our area is almost triple the size of anyone elses, because the houses are more spread out. That means walking is inevitable. My nice shoes are actually holding up pretty well. I decided to just keep wearing them until they wear out because I don´t want to carry around an extra pair of shoes for two years, just to wear them on special occasions. And yes, the picture with the muddy shoes is pretty normal. If it rains, that is how we come home every day. If not, they are so dusty by the time we get back that you can´t even tell the shoes are black! Haha it cracks me up. I´ve never been so dirty in my life. I have a newfound appreciation for streets that are paved instead of dirt and gravel!

We are teaching a nine year old boy right now and he is our number one investigator because his baptism is scheduled for September 3. His family is interesting because they are all members, his dad has the melchizedek priesthood, but they aren´t active. So we are trying our hardest to not only teach him but to also reactivate the family. So far the mom is active again and she goes to church with him, but the dad is tough because he doesn´t want to make the changes in his life to be worthy to baptize his son. That is so sad to me because as a father it is his responsibility to make sure his son is doing what is right, and he is failing! But, slowly we are seeing a change in his heart, which makes me so happy!! If we can get them all active again, baptize him, and keep them strong in the church, I´ll be so happy! Just seeing people´s lives change for the better is something truly amazing. I really didn´t understand the scripture in Doctrine and Covenants 18 until now. There is a real joy in seeing people come unto Christ and be baptized! I´ll keep you updated on him.

The language is coming really well. I still make mistakes quite frequently, but I can basically understand what the people are saying, which is awesome because I´ve only been here for a month! The more that I speak with the people, the more they respect and admire me, even though I make a lot of mistakes because they can see that I really care. I have lost all my fears of the language, and that was the biggest impediment to me. So this last week I feel like I learned a ton! My companion is a huge aid to me too. We did better this week at loving the people and not getting frustrated with them when they wouldn´t accept our message.

I am still doing awesome!  I´m in a groove now and the days are going by so fast. I gave a talk in sacrament meeting last week, with 5 minutes notice. The bishop asked me to speak because one of the speakers didn´t show up. So I did! And I definitely felt the spirit guiding me along during my talk because I had nothing planned. The spirit is the biggest aid that I have. Without him, I´d be so lost!

I love you all! I hope that you are doing really well! I pray for you and think about you.

Tu hijo,

Elder Biggs

Mission Update Sept 4th, 2011

Mi familia,

I am doing really well! Chris, I´m sorry to hear that your foot is really badly bruised, but you are one of the toughest kids I know so I don´t feel as bad for you haha. I agree with dad; your foot will probably heal faster than 4 weeks. Nevertheless, try not to kick someone too hard during your muay thai practice ;)

 I have too much to tell that I don´t know what to say. The work is going well but the investigators are tough. No one wants to go to church. No one wants to read. No one wants to pray. Dad, you are right when you say that anything that takes away the personal responsibility of someone is usually welcomed for most people. They really don´t want to pray and go to church because if they find out that it is the right church, they are going to have to make some big changes in their lives. Last night we had a lesson with a woman who is a die hard catholic, and she utterly refused to change her life. She doesn´t care if the church is true. Her heart is like ice. It is so sad. I work so hard to help them understand, but they use their agency to throw away an opportunity to save their salvation. ugh. Regardless, we continue to work with power and love, with an eye single to the glory of God. My companion likes to argue with people about authority, and I continually remind him that we aren´t here to argue with people; we don´t have time for that. We´re here to find those who are ready and willing to accept our message. He is really good at arguing with people and absolutely destroying the foundation of their church, but it doesn´t help. The people leave with a bad taste in their mouths and our conversation got us absolutely nowhere. So, we are working on that together.

One thing that was really sad this week was that we lost two investigators who are evangelical. They said that they talked to their pastor and he said to stop taking the lessons and then they gave us a pamphlet. Dad, you´ll love this: the name of the pamphlet is ¨Los Visitantes¨ and is completely designed about the lds missionaries! It was designed in WA state and I think I´m going to make a copy of it and bring it home with me, just to show you how ridiculous it is. But basically it shows that we as missionaries don´t know what we are talking about and that we´re just scared little boys with heads full of garbage. But oh well. They weren´t quite ready yet. Maybe in time.

On a very positive note, we have a 9 year old investigator who´s dad is an inactive member of the church. He is doing well with the lessons and we have him committed to baptism on the 27! So pray for him! The dad is slowly warming up to the church again so hopefully this will help the whole family get back into the church. I love teaching him (his name is Eliseo) because he knows nothing about God or the church and his mind is completely open to the truth. Being able to teach so simply without him arguing is nice, and he asks such sincere questions that we can tell he wants to learn and grow. I´m really excited for him! We have a lot of other investigators too and most of them are progressing as well.

Life is so good! Vida es buenísima! God has so much in store for us and I´m trying to help the people here realize that God is already waiting, it is just up to them to do their part. I have faith that our investigators will feel the holy ghost answer their prayers when they pray. I´m loving my time here, I really am. Even when we´ve been walking for hours because all our appointments have fallen through and not been home, life is still so good! I used to take a lot for granted, but my eyes have really been opened. I am so grateful for the gospel in my life. I KNOW that it is true. And I am going to work as hard as I can so the people here know it too.

I love you all so much. Thanks for all the support and prayers!

Your missionary,

Elder Biggs