Elder Grilliot Saves the World Part 1

hey guys, overall, all in all, looking at the big picture here, i had a great week. 

some freaky dreams i had

i had some really freaky dreams this week, i don´t remember alot of the details, but i remember that in alot of my dreams the world ended, or almost ended, like my dreams were of problems of unreal proportions, like, epic dreams, legendary dreams, larger than life super dreams, in one dream, i armed a nuculear bomb, hid in a bunker, and waited until it blew up and destroyed everything, and i think people were trying to stop me, but i just did it anyway, and then i came out of the bunker, and i talked to my family, and then i armed the bomb again, and i went in the bunker like i did before, and there were like 3 minutes left on the bomb, and i was like, "wait why do i want to blow up the city? i like the city." and so i walk out of the bunker and disarm the bomb. weird stuff.

Earlier i had a dream about the british sherlock from the series, and henry b eyering, and together they were like the two smartest people in the world. and they made a time machine and got caught up in these shananagins and ended up breaking the planet into like 6 different peices. 

sorry that´s all really random, but that sets the pace for an email of epic proportions!!!

epic things

we started teaching this wonderful lady this week, she has goofed up her life in a lot of ways, she´s like 50ish and her kids are grown up but her family is pretty disfunctional in alot of ways, but she is ready to get some help and turn things around! her name is marge, when we explained baptism to her and invited her to make this promise with God and to be made clean of her sins, she cried tears of joy. She just touches my heart, she is seriously one of the most humble people i´ve talked to here in mexico, like she is just so grateful that we are talking to her, we invite her to church and she´s like "oh my gosh, really? can i really go to church? will they let me do that?" and it just filled me up, she lives up on the hill, and the hill is actually kind of the ghetto part of town, she lives very simple. after talking with her this week i was just so filled up and happy, i want to buy her flowers or do something simple and apropriate to show her that the missionaries care, send me ideas if you have any.

i feel like my spanish is getting better

i don´t feel like i´ve talked about the process of learning spanish alot, maybe just because it´s so slow and gradual that i don´t feel like it makes a good story, but with a little more time i feel like i´m getting a better perspective on language learning. 

It is really gradual, and kind of magical, like there are lots of things that i can do to learn spanish, but really you notice changes like by the months, like in a month i´ll be like "i think i´m understanding a little better, or talking better" but i´m not really sure how that happened, it just does. 

And so now the thing that made me realize that my spanish is a little better is that i realized that when some one uses bad grammer in spanish, not all the time, but with some things i know it´s wrong because it sounds wrong, not just because i read in a book that that is not how you do it, but because bad grammer has started to sound wrong to me, and i´ve started to be able to pick up on accents when people are from different parts of mexico, and i have enough experience listening to different people speak spanish that i can feel better if some one is talking cholo, rancho, or chilango gangster, or hick, or new york.

a quick side note about the chilangos, they are they people from D.F. the city of mexico, and they talk in more of a sing song kind of way, people here generally don´t like chilangos and there is generally more crime in the city of mexico and people are distrustful of them. but all the chilango members that i have known are really cool, i like the way they talk, and chilango food is cool, and i get along really well with the chilangos.

any way, yeah i´m understanding a lot better and getting a feel for things, i think in another year and a half i will have pretty good spanish as long as i´m dilligent in studies and humble enough to ask lots of questions.

we had capacitations this week

training that is, with president and the asistants, one of the asistants said some things that really inspired me, he talked about how to love and work with members better and i really agreed with they way he viewed missionary work and it gave me a greater vision on how to have a happy and succesful and love filled mission.

a thought about the preisthood

i´m understanding alot of things about the gospel better on my mission, for some reason i thought i already understood everything before my mission, and i know that i could make that mistake after their mission too, but there is so much to learn!

in church we talked about how the priesthood relates to the atonement and i thought it was really profound. The atonement of jesus christ is his sacrifice and his ablility or power to help us and save us, and the priesthood is the goverment of god, or the organization of the kingdom of God. and Jesus Christ stands at the head of his church, and through righteous priesthood holders he passes down the power of his atonement to help and save and empower and enlighten, He passes this down through the prophet and the apostles and area leaders and to stakes and wards and to families, down to the smallest member, that they can have preisthood power, the power of the kingdom of God on earth in their home, the power of Jesus Christ to heal hearts has been placed in my home because i have such awesome parents who made covenants with Christ and chose to be his. Like i want to say this right, I could say, "i grew up in a stake of the lord, or of the priesthood, or of the covenant" but I would rather say, "I grew up in a home of Jesus Christ" My home has been part of his kingdom. How cool is that?? I don´t think i deserve such a big blessing, here in mexico i see homes that are just falling apart, children that are exposed to all kinds of violence and drugs and sex and it´s just a part of normal life. freaking sad stuff man, but God knows what he is doing. 

mmmm. i have more stuff that i could say but i´ve already used a bunch of time, but hey! i´m going to call my family in a few weeks! yay!

see you guys later!

Elder Grilliot