Deny Yourselves of All Ungodliness (Moroni 10:32)

Hola again familia,

To explain the photos, I received a package this week and could not have been happier to see that it was sweet bread from Penny! Elder Barajas and I just feasted. So so good! The other is a picture of La Fiesta Patrias that our ward had. It was a great party to celebrate the independence of all the Latin American countries. It was on Friday and was a good time. Food from 10 or 12 different countries.

Hope that you are all doing well! Thank you for your prayers and love. Looks like everyone has been pretty busy but happy. We have Elder Ellis coming this week to tour our mission. We are very excited for this! We spent all day today doing a mission wide service project in which we cleaned and dejunked (is that a real word or just used in our family?) and organized everything the mission owned. We get to have a Zone Conference with him on Friday. I am really excited for that. He asked President Ashton to have all of us missionaries prepare a five minute talk on Luke 9:23-25. I have really enjoyed that assignment and taken quite a bit of time. I entitled my talk "Deny Yourselves of All Ungodliness". On Friday in the Zone Conference, Elder Ellis will call out a few missionaries at random to give their talks. Should be fun. I will write mine up next week it I have time.

Anyways, some things I have been thinking about recently is what I am grateful for. I have realized how much I take for granted and how true the saying is that you don't appreciate something until it is gone. Some of the things I am grateful for is a bed and brakes that work. My brakes went out on my bike because of a weird glitch and I had a few interesting experiences, but I brought it back into the store and all is well.

Something else I have been thinking about is the role of the Holy Ghost in missionary work. We have been having some incredible finding situations and have four new investigators this week. What a blessing. Thank you for your prayers, they are surely being heard and answered. I have realized though that if these investigators don't feel the Spirit, they are not going to progress in the Gospel or keep committments. Elder Barajas and I have been talking and praying and studying how to teach with the Spirit. In Doctrine and Covenants it says something to the effect of "if ye have not the Spirit, ye shall not teach". I have realized that this is because without the Spirit we are just 19 year old boys with white shirts and ties.

I continue to feel the Spirit very strongly in my life through study, prayers, and the Sacrament, but I have realized that this is not enough, I need to be able to help others feel it. So if anyone has thoughts, experiences, or advice, please let me know. The work is going well. My ward is wonderful! Our bishop is 27 or 28 (David, I think you can empathize) and everyone is kind and beginning to catch the Spirit of the work.

We are being blessed greatly and I am so grateful to participate in this work. I remember a testimony meeting we had as a district in the MTC. I bore my testimony that this work was the greatest work on the earth and that it has been prophesied since the earliest times in scripture. I know that this is the Gathering of Israel and it truly is a marvellous work and a wonder.

Things are great! I love you all. Elder Barajas and I have become best friends. We sure do enjoy the work. I pray for you often.

Love,

Elder Case

The Power of Prayer

Hey Family!

Thank you for your prayers. I knew before I saw any emails that you have been praying for us to find investigators because we found them. I am so grateful for the power of prayer and for the opportunity to unite our faith through prayer.

The first picture shows our apartment after we spent five or six hours cleaning. We got bed bugs. The whole mission has been getting them. So we spent all day Monday and Tuesday cleaning and vacuuming every surface in our apartment. They are gone now though and life goes on. The rainbow was just the other day. It has been raining a lot, which cools things off, so we love it!

We have been blessed by your prayers. We have three new investigators that I think will all progress to baptism within the next month or two. I will share two experiences with you. The first happened when trying to contact a referral. Elder Barajas saw someone that he knew and asked if he had time to teach him right then. He said yes so we did. That was Thursday. He then came to the Elders Quorum BBQ Saturday night, after which we gave him a church tour. The Spirit was very powerful as we sat in the chapel and bore testimony of baptism and the Sacrament. He couldn't come to church because of work, but he is awesome. Please pray for him. His name is Junius. He needs prayers right now as we help him overcome an addiction.

The other story was last night. There was another referral that we were contacting. It was from Salt Lake. They text us referrals all the time and we have to contact them and report on it. We had already stopped by Gerald's house four or five times and he was never home. He works from the morning till 9 or 10 at night. He would never answer his phone either. It was about 8:30 and raining last night, we were a few minutes away from his house and didn't know what to do since everything else had fallen through. I pulled out my planner and was flipping through it and saw his name. We decided that we would stop by but that if he wasn't there we were giving up and reporting that he wasn't possible to contact. We knocked on the door and his son answered. We asked if Gerald was home. He came to the door, saw that we were wet and it was raining, and invited us in.

We talked to him a little bit and got to know him. Elder Barajas offered a very powerful prayer and then I began talking. I was about to the start the Restoration which starts with "God is our loving Heavenly Father" and then goes to "the Gospel blesses families". But instead I found myself talking about prayer. I had no idea what I was saying, but I bore testimony of prayer and then asked what prayer meant to him. He then explained that he had attended a church once that prayed like us. He said it was in Mexico (the same place that Elder Barajas' parents are from) and said the name was Latter-day Saints. He asked if we had heard of it. We explained again who we were. He then told us that when he attended our church, he felt overwhelming peace and happiness (we explained the Holy Ghost and the fruits of the Spirit as found in 1 Corinthians). He told us that he was about to get baptized but then he moved to the United States. Talk about a prepared investigator. It was a wonderful lesson that was guided by the Spirit. Thank you for your prayers. I know that without them we would not have found Gerald. Please pray for him to. We explained the Book of Mormon and he asked for a reading assignment. He promised to come to church next week and asked if we could teach him again.

I know that this is the work of the Lord. I have born my testimony hundreds of times about Joseph Smith. I know better than every that he is a prophet of God and that he was called by God to restore the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the earth once again.

I love you all. Thank you for your prayers. I pray for you often.

Love,

Elder Case

The Tender Mercies of the Lord

Hey family,

Hope that you all enjoyed your Labor Day and birthdays. I am praying for you all and so grateful for your prayers. I spoke in church yesterday and my topic was "Maintaining a relationship with the Savior through prayer". That was a twenty minute talk and I was the concluding speaker. Luckily, I was able to apply what I learned while preparing and the Lord answered my fervent prayers and allowed me to express myself in Spanish for the whole time. One thing that I have been amazed with this week is that when we pray, we are truly talking to Heavenly Father. I have always known that, but this week I finally began to understand. When I pray now, I try and imagine that He is in the room and that I am talking to Him face to face. What a blessing.

After Sacrament meeting, Elder Barajas and I got to teach another class. We taught Gospel Principles on Tithing. It was fun. One of our recent converts asked if you have to pay tithing within a set time limit or if the important thing is just that you pay it. I told dad's story with trying to sell the suburban. It was perfect and brought the Spirit. I am grateful for tithing and the blessings we receive. When we closed, I bore my testimony and said that while the blessings of tithing are great, my dad has always said that the number one blessing is that it allows us to have a temple reccommend. I realized as I bore testimony of the this, that the verse in Malachi that says we won't have room to receive the blessings is really just referring to the temple and the covenants that we make there. It always goes back to the temple.

Well, as you can see from the pictures, we had the opportunity of having another baptism. The two that were baptized were Vincent and Karla. They are brother and sister. Karla is 15 and she was the first lesson I ever taught. My first day in the field we went to her house and Elder Barajas had me extend the baptismal commitment for September 8. She followed through. Her brother Vincent is a tender mercy. He has Down Syndrome and is Isaac's twin. Isaac is much more advanced than Vincent, but Vincent is bilingual when it comes to hearing. Can't really communicate. He loves church and everyone there loves him. When he smiles, everyone instantly is in a good mood. He just follows Elder Barajas and I around at church. I was the one that bapized him and it brought a flood of emotion. I thought of Isaac and how sacred of an opportunity it was to baptize one of Heavenly Father's most choice children. It was a powerful experience for me and one that I will be eternally grateful for.

Just to tell you how much Vincent and Isaac are alike, they had to wake him up from a nap for his baptism and when he got to the church he was throwing a huge fit. We offered him brownies and the fit was gone. It was hilarious. Oh we are so blessed.

Another blessing that I have been thinking about comes from my setting apart. Dad and David, you will probably remember that President Lewis told me that I would minister to those in my mission. I have already given a number of blessings on my mission. Two of them have been in Spanish. I have continued to find through these blessings of just how much the Lord loves us. I know you will all make fun of me from this, but to quote myself, I spoke of given blessing in my farewell talk and how everytime I gave a blessing I would always feel prompted to express to the person how much Heavenly Father loves us and that when I would, the Spirit would come. This is still true. I have thought about it and I realized that it is true because one of the roles of the Holy Ghost is to help us feel that love which often comes in the form of comfort. When we are told that we are loved with a perfect love by the Creator of all things, the Comforter comes and bears witness to our souls that it is true.

Well good things have been happening, we need more people to teach. Please pray for that. That we can develop the faith to find.

I love you all. This work is true.

Love,

Elder Case

The Keystone of Our Religion

Hola otra vez familia!

I hope you all are doing well and know that I am praying for you and am grateful for your prayers and support. Sounds like everyone has been busy. Mary and Craig in Florida, and baby blessings in Utah. What great blessings. I wish so much that those who I come in contact with could understand just how greatly our family has been blessed by the Gospel. I was teaching a less active family the other day and trying to get them to understand the importance of nightly prayer and scriptures as a family. I could tell that they weren't completely understanding so I finally just explained that all of my older brothers served missions and that all of my older siblings are sealed in the temple. They began to understand. We have been so blessed. It reminds me of Alma 37:6-7 

 6 Now ye may suppose that this is ^afoolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by ^bsmall and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.

7 And the Lord God doth work by ^ameans to bring about his great and eternal purposes; and by very ^bsmall means the Lord doth ^cconfound the wise and bringeth about the salvation of many souls.

Prayer and scriptures seems almost too simple and thus it is easy to justify. But we learn here that it is one of the means by which God works to bring about his great and eternal purposes.

Anyways, I am loving it here! It was Elder Barajas' birthday on Thursday and we spent the whole day riding from place to place. By far the hottest day yet, and no one would open the door. But at dinner we had an appointment with a ward member but the husband didn't show up so we couldn't go in. We ended up eating outside in the driveway at this little table. It was a 4 course meal complete with appetizer and dessert. We loved it because they had to keep bringing the food out to us and we felt like we were at a restaurant. Good times.

Later that night we had a church tour and I was able to play the piano in the chapel. I have been using the piano more than I thought. It has been really enjoyable. Please let Mrs. Baber know that all her frustration with me wasn't entirely in vain.

On Tuesday night we had a really neat experience. We visited Martha (she was just baptized last week) to see how she was doing. She immediately began to unload on us and the ward mission leader. She has some really hard things in her life and it just about breaks my heart every time I am there. She has incredible burdens to carry. We listened and listened and finally she calmed down a little and we asked if she had been reading and praying. She said she had and that it was the only thing that kept her going. Then Elder Barajas and I both reached for our scriptures and turned to the same chapter. We opened to Mosiah 24 and asked if we could read with her. As we read one verse at a time, we would explain the situation and apply it to her, but after a fewe verses, she just took over all the reading and the Spirit started teaching. Tears came to her eyes. She looked at us and understood. Just like those people, she had made covenants with the Lord and she knew through the power of the Holy Ghost that the Lord would make her burdens seem light just as He had done for them.

It was incredible. I cannot fully describe the feelingst that were present in the room. It made me understand a little bit more why the Book of Mormon is the keystone. I know that it truly does contain all of the answers because it brings the Holy Ghost into our lives. I just finished studying the book of Alma today, I have learned an loved every verse. The Book of Mormon is true. I am so grateful for the chance I have to testify of that book and thus testify of the Savior. I know that this work is true and the Jesus Christ does stand at the head and direct this work.

I love you all and am grateful for your examples and prayers.

Love,

Elder Case

The Power of Godliness is Manifest

Hi Family,

Hope you are all enjoying your time together for the baby blessings! Thank you all for your prayers and love. I was so happy to hear about the news from Mary and Craig. It will be fun to come home to yet another family member in a couple years.

We have had a wonderful week. We received two days of good rain which means puddle splashing on the bikes. When it rains here, we just plan for fun. After about two minutes, you are drenched from head to foot and can't get more wet, so then we look for puddles to ride through. It is a blast. Elder Barajas has been a good example of having fun in every situation.

Also, we had a baptism on Saturday! It was wonderful. Mary and Martha (names changed) were both baptized (mom and daughter). I baptized Mary (she is 8) and Elder Barajas baptized Martha. Many ward members were there to show their support, and the Spirit was present. They were both so happy. It was wonderful. The verse in D&C 84:20 has taken on new meaning for me. It is like dad also says, when there is a baptism, the Spirit is there because it is an ordinance and the Lord has promised that in the ordinances of the Gospel, the power of godliness is manifest. It was wonderful.

We had a number of investigators at church and it was perfect because Mary and Martha were confirmed! For some reason (probably because school started today so everyone is back) the ward was twice as big as I have seen it yet. It was packed. I was so happy as I watched the ward members come and introduce themselves and welcome each of our investigators. What a blessing we have to have our ward families and to be able to gether each week and learn and be edified together. What an even greater blessing to have our family and to have a home that can be similiar to the temple, to the house of the Lord, in its spirituality.

Elder Barajas and I taught Elders Quorum yesterday. We were asked to teach "The Laborers in the Vineyard", Elder Holland's most recent talk. It was fun to teach and to get to know the members better. I love that talk. My two favorite quotes from the last conference came from it. One is, "Why should you choose to be jealous when I choose to be kind?" That has taken on new meaning as a missionary. I now think of that as meaning I need to share the Gospel with everyone because if I don't, I am being jealous and selfish with the knowledge and blessings I receive from the Gospel. The other quote is something to the effect of, "It is not possible to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ's Atonement shines." I love the Atonement of Jesus Christ because it is how I can feel of the love of Heavenly Father. I love teaching about the Atonement because people receive a new hope. They feel of the love of God. I am so grateful for the Atonement and the opportunity to overcome the natural man.

I know this work is true. The blessings are real. I have seen some incredible changes in many people in just a few short weeks. Thank you for your support and your love and your prayers. I continue to pray for you all. We have another baptism in two weeks of two teenage siblings. One is an 18 year old boy with down syndrome. What a tender mercy. He is just like Isaac. I will write about him next week.

I love you all.

Elder Case

Guided by the Holy Ghost

Hola Familia!

Hope all is well and that you are all ready for school to start. To explain the pictures:

The one at the map is with just some of my boys from Freshman year. There was 12 in the MTC but only those ones showed up for the picture.

The group outside was my MTC District with one of our teachers. He was the coolest guy.

The picture in a parking lot is my trainer and my mom (as they say in mission language). Elder Barajas, my trainer, is the Hispanic on the right.

The last photo is self explanitory. I quickly learned why they said to only wear dark pants. We call it sudo de pompis. Elder Barajas thought it was about the funniest thing ever that I sweat that much.

Anyways, this week has been wonderful. Last Monday night, President Ashton called us and asked if he could attend our weekly planning session the next day. On Tuesday I had my first District Meeting in which I played the piano and spoke. Then we went back to our apartment and planned for four hours with President Ashton sitting in. The whole thing was in Spanish and the best thing that I learned was from President Ashton. We told him about to different women that we are teaching that have some hard situations that make it difficult for them to get baptized. He said that they would just need to exercise their faith to which we responded that it still might not be possible. He then looked at me and said, "Elder Case, usted nesecita ejercer su fe tambien." That was a humbling experience. But I took it to heart.

  

We went to a lesson with Maggie (name changed) on Thursday night. She is working four jobs and one of them is at IHOP where she starts at 10:00 Saturday night and works till 7:00 Sunday morning. We got there with a senior missionary couple in our ward and she just went off in Spanish that I didn't understand. After about 30 minutes of tears and such, I felt that I should share Matthew 11:28-30 and Alma 7:11-12 with her. I did and then bore my testimony that the Savior understands and knows how to succor her. It then continued for another 30 minutes of incoherent Spanish. I couldn't follow but I received the strongest prompting of my life to promise her something. The words were given to me. I didn't want to because I didn't think my Spanish was good enough, but I finally decided that I would obey. There was a break in the conversation and I look at her and said, "Maggie, I know my Spanish isn't that good. I am still learning the language. But I know the language of the Holy Ghost and He has told me that I need to make you a promise from your Heavenly Father. I promise you that if you will go to church this week and then get baptized the following Saturday like you committed, that you will find another job, that your depression will leave, that the Spirit will come into your life, and that everything will be ok." As I said these words, I understood what it means in the scriptures to teach with power and authority and that it will be given to you in the very moment what to say. The Spirit seemed to fill my whole soul and I know that it penetrated hers. She looked back at me and simply said, "I will". She came to church yesterday and she is getting baptized. I am so grateful for the Holy Ghost, for the love of God, and for His mercy which enables us to be better than we really are. It was an incredible experience.

The next morning we were knocking doors, and not having any success, Elder Barajas and I went to a hidden place, and he offered a prayer that we would know what to do. We both felt that we needed to go early to an appointment. On our way there we ran into a 23 year old man on his way to work. He didn't know his address but described his house. We found his house with his wife outside. We talked with her and found out that they had just moved from Mexico two months ago and were looking for a church to go to. We set up an appointment for Saturday and then went and taught them and they committed to be baptized next month. There are so many other experiences just like this. It is incredible. So many times this week we have been guided to those that have been prepared by the Lord. The Spirit has softened hearts of those we teach and carried our message unto their hearts.

I know this work is true. I see miracles daily. What a wonderful work to be involved in. The Gospel is true and Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Savior of the world.

I love you all and pray for you often. Thank you for your prayers and support.

Love,

Elder Case

Elder Case with the Mission President