Week one of the CCM

 Moms note:  I will not be able to add any pictures to Matthew's blog until he leaves the MTC.  Upon arriving in Guatemala they take all of the missionaries' cameras.  I guess for safety reasons.       

        I can't believe my first week of the MTC is already over!! Time is seriously warped down here! It’s insane how much I have already learned and how you can change in only one week’s time! The plane ride down to Guatemala was quite the trip, the layover in LA was pretty rough and flying through the night ... definitely not the best idea ever, but alas I made it here safe and sound!

         The CCM (MTC) is in the middle of the city and so there are big fences around the entire thing and body guards by the gate. Almost every major store has at least a few guys out front with shotguns, watching the area. Crazy stuff! The actual CCM is really nice, everything is remodeled and new. The food is pretty good, Most days it’s just a variety of Latino food mixed in with normal American food. There has probably only been like two meals so far that I have had to stomach down. (Not eating all your food is like literally a sin) The schedule for each day goes a little bit like this.... wake up at exactly 6:30, shower, eat breakfast, personal study for an hour, language study for an hour. We then get taught by our teachers, Hermano Bonilla or Hermana Bruno, both of which are extremely great. We then have lunch, followed by a grammar lesson, then usually using TALL a computer Spanish learning program. We then have sports, which generally is basketball with my district. Except for one day when we played Futbal! It technically got banned by the President but for some reason we went outside one day and all the Latinos were playing, so we joined in and boy was that AWESOME! They are such kind and fun loving people, its just great! Eventually a guy came and told us we probably shouldn’t play because its against the rules, which we didn't know at the time but now we do! Sad day :( I guess the Nortes, (North Americans), kept kicking the Latinos and hurting them too badly... we Nortes just need to practice the worlds greatest game more I suppose!! After sports we have dinner, followed by teaching our investigator, who is one of our teachers. The very first time you teach, two days after you get here you teach in only Spanish, it’s insane!! You have zero idea what to say but you just rely on the Spirit and go with it! Our lessons have improved a lot ever since! After teaching we get refreshments, usually cookies and milk, so that we have a chance to talk to the Latinos. Pretty much every meal you are required to go sit with the Latinos so that you can work on your Spanish. Sometimes it’s awesome, usually it’s just embarrassing! haha We then plan as a companionship and go to bed, promptly at 10:30! Every single day you are dead tired but that just means you are giving it your all! That’s about it for the schedule...  

Some of the best experiences so far have been...

- We pray soooo much, it’s crazy. You think missionaries are always exaggerating about the amount of times they pray? They aren’t! Prayer is such an amazing gift from God and so we try to use it constantly down here in the CCM.

-  We listened to a talk on Sunday, which, by the way, the first week here you have to prepare a talk in all Spanish for Sacrament meeting. But anyway we were listening to a talk given to the MTC in Provo by Elder Scott and it was such a blessing to me. He talked about God answering our prayers and how sometimes we get a strong answer, sometimes we get a stupor of thought if what we are asking for is wrong, and SOMETIMES we have to ACT in FAITH and we will get our answer later in life. Sounds kinda familiar eh? Probably because this was something I really struggled with and talked about a lot during my farewell talk!! Neat stuff!

-  Another cool experience was last night my district, who are totally awesome, got together to discuss our weekly Spanish goals and stuff.  My expectation for the meeting was that it would be five minutes, and we would mess around for the rest of the time we had. I couldn't have been more wrong. We discussed our goals but then starting talking about being here and it just slowly turned into this testimony meeting that I was totally bawling over. I had been praying to be able to feel the Spirit stronger at the CCM and boy did I get an answer! Elder Hale from Draper and Elder Laing from Provo gave the best testimonies ever! Laing talked about how we were all stressing so much about our Spanish, when we really should be striving to learn more about the gospel each day. It was just what I needed to hear because I was stressing a ton about my Spanish and letting it consume my personal study time. Not good. We study the gospel our entire lives and still don't fully understand it, while Spanish is something one can practically master within a year of being here!

- We also watched a sick video from Elder Holland, the gospel guru himself, and he taught that as a missionary, all we want is for our investigators to read the scriptures more fervently, pray with more conviction, study with more purpose, love others with more Christ like love, etc. ... but, instead of converting others, we must convert ourselves first, by doing everything we want our investigators do first. It really struck home with me and made me realize that all of the basic principles of the gospel I could do with more purpose, more love and more conviction. I need to convert myself fully first.

- Last cool experience, when you first get here, you get told about a million rules, and to be honest, a lot of them seem pretty dumb from the beginning, but eventually you learn that it’s through obedience that you are able to learn and grow more here in the CCM. Elder Laing shared a quote last night in our "testimony meeting" that said: Obedience brings blessings. Exact obedience brings miracles. Awesome stuff. I am now trying to be exactly obedient in everything I do here. It’s vital for us to grow as much as we can in the short 6 weeks we are here.

         Sooo, taking one from my sister’s book, my challenge for all you loved ones at home, find something you do each day and do it with exact obedience, like for example, get on both knees on the floor by your bed each night for prayer. Not in your bed, not laying down, not half kneeling. Just do it with exact obedience and I promise you will be blessed for it.

That is about it for the week, I love you all and I pray for you each night!

Elder Crump

Let the Adventures Begin...

Before Matthew left for the Guatemala MTC we went to the Jordan River Temple to take a few pictures then went out to dinner.  His flight left at 8:30 on July 22nd.  He gave us all a hug, shed just a few tears and headed off, excited to get going.  He was flying to LA with at least 25 other missionaries.

Here is a copy of Matthew's "Farewell" talk.  It is the written version . . . the actual talk was altered a bit.

Farewell Talk

20 July 2014

            Good morning brothers and sisters… I am glad you could all be here today… today I am going to talk to you a little about the first principles and ordinances of the gospel…. I pray that I can speak with the spirit and be able to share the message I have prepared… I also pray that my dear brother will not have his usual red bench lines across his forehead by the time I’m done today… lolz.

            So the first principles and ordinances of the gospel are taught to us from a very young age..  the only problem is that not everyone realizes what the first principles actually are… So I would like to read you the fourth article of faith..

“We believe in the first principles and ordinances of the gospel are, first; faith in the lord Jesus Christ, second; repentance, third; baptism for the remission of sins, fourth; laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost…”

These are called the FIRST principles and ordinances of the gospel for a reason… this is what our gospel is based on… each day we need to strive to live what these principles teach… as a missionary your purpose is too…

”Invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and his atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end…”

So as you can tell the principles are very important in our lives… it is also essential for me as a missionary to fully understand and have a strong testimony about the first principles and ordinances of the gospel as it is my purpose to teach others about…

As such I would like to share a little about each of these principles and how I was able to gain a personal testimony of each of them…

First I would like to talk about faith…. Faith is something we all must have and strive to keep throughout our life time…  The Apostle Paul stated that faith is “ the assurance of things hoped for, which are not seen.” 

As a child, faith is hammered into us in Primary… one of the lessons taught is that praying isn’t of much use to use without having the faith that what we desire can actually be given… this is where I believe my first seeds of faith were planted… growing up, my family, and my sister in particular, lost important things to her quite often… she would look for it, have my mom look for it (usually a guaranteed find) but if not, the stakes would go up to a “family search time”. I can remember numerous occasions where once we were asked to help in the search, I, being a sneaky little kid, would get down on my hands and knees and say a simple prayer to find what my sister was missing… this was almost always followed by quick success… although this seems simple enough… It has helped me greatly to have faith that we have a Father in Heaven, he loves us, and is watching over us each day…

In True to the Faith it says this about faith…

“Having faith in Jesus Christ means relying completely on him… trusting in his infinite power, intelligence and love. It includes believing in his teachings. It means that even though you do not understand all things, he does.”

One of my favorite scriptures is in Proverbs 3, and it simply says, “Trust In The Lord.” I love that because your life is going to get chaotic, and you think you wont have enough faith to get through your current trial, but all we have to do is trust in the Lord, because he truly does know all things, and is doing it for our benefit….

I would like to quickly share a second story about my experience gaining a testimony of the Book of Mormon and how I realized that exercising faith was vital in that search…..

After you get your mission call, one of the things you are instructed to do is to make sure you have read and gained a testimony of the Book of Mormon, so I of course tried to do so… I finished reading the book a little before school ended on a Sunday… so I decided I should go and pray to hopefully gain a stronger testimony of the book…. So that Sunday I planned to go up to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple after I was done with work and pray to my Heavenly Father for a witness….

So once I got off work I drove up to the parking lot, got on my knees in the back seat of the car and asked Heavenly Father if the book I was holding was true… I knelt there for awhile… but eventually my knees starting hurting, waiting for my answer.. so I sat in my seat and just looked over the valley as I thought and waited more… but nothing ever came. I just felt like my same old self… eventually I left, and went home really scared and saddened…. Here I was about to leave to go down to El Salvador to teach about the Book of Mormon that I didn’t even know was true myself!

I quickly scheduled an appointment with the bishop to see what he had to say about the matter… I met with him later that week and the gist of what he said to me was, “Matthew you already have a testimony of the Book of Mormon, you just need to have some faith!”

I sat there a little frustrated as I wanted to argue with the bishop that I didn’t think it would hurt Heavenly Father much to give me that awesome feeling that so many people often talk about…. But you don’t really argue with a bishop so I left…

A few days later I finally got my answer as I was in church listening to the music… Heavenly Father had blessed me with a testimony of the Book of Mormon, I knew that. And I may not have a perfect knowledge, so I needed to exercise some faith. A quote that my buddy, Hunner,  I believe shared last time he spoke in church…

“You may not know everything, but you know enough” that Elder Neil Anderson shared.

I was really glad I had that experience because it taught me a lot and I know that it will help me as I testify to others of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon throughout my mission.

So next I would like to talk about repentance through the atonement… my favorite story that best exemplifies repentance is that of Enos is the Book of Mormon. Enos had a change of heart and knew that he needed to repent for the life he had previously lived, so he went out hunting and knelt down to pray…

“Open scriptures to ENOS”

I really liked that scripture, especially the verse that states that Enos was forgiven of his sins because of the faith he had… thus repentance is the SECOND principle and ordinance of the gospel because we must have faith that repenting will actually do something for us!

I asked my sister who is serving in Argentina right now what she thought I should say regarding repentance and she wrote back quite a bit.. she being quite the writer and loves sharing her thoughts… She said,

“”What I have found is that it is really just a change in ourselves we are willing to make. I don´t think we have ever lived a perfect day in our lives. Every day we make mistakes. Thus, every day, repentance should be a part of our lives. You can read more all about it in Preach My Gospel. It´s great””

I thought it was interesting the view she had… its generally the big things we do that we instantly think goes hand in hand with repentance, but it can also be viewed as a tool we use to better ourselves each and every day. So I would challenge all of you, as you pray each night, to carefully go over the things you feel as a person you need to improve, and work on making one of your weaknesses, a strength, by the atonement…. We came to this life to learn and grow, and by changing one thing each day through use of repentance, we will become the best person we can become by the time we return to our Heavenly Father…

FINALLY I would like to talk about baptism and receiving the Holy Ghost… the third and fourth principles and ordinance of the gospel…

Baptism is the first covenant we make with our Heavenly Father, and we can only do so once we have enough faith and have made full use of the atonement. When we are baptized, we covenant to take upon ourselves the name of Jesus Christ, always remember him and keep his commandments. This is renewed every time we take the sacrament. I have received a witness of the sacred power of baptism by going to the temple and doing baptisms for the dead… While doing that work you can always feel the spirit and the warmth you feel is like nothing else, so as if we don’t get reminded enough,,, go to the temple!!!

So after we are baptized we get the blessing of the Holy Ghost. I really like what Preach My Gospel says about the Holy Ghost…

“The Holy Ghost provides the power by which we teach and learn. The gift of the Holy Ghost is one of our Heavenly Father’s most precious gifts. Through the power of the Holy Ghost we can feel of God’s love and directions for us. The gift is a foretaste of eternal joy and a promise of eternal life”

That’s such a powerful statement to me, especially that the gift of the Holy Ghost is a foretaste of eternal joy. I am very excited to share such a promising message with the people I will be serving…

The Holy Ghost does a whole variety of things for different people. Some people have it as their constant companion. Some are calmed and kept at peace through it, and others are guided or warned from spiritual and physical danger.

For me personally, the Holy Ghost has made a significant impact on life and Real quickly I want to share how the Holy Ghost has been to comfort and reassure me when I need it the most…

The Holy Ghost, for me, has become essential for knowing that serving a mission is what God really wants of me. While I was preparing to turn in my papers, I thought a lot about my decision and couldn’t really get the confirmation I was searching for… Instead I made the choice to serve, from the beginning, mostly off of what I thought was right… I then later got my call and felt the Holy Ghost witness to me that YES a mission was for me and I had made the right choice. Sooo, Anyone that is struggling to make big life decisions, know that Christ does care about what you decide… and even if you don’t get that overwhelming feeling of reassurance, continue to search things out yourself, make a decision and then see if you get that peaceful feeling through the Holy Ghost, telling you that what you have done is the right decision. I promise it will come. Life is about making big decisions and learning from them… the Holy Ghost won’t just tell you right from wrong every time. Just put faith in Christ and eventually you will get the confirmation from the Holy Ghost that the decision you made was right… or else it was wrong, but you probably have learned a valuable lesson in the mean time. And that’s how God works…

Alrighty……in closing I would like to bear testimony that I know that the first principles are a true. God based his gospel after Faith, Repentance, Baptism and The Holy Ghost because they are an essential part of our lives.

I am grateful for the opportunity to share these truths with the people in El Salvador and I know it can change peoples’ lives.

I know President Monson is a living prophet of God and if we listen to the messages he shares, we will truly blessed.

I know the Book of Mormon to be true, and as long as you exercise a little faith, you can gain a witness of anything you are searching for…

I’m so thankful for the opportunity to grow up in the ward I have. Everyone one of these boys have helped to make me the person I am today and I am truly grateful for it. I couldn’t be more proud to call these guys my brothers.

I would also like to say how much I love my brother. I’m grateful to be around such an awesome guy all the time.. He’s gonna be an amazing missionary someday. My sister, for the perfect missionary example she is. For my mom and the unconditional love she has always given me. And finally for my dad and the amazing priesthood holder he is. What a blessing that has been to have a home centered around the power of God on Earth…

I’m grateful to speak to you all of you today, and I can’t wait to be standing here again in another two years!

I say these things in the name…