This week has been a little interesting. We´ve been trying to find a lot more singles to teach so that we don´t have to worry quite as much about marriage papers and troubles. We´re still working with most of the other families that we´ve been teaching, but we´re really going to have to wait a while for getting some of them married. Geraldo and María have been going to church for months and need Geraldo´s birth certificate to get married. Long story short, They haven´t been able to get it and on the last attempt the discovered that his mother never really daclared him, so she has to do that before they can make him a birth certificate. The lucky part is that she´s still alive. We also have José and Dania, who will have to wait a couple months to see if José´s aplication for a visa to the States goes through. If it doesn´t go through he´s just going to go ahead and get married and if it does then his goal is to go to the states, wait until he can legally marry Dania by US law and come back to take her to the states with him, at which point they´ll be able to get baptised. He really just wants to get married now, but due to the thousands of dollars and years of effort on his mother´s part to get him to the states it would cause a huge rift in the family, which can be avoided by seeing if everything will work out in a couple months. If it doesn´t work out, he can just go ahead and get amrried without causing any problems in his family. Really the whole thing stems from another paper problem. I´m glad to be from an organized country.
Unfortunately it rained yesterday morning, although it stopped before church. For the most part Dominicans are deathly afraid of the rain, so they don´t leave the house if it´s rained recently. Our goal for the number of investigatores in the church yesterday wa 13. And we had 13 people in church yesterday.... 13 of the usually 70 members that go. Unfortunately none of our investigatores went, although we felt a litle better when we saw one of the less-active members we´ve been working with sitting in the back (which with only 13 people was a little more like the front).
Anyhow, Here are some thoughts that came to me while I was studying and old Liahona this morning. While I was reading an article in the Latter-Day-Saint Voices section the author made a refference to the spiritual "high-ground" offered by the gospel. Offten when storms, torments, or floods come beating upon the inhabitants of the Earth, the only safety can be found by seeking-out higher ground and staying there throughout the storm. It makes me think about the protection offered by seeking-out the mountain of the Lord and keeping ourselves worthy to stay there as the storms of this life pass by. I espacially thimk about the "house of the Lord built upon the tops of the mountains" in Salt lake City that can be found so close to our home. There is a vast difference between the altitude of that home in the mountains and this island paradise I´m in right now. Indeed, it would seem that the storms, waves, and cyclones, that assault this island with regualarity, could never dare to so much as reach towards those mountain peaks. There seems to be so much more protection there, yet as we take a look at the course of geographical and geological formations and changes we can learn a valuable lesson that brings us hope for future devolopments. Those great Rocky Mountains were formed through a long proccess of shifting and change. They were not taken to such heights in a single day, week, month, year, or even millenium, but rather through an ongoing and constant progress. Even so, we can see that those great mountains were once buffetted, beaten, and deformed by forces incident to the giant Boniville Sea, which stood in their midst before they came to be what they are today. Those mountains now stand far beyond the reaches and ravages of the sea. We see that, even here, on this island surrounded by the waves, mountains have been raised that stand as protection against the destructive and mocking forces of nature. Those mountains are far from the heights of those Rocky Mountains in the Boniville region, but they continue to shift, change, and grow through the passing ages. They adapt according to the cirmustances that surround them, and one day, even they might reach the great altitude and protection of the Rocky Mountains. An effective paralell can be drawn to the spread and growth of the church and and living of gospel principles. Through the years, the Kingdom of God has been built-up, fortified, and lifted in the lofty mountain tops of Utah. Great strength and protection can be found there in the numerous mountains of the Lord. The kingdom here is still found in the rapid and progressive growth of development. As streangthening and encouraging forces are continuously applied, the kingdom will continue to grow, and come to function with greater efficiancy and precision. What a great priviledge we´ve been blessed with to be a part of this great work.
Cuidense!
Elder Adam Russell Rich,
Ozama, Dominican Republic
