Oreos, Push-Ups and The Imperial War Museum..!

Reading SZT!

Good morning everyone!

This is a small rundown of how the week has gone and of course, my week was great once again! Hope yours' was too!

Thursday: October 27th, 2016
We were in Reading today for another Specialized Zone Training. Another great one and then we had a great time traveling back home in traffic...

Friday: October 28th, 2016
We had our hometown Specialized Zone Training today in Crawley and wow... today was a good day! Learned a few new things I needed out of my Patriarchal Blessing and then had a good chat with President for a small unscheduled interview before myself and the Worthing Elders headed to Worthing.(I was the roaming assistant again for this round of exchanges) 

Crawley SZT! Yeah, I'm the tall one! :)

Saturday: October 29th, 2016
The exchange went super well... it was difficult due to the fact that we had a good morning of finding and then both elders and I had a heart to heart, bro to bro talk. Each needed some help and I was grateful to put the counsel I received literally the night before into effect to help someone else. Funny how God works. Anyways, had a good long talk with each of them and then  I embarked on another journey back to Crawley. My luck is great with my roaming exchanges... trains always are just messing around. This time my whole train got cancelled that was originally meant to go into London Victoria and it called (stopped) at Gatwick Airport (which is where I needed to change) and it completely cancelled. I then caught a train heading into Brighton and then got a train heading into Burgess Hill which then landed me into another train going off to Three Bridges. So another fun adventure haha... roaming exchanges provide for some great memories.

Sunday: October 30th, 2016
Today was a great day! My companions headed off to deal with some other missionaries that were struggling and I stayed behind to work with the Crawley Elders and boy was I glad I did. We had a lesson with an older lady named Sheila who had a stroke about 8 months ago and was paralyzed from her arm down on the left side of her body. She expressed that she had felt she lost her faith and was feeling low but she decided one day to pray and ask for help and that same day, Elder Chrimes and Elder Walker knocked on her door and taught her about the Book of Mormon. Then we saw her a few days later and we sat down and shared some scriptures on faith and how miracles happen by faith and WOW...!!! Get this... as we were sharing these scriptures and talking about them and promising her the blessings of reading the Book of Mormon and praying daily, I saw her left arm twitch (remember, paralyzed from left arm side down) and I was curious about it and then a few minutes later... all things stopped when we saw her focusing everything she had into her leg... her leg was moving... it moved! She lifted it up twice and with a big smile on her face, and with all of us in astonishment, she called her husband in to witness it also. It was amazing... miracles do still happen and there were 10 pairs of eyes that witnessed Sheila moving her paralyzed leg. God is great!

Monday: October 31st, 2016
Typical day of accounting with President and Sister Gubler and we headed home a bit earlier due to the fact they were heading to Budapest, Hungary for a Mission President's training...(that means my companions and I are sort of responsible for a lot of things right now... oops?) oh yah... it was also Halloween but it also wasn't Halloween... it just didn't feel like it and I totally forgot really that it was. Haha, boo hoo!

Tuesday: November 1st, 2016
Well, Elder Phelps and I were on Exchange again and today we headed to a Zone Training in Wandsworth as we were invited to attend. Wow... there was a portion that displayed an object lesson which involved Oreos, lots of push-up, and tears here and there. It represented Christ's Atonement and how some will accept and decline the free gift of His sacrifice and whether they accept it or decline it, He would still suffer for them. That was a serious start to the morning and then after a quick lunch, we headed to the Imperial War Museum(missionary purpose of course) and we went

Imperial War Museum Extravaganza!

through the Holocaust exhibit. We were talking about physical and spiritual warfare and how it is all around us and how the battle continues to rage on. The exhibit was very, very, very humbling... the stories you heard, the videos you watched from Holocaust survivors and also real artefacts and other stuff around it was well... astonishing. I won't lie when I say that my heart sank a few times putting myself into their shoes as I listened and watched their stories. There came a part of the exhibit where you literally sit in a small cubicle with speakers around you and you just listen to stories of those that arrived into Aushwitz(the deadliest concentration camp at that time) and it was nerve racking and tear jerking stories... I truly learned today that I have no reason to complain, stress, or be angry at small things that happen or have happened, or will happen to me in my life because these people literally went to the deepest of all despair and trials and yet, there were some that found joy in the hardest and darkest of times. Definitely something I want to go back and do again in the future when I return because there was so much more to do outside of the exhibit.

Quote of the Week found at the Holocaust exhibit: "For evil to triumph it is only necessary for good men to do nothing."

Love,
-Elder Rivera