Las visiones son reales

Well its been a pretty slow week, nothing super crazy has happened.  We are all so happy for the temple. This announcement has brought a lot of saints to have the determination to live better lives to be worthy of a temple close by. I am feeling better, my cough has gone away. We have changes this next Monday, so if I dont respond to your emails it is cuz I will be traveling to a new sector. We will see what happens. I dont want to leave San Roque at all, I love it here. Well with nothing super exciting to say, I am just going to write down some thoughts that I have had.

What does it mean to be wise? Last night I was reflecting a lot on what is the difference between wisdom and knowledge. This happened after my companion and I passed by a 74 year old member of the church who is the Bishops dad and recently served as the High Priest Group Leader. I was so inspired by the wisdom that he has and as we left his house I realized that many of the people I teach here have a great wisdom that has inspired me.

Here in Otavalo, the education isn't that great. Of everyone in the ward, only one member has graduated from college, maybe a third of the adults in the ward have graduated from high school, and maybe half of the adults have graduated from elementary school. Many of the people we teach cant read well or cant read at all, but that doesn't mean they aren't wise.

From what I have learned in the mission, humility is the key to gaining wisdom. Living a wise life is a life where we can be happy with the few things we have instead of being unhappy focusing on the many things we don't have and want and the people here in Ecuador are such good examples of not having temporal things like money, cars, toys, nice houses.  Many of the houses I teach here don't have electricity, or water, or floors, we teach a lot of candlelit lessons on dirt floors.

But many times as missionaries we teach people that they will receive their answers in the scriptures, but something really cool about this sacred part of Ecuador is that when the people literally can't read the scriptures they receive their answers in other ways, more than anything through visions and dreams. Our Mission President taught us this principle this last week in a zone conference we had, that here the people receive visions, and as he said that I realized it is true, almost everyone we have taught has had a vision of what we have taught. 

I thought this is so cool, so I am now keeping a journal of all the cool visions I have listened too here in Ecuador. I would be happy to share some with you when I get back.

Love, Elder Roberts