2/4/2013 Mission Update - The Liahona compared to the words of Christ

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Coffman 

 Date: Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 4:04 PM
Subject: Re: hola
To: Janel Coffman <janelscoffman@gmail.com>

well i´m back to normal missionary schedule now so my pday will be mondays. last night i had my interview with the mission president and it went well. he told me some really cool stuff about life and my mission and it was great. he is a very Christ like person and i have learned so much from him. he really does love the lord.

 i am now in a different area with zone leaders. i´ll miss elder galindo and elder connolly (especially because they didn't mind carrying the toilet paper we bought this week jaja jk) one is elder wadsworth. he´s from ogden and i finally have a companion who likes football so we get a long pretty well. i guess you could say we have a lot in common and  he likes to work out so that's good too. the other companion who is a zone leader as well is elder martinez. he´s from the dominican republic and is super cool tambien. he talks really fast spanish but doesn´t have the notorious dominican accent so i can understand him most of the time. luckily he speaks perfect english so that helps too. he´s also a really good singer. we call him chris brown. our new house is one of the nicest in the mission. it is huge!! we also have a washing machine so that is pretty nice too. it´s a way nice house but i have to keep most of my stuff in my suitcase because i´ll be going to a different area in a couple of weeks. but i´ll be glad to get my own area and my own comp when the time comes. this part of merida is a little poorer than the last area but that´s ok because the humble people are the ones that usually listen.

i had some cool things happen for the past couple of days. we were talking to some kids and we decided to give them a book of mormon and when we did, one of them was really interested in it and he immediately began to look through the book. so i kinda took him to the side and gave him a little part to read that night and he said well is it ok if i read more? jaja que potente es este muchacho! i probably won't ever see him again because he was in a different area but i know a seed was definitely planted. well he started reading the book right there in the street and i was super excited. i don´t know if he´ll stick with it, but i hope he does because the gospel will make his life so better even though he is young. i was really impressed with how interested he was in the book and it made me feel bad because sometimes i think i take all the extra scripture we have as latter-day saints for granted. then that sunday during my studies i read a cool part in the bom in alma where it describes the liahona and compares it to the words of Christ. it says that the words of Christ will take us to the direct path of happiness. it is such a good comparison because it´s exactly what the liahona did for lehi and his family. sometimes, however, they didn´t follow it or they weren't able to understand it all the time due to their shortcomings as human beings and so it ended up taking them longer to get to the promised land. as is with the book of mormon and the other scriptures. it's so easy. we have it right there:a map to happiness. it also talks about prayer in this chapter and i know that is an essential part as well. so i invite yáll to read the scriptures more often and really search them because they have the information that will get you to the direct path to happiness.

we also had a way good testimony meeting where we went over by 20 minutes. the members here are awesome and its cool because we are really involving the members in the work now. although some of them are brand new members, they still have their testimonies and although simple, they are super powerful and each time they share it, it gets stronger.

well it sounds like everything is going good at home. i hope you guys are enjoying the cool weather because i´m loving the sun! if you guys ever send anything out here, could you send me a pedometer. i´m curious to see how much we walk.

Janel's note:  Thank you so much for your love and support of Elder Coffman.

Per Elder Coffman's suggestion, at our discretion, he suggested leaving some  of the personal messages to our family members out of this blog, due to them not making sense with not hearing both ends of the conversation, but we're keeping these messages safely for him in his personal missionary memories.