Praying IN THE MIDDLE OF A THRIFT SHOP (6 January 2016)

On a frozen lake!

Amazing week.

- Goal. So we have this goal that if we see anyone that looks like they speak Spanish, we stop whatever we are doing and go talk to them. Even if we are driving on the road and we see them walking, we pull over and talk to them. It's been paying off huge, too.

- Yesterday we were in a Salvation Army looking to offer community service to the organization. Well, I went to look around and I heard a lady speaking Spanish. I knew right from the beginning that she was from the Dominican Republic due to her accent. I went up to her and cracked a Dominican joke in Spanish, which completely took her by surprise that some white boy in the middle of a farming town was speaking Spanish and then knew jokes that only Dominicans get. It was amazing because we started talking about who we were. Turns out her husband is on his death bed who used to be a pastor for a different church. We explained to the lady what blessings of healing and comfort were, and asked if her husband would be interesting in having us visit him and give him a blessing. She said she would ask him. As we started to talk, I learned more of her situation. She was with her son who had been mentally damaged due to some medication he has taken over the years. I asked them in the middle of this thrift shop if we could get together and pray for him. So, we got in a group and prayed right there on the spot in the middle of this popular thrift shop. Everyone was looking at us. After, the lady was so touched that she looked at us and asked, "Can we now pray for me, too? Please?" We ended up saying a prayer with her and she would repeat everything we said when it touched her. So many people were watching, but yet the spirit and the love of God were so strong. We got her contact info and are going to go and try and see her husband. We have been trying to go visit that store for a few weeks, but God knew we had to be there in that store in that very minute.

- Kenny.  Kenny is a very interesting situation—I previously mentioned in a past letter that he is a man who was a professional tennis player. He was one of the best. He was a multimillionaire with all the fame and money in the world. Yet, he's been humbled. During his great tennis career, he suffered a back injury and the doctors gave him medication that gave him brain damage, ending his tennis career. We went over there the other day and had an amazing discussion on existence. Kenny started to break down crying, talking about how he realizes now that money, fame, satisfying the natural man, giving into temptation, drinking, drugs, etc...all of that is nothing. He says the only thing that matters is eternal life. He sat there in his guilt of all the horrible things he expressed to us, and yet he was having the turning point that would change his life forever. It was amazing to see someone who is so talented, who knows so much about the professional world, be humbled down in the depths of humility to truly see what eternally matters. It was one of the most powerful moments of my entire mission. His life is changing. He gets baptized in three weeks. I can't wait for his guilt to be gone because it weights so heavily upon him. Kenny is really an example to me.

- To finish, I want to share some thoughts that have been weighing deeply on my mind. This life - so short, yet so much of the future depends on what we do here. As someone who is human, I am stuck in the middle of this vast concept of reality separate from an identity placed on by society. Stuck with the reality of life, with the sting of the knowledge that every second that passes, death creeps closer to me. Stuck thinking on the topic of why we have free agency. Why we as a society from the beginning of time have been so obsessed with progression. We have 80 years of life on average. We grow up in a world where they teach us to follow our dreams, to fall in love, to go with that person in whom you fall in love with, and the two of you separate yourselves from the world you knew and create this new existence of a world that binds you together, something new that you didn't know existed before. You then add children into that reality and your world slowly begins to completely revolve around what you call your family. You teach them, you help them, you love them, and even if your family does not get along with each other, secretly you always wish they would. You build up your spouse, you have moments together where you feel as if you are placed in Heaven, and you have times where you all seem to enter into the gall of bitterness when you experience the misery of certain elements of life. Yet as you stay strong together, holding each other when the darkness takes over and the light fades, together you somehow are still stuck in this bliss, even in the pits of darkness, knowing that wherever you go, whoever you become, your spouse and children will still be there. You become one. Without them, you aren't you. Without you, they aren't them. They are your life. They are your hope. They are your heaven. As I dwell on this thought, the thought of the future seems to haunt me, coming to the front of my mind and taking over the feelings of joy when thinking of this family to come—that thought being the sure reality that one day the life I have now will be gone.

Most of us have less than 80 years left. Then there is death. We as humans are frightened by death because it's unknown. I've always believed in God, but I never understood how I can be satisfied with this idea of hoping that I'll be with my family again....or in what they call "heaven." How can I really know? At this point, isn't it merely a desperate attempt to satisfy the horror that would weigh on my soul if I were to realize that all of this would go away and one day vanish? Being satisfied with this hope would be my way of hiding it from myself so I don't have to think of such a grave thing because that is a very scary thing to think about. But if God existed, and is the God we know in the New Testament, then we know He is a God of order. We would also know that He created us, and that He loves us. So if He is both, wouldn't He give us an orderly way to obtain life after death? And since He loves us, wouldn't He give us a way to return together as a family unit? I'm not satisfied hoping that I will one day be in the presence of God, having eternal life with my family, by simply hoping that it will come by just trying to aimlessly live a good life. I can sit here hoping in the cold that a fire will start from here until forever. But I will never be able to light the fire until I have fuel. That is the only way to produce it. So what is the "fuel" of eternal life?

Let's then say that death is not the end, but you had no promises. Let's picture a life in the next, and what it would be like without the ones we love and a world where we are limited and where we suffer limitations and deprivations. How final! How frightening! Since we would know well that mortal death does not terminate our existence, since we know that we live on and on, how devastating to realize that marriage and family life, so sweet and happy in so many homes, would end at death.

A general authority once wrote in his words what it may be like:

"Are you willing to jeopardize your eternities, your great continuing happiness, your privilege to see God and dwell in his presence? Are you willing to make yourself a widow for eternity or a widower for endless ages--a single, separate individual to live alone and serve others? Are you willing to give up your children when they die or when you expire, and make them orphans? Are you willing to go through eternity alone and solitary when all of the greatest joys you have ever experienced in life could be 'added upon' and accentuated, multiplied, and eternalized?"

   

What a horrible world that would be.  Thankfully we don't have to ever live in that world if we choose to do what God asks of us to "make sure" our blessings in the life to come. And those blessings are so grand, vast, and filled with endless glory that the human mind cannot comprehend them, and the human body wouldn't be able to sustain itself in their presence.  I will touch a little on that next week.  But for now, just think of what this world would be like without everything you have ever worked for, cried for, smiled for, laughed for, loved for, and have ever hoped for.  It would be a world that even Satan himself would not want to live in.

I love you all,

- Elder Celaya

Our zone (two German boys right in the middle haha)

Christmas mission dinner

Christmas Skype!

It Just Gets Crazier (16 December 2015)

When you thought Harlem was as crazy as it got....haha… ah, what a week.

- We are driving along this road in the middle of nowhere at 8:30pm, going 65mph and it’s pitch black.  All of a sudden, out of nowhere, the car in front of us looks like it gets hit... hard. Then we see fur fly in the air like an explosion. Not just a little bit of fur, but a lot of it. The car spins out of control and we are left in awe wondering what just happened. So we pull about 100 feet in front of the car. We park fast, run out of the car, and there on the road is this massive (and I mean HUGE!!) deer twitching its way to its death, and in back of the deer was a car that was totaled on one side. We walked our way around the deer and went quickly to the driver to see if he was ok (from the look of the car, it didn't look good)... but thankfully he wasn't hurt too bad. Luckily the deer completely took out the passenger side and not the driver, but the poor guy was in so much shock. The kid looked like he was 20 and didn't know what to do. So we called the cops, calmed him down, and helped him.

- Found dead. So we had a member from our church pass away this week.  We live right next to a university and on the other side of the road and up a distance is our church. Well, this guy was attending the university here and then would go to church on Sundays. Well, rumor has it that he was found dead on a trail hanging by a tree. We kept trying to figure out more about the guy because we didn’t know him well, and we found out that the college was going to have a big memorial for him.  So on Sunday night we went to the college and listened to a lot of his friends and coworkers and professors speak about him. The guy was 20 and truly seemed like a great young man. People were confused about us because here they were amongst all these familiar faced college kids, and then there was us, who just seemed to pop up in the college out of nowhere. It was a great experience to be able to support the guy, even though we didn't fully know him. I guess I'm not in Harlem anymore, but the craziness just seems to follow me :)

- People - The people here are so nice that I just feel rude, especially coming from Harlem where you have to be straight up about things to get anything done there. Everyone here lives in old houses, with lots of farmland and tons of trees. It is like I'm completely in a different mission. I'm having to re-learn how to be a missionary. If you put me in a city with tall buildings and lots of crazy people, I'll know what to do, but this.....I have no idea. Haha. Everyone hunts out here, everyone makes their own homemade food, and everyone seems to be united as small towns. Then occasionally you get your "white trash" families who have 20 people all living in the same house who are all inbred, pack rats, and eat all day. But the towns are great. The other night they were having a Christmas tree lighting/Santa greeting/caroling for this small town. Everyone from the town was out participating—something you would only get in a small town. I love it here. I couldn't sleep the first four nights because of how quiet it is. I really haven't heard silence my whole mission, so coming out here in the mountains feels very odd.

- We do a ton of service here. This week so far we have gone into the forest and cut trees down and cut wood for firewood. We cleaned up a yard and got rid of tons of leaves and got all the scrap wood and burned it in a trash can (see pic below). We unloaded a massive pallet of bags full of pellet fuel for stove fires. Side note – everyone makes fun of my companion and me because we are both from Southern California and have no idea how to work all the burning and heating devices they use to keep their houses warm. They give us such a hard time. We cut up a massive tree that fell into someone's garden and took it deep into the woods. It has been fun and a lot of work. It really gets you into shape though.

- I've been going hard on working out every morning and night. We also have bikes and sometimes we will choose to ride those instead and race to our appointments to get a good workout in. My companion’s dad was a professional cyclist. You know what they say, like father like son, so it's hard to keep up with the guy, but it's great.

- The ward here is a branch and we have about 30 people who go to church. There is this member who is opening a pie shop and she made the most amazing gluten free pie for me. The members are just great! I honestly cannot believe how relaxed missionary work has been. Serving in an inner city my whole mission has been so much harder compared to this. I cannot believe this is how missions usually are.

- I can't believe how much I miss being in the Spanish program. I'm not used to this, haha. There are hardly any people here that speak Spanish. I've only seen two. But one of our members is from El Salvador and she says she has three families for us to teach that only speak Spanish. So tomorrow we are going to visit all three and I'm super excited to do so. I have this goal to talk to everyone I see that looks like they speak Spanish, even if we are driving down the highway and the person’s walking down the road. We will stop the car and I'm talking to the guy. My companion thinks it's odd, but you have to do what you have to do.

- We went to this place called Mohawk Mountain and hiked through a bunch of massive boulders. There was a very nice hotel at the top of this mountain with a massive lake and ice skating rink. We visited it with our mission leader and his family. It was such a challenging but fun hike. Then we had correlation meeting at the top of the mountain. Best correlation I’ve ever had.

- Ex Pro Tennis Player. We are teaching this man named Kenny who was an ex-pro tennis player who unfortunately was unable to continue his career because earlier in his life he had something wrong with his back. The doctors gave him the wrong medicine and it gave him brain damage. The guy is in his 40's, but has to walk with a walker due to what the medicine did to him. He's great though! We love talking about sports and going hard in life. He has a baptism date for next month. We will see how Kenny does.

- I want to share something that was spoken about at the young man’s memorial by his philosophy professor that I have been learning is completely true. He was talking about a concept professed by an early Chinese philosopher. He stated that when one goes out into the world to "find himself," he will never come to find who he is. It is only when he gives himself to others and then creates loving lasting relationships that he finds out who he really is. “Who he is" is the accumulation of all the relationships he has acquired. Who he is has nothing to do with himself. It is only when we turn outward that we find who we are. I used to think that by focusing on myself I'd found out who I was and who I wanted to become. But as I've been here trying to forget about myself, ironically, I feel as if I know who I am and what I want to become in life more than I ever have in my entire life, especially when I was solely focusing on myself. If you want to find who you are, forget you and remember others. I don't know how it works, I just know that it does. The ultimate example of this was Jesus Christ. How so? Here's a video that explains. We find us when we give. He was the true giver.

https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2015-12-1000-why-we-need-a-savior--a-christmas-message-about-our-savior-jesus-christ-asaviorisborn?lang=eng

What can you do to give a little of yourself to someone this Christmas season? Imagine if everyone in the world was focusing on giving instead of receiving. Imagine what the world would be like. We can't necessarily change the world, but we can change ourselves.

Sincerely,

Elder Celaya

from the New York Stake "Christmas on Columbus"

From Harlem to the Farms (9 December 2015)

Why hello family! So.....

- I'm getting transferred off of Manhattan island, out of Harlem, going about 2 hours up-state (basically the first time out of the city my whole mission) to a place called New Paltz, and I'm being switched temporarily as an English Elder, to be with Elder Hansen who came out with me into the mission and whom I love! He is awesome! He's from California and we are good friends. We have made the joke throughout our missions that one day we would be companions, but we thought it would never happen because he was an English elder and I a Spanish one. But, now look! Haha. Don't worry though, I won't lose my Spanish. We drive a lot in that area, so I'll have a lot more time to practice it more than I have ever had in my mission. That way when they switch me back to Spanish, all will be good :)  So this will be my fourth area (Yonkers, The Bronx, Harlem, and now New Pultz). This will be the first time out of the city, so I'm stoked. I'm going to try and find the Hispanics up there, too. All you’ve gotta do is find the farmers and then they'll lead ya to those who speak Spanish, is what I've heard.

- Shot again. So this week as we were walking home, another cop got shot. It was nuts seeing the crime scene. Only in Harlem. I'm going to miss this place - that's not sarcastic either, haha. You kind of get used to the craziness.

- Photos. I've gotten a lot of people saying the locations of pictures that I take are pretty nice. So let me tell you how this works. Manhattan is a large island. It basically gets nicer the lower you go on the island. I only have really taken pictures down south and not in Harlem because I’m afraid to pull out my camera here.

- Angel Dust. Saturday we were walking to go downtown to our stake Christmas concert. On the way there, this guy came up to us and starting bawling, asking if we could pray with him. He had a rosary hung around his neck. So we started talking to him and he would randomly start screaming for help and kneel down on the dirty ground of Harlem. We were surrounded by the guys who smoke and drink on the streets of Harlem and he was really making a scene. He was acting very weird, so we asked him what was up. Turns out he was on a hallucinogenic drug called angel dust. He was saying he had $10,000 on him and he was scared because he was going to do something not so smart with his money. So, in the middle of thousands of crazy people, we stood, huddled, and prayed with Douglas as he held up his cross. It looked like we were performing an exorcism because he was yelling in the prayer. So we walked with him and started asking about his kids. He kept telling us he didn't remember anything we just told him, so we had him pull out his phone and record himself. We hit record and talked to him on the video and asked him: "Is this really how you want your kids to see their dad? Is this how you want them to see your example?" We gave him our information and told him what to do so he wouldn't do something stupid while he was on the drug. We talked to him and calmed him down for half an hour and then we left. The man needed so much help and was on the verge of doing something very dangerous. We have been calling him throughout the week to see how he is doing, and he literally thinks we are angels that God sent down to save him. We are going to set him up to get into the addiction recovery program. It was just amazing because my companion had forgotten his metro card, so we had to go back to our apartment to pick it up, and we met Douglas on the way back up, and we would have never met him if we had brought the metro card to begin with.

I'm learning that when things seem to go wrong, a lot of the times they are going right, you just have to be patient. Just like this situation, and the next.

- We took a taxi to transfers today, and we were running really late. At first we could not find a taxi, but finally one came. We started talking to the guy and turns out he is from the Dominican Republic and he had received the missionaries before. We talked for a while and he told us he wants missionaries to come visit him again. It has been about 10 years since they visited him. So we got his information and sent it off to the missionaries who cover his area. We were frustrated about no taxis coming and about running late, but God knew we needed to meet this man. It's just been amazing to see how God works through little things and how most of the time when doors seem to be closing, they really are just beginning to open.

- Patience is key, but not patience as in waiting for things to happen. Rather, doing all that you can do until you can't do anymore, and then go to God and say, "I've done all that I can do, now it's in your hands." Then wait for Him to help you help yourself do things that are impossible that you could never do yourself. I love it. I love how much you learn out here.

God is there, but He wants you to want to find Him and learn how to do it. That's the beautiful thing about this life—he leaves it all in our hands.

With love and hope,

- Elder Celaya

Goodbye Felipe (I love this man)

 Sister Feliz (she's like mother away from home)

With Frederico Torro

With Sebastian who lived in Oxnard

and always brings us Arizonas

Thanksgiving in New York (2 December 2015)

Hello everyone,

Thanksgiving was awesome, wasn't it? It was very different on the mission, but different in a good way! We went to someone's house who didn't have a family, bought him a pie, ate it with him, and spent some time with him. It was great. Then we went to Felipe's and he cooked us a 20 pound turkey and a 15 pound ham...we made mashed potatoes and stuffing (with almond milk), and we spent some time with him. I love that guy. I don't think there is anyone I'm closer to on the mission. And he is a genius! He is a member here from Spain who speaks better English than I do and it's his second language...SUPER SMART. Smartest guy intellectually I have ever talked with. He works for the UN.

We are having a large Christmas concert here in Manhattan in Lincoln Square. Well, what's awesome about that is that a lot of the ward members go to Julliard as performers. So, this Saturday we are going to have an amazing concert. It is the best way to contact people. 

Yesterday, we were not feeling too good. It was very rainy, the people are nuts, and we just needed something to get us going! So, we went out and ended up knocking doors in this one older building. We got to talk to everyone except one door in that building. The entire building was Spanish speaking too, which was a miracle. 

It's getting cold here. The crazies are leaving the streets and going down into the subways. When people ask us for money (which happens about 20 times per day), we now act like we are deaf and start signing to each other, or start speaking in Spanish, and they just move on. If you deny them, they get very angry and start cursing at you. Sometimes though we give them some change.

I have been doing a lot of exercising lately. It feels so good to get back in shape. Exercising mornings and nights.

I have been seeing that life really is all about your mind. If you can believe it, you can achieve it, with whatever it is in life. People who really want to change, do. They put in the effort and will do whatever it takes. And by them just showing up, putting in the effort, they already win the big battle. Heavenly Father made us. We have divine potential. As we are (as humans), we are limited in power, but when we involve God and ask for His help, there is nothing we can't do. When we truly come to know what we are and who we are made to become, we start seeing life a whole lot differently - the way God intended us to. 

Love you all,

- Elder Celaya

Felipe with Pres. and Sis. Smith

with Elder Wadsworth

Central Manhattan Zone - "Central Man"