I Dare You with Love (24 February 2016)

Hello Everyone,

What a weird but awesome week we have had here.

- Got pretty sick this week. Still fighting it.

- Working out every night hard. Yoga in the mornings. 

- We did a look-up of a person who had supposedly been looking into the church before. He oddly let us in and talked about how his brother lets us sleep at his house. We were super confused, and he then told us that his brother was very high in our church. We did not recognize his name, so he said he was going to have him come over. Wasn't home, so he called him. We told him our names and that we were new in the area and that we were trying meet the members. We told him we were from New Paltz, and he said that it was impossible because the New Paltz missionaries don't cover the area where he lived (we were in a different town). We told him we did, and he asked us what our "area cards were"? Well, come to find out, he is a Jehovah's Witness, and we got so deep into it not knowing that they were such that we had no way of backing out of it. So, we pretended like we were JWs. Quite a funny experience. We left a Book of Mormon on his porch so he probably knows now who we are. :)

- Right after the experience above, I was driving 50 in a 30 MPH zone (I thought the speed limit was 45) and got pulled over by a cop. He asked where we were coming from, and we told him we were missionaries from our church just coming home from an appointment. He asked me if I have ever gotten a ticket in New York, California or anywhere in-between. Said no. He looked at my name tag, thought for a second, and then gave me back my license and told us to be careful going home and to keep up the good work. God is good. That would have been a $300 plus ticket :)

- Last week we went over to a member’s house to have dinner with them. Within the house is an older man who is not a member of the Church. Well, 25 years earlier on that day, his wife had passed away. He was lonely, and you could tell he missed her. The head of the household asked us if we could go and pray with him. We did, and then we started to learn more about his family. We talked and ended up teaching him that he CAN be with his wife again, and we shared how he can. We taught him the plan of salvation mixed with the gospel of Jesus Christ. We invited him to be baptized on the very first contact and he said yes!  By the time we finished the lesson, we had to go to our next appointment and never even got to teach the family. But God knew why we needed to go over there, and it was for this man. Well, this week we went over there, taught him the restoration of the gospel, and he is now on date to be baptized the 2^nd of April.

God is a god of miracles, but he gives us this life as our playing ground.  This life is a training.  God never leaves us, we leave Him, and as we try to get closer to Him, He will guide us through this life perfectly.  Don’t think it can happen?  Try it.  I dare you.

I dare you with love,

- Elder Celaya

God sees the Divine Potential of Those Who Struggle (17 Feb 2016)

When you come to start to know God, you start to see the DIVINE potential of others. There are moments in life where you feel comfortable and think you do not need God. But there are moments in life that are deep and extreme reminders that we indeed do need Him.

I feel like my life right now is surrounded by addicts and their struggles. It's been crazy. In this area I’m in we are teaching a lot of drug addicts and alcoholics. In fact, out of all the people we are teaching, only one isn't an addict. It's so sad to see the craziness it causes. One of the people we are teaching was in a coma for four days in the hospital because he overdosed on Morphine. He did it again the other day, but didn't end up in the hospital. We were over there when he did it and we had to deal with that, trying to save the guy's life. We have been trying to get him off of it. 

We are teaching this other guy who was in the military. Decided one day to take on his captain in a fight. The captain beat him to a pulp. Doctors gave him pain meds and he got hooked. Got to a point where he was taking 6 vicodin a day, 5 morphine, and 4 other medications (8 each) that were pain meds, but his biggest drug of choice was heroin. Nuts right? He was homeless for 10 years living on the street that has the highest murder rate in the entire nation here in NY. Well, he has been clean of heroin for two years. We are working getting him off alcohol and cigarettes now. 

We are teaching another guy who used to be a crack addict and a hard core liquor drinker. He has to have a bottle in his hand every second of the day or he physically cannot handle the way his body rejects being sober. We got him off liquor and he’s just drinking beer (about four a day). He has a wife, two kids (16 and 9), and grew up in Yonkers. He's a grown man, but calls us whenever he needs help. We went over there the other day and he took us into this laundry mat where his wife works. He cried his soul out to us, saying he felt like there was no way out and that he wasn't a man anymore. 

These are just a few people we are teaching. I don't know why all we teach are people with suicidal thoughts and drug habits, but it's teaching me a lot. Like a ton. I have learned not to judge anybody. In fact, when we were teaching this guy, he said, "I feel like I have failed, have no potential, and that I am not a man anymore." I looked at him in his eyes as he was sobbing, a little confused about what I was feeling. I felt an overwhelming love for him. A love like I have never felt before. And I sat there for a minute as he cried, looked up at him and said, "Pat, I don't know why, but I feel an overwhelming love for you, so intense I have never experienced anything like this. I barely even know you. I don't think what I am feeling is the love that I have for you, but just a small piece of the love that God has for you." It was such a cool experience to feel that. I've seen, as I’ve prayed for it, God giving me a little bit of a vision of how he sees these struggling people...their divine potential. It has been amazing.

I never would have thought two years ago this would be my life. It gives you a different perspective than you can get anywhere else because you are 100% disconnected from the world.There is no TV, no news, no phone, no internet, no calling friends ... all you are left with is yourself and the promptings of God. It truly gives you a vision of HOW THINGS REALLY ARE.

A bit of bad news... we got in an accident two days ago. It was snowing a lot, and we slid across the road and hit the curb really hard. I hit my head on the top of the window, but luckily neither of us were hurt. We destroyed the wheel and the rim. We had to take in our car all day yesterday to get it fixed. It's like new now, though :) I guess that is what you get by giving two California boys a car in snow. Believe me, I know how to drive in snow—the members ALWAYS teach me because they know I’m from southern California. There was just nothing I could do in the situation that we were in. It could have been a lot worse.

Ugh, it was negative 5 degrees here on Sunday, 10 degrees on Monday, and 59 on Tuesday. Makes no sense, right? It was snowing super hard 2 days ago… we woke up and it’s 59 degrees! Haha, gotta love this weird weather.

I hope you are all doing alright.

Love,

- Elder Celaya

It's snowing!

Zone Conference Feb 2016

Miracles (27 January 2016)

Hello Everyone!

— We went and did service at this house that takes in drug addicts, those with diseases, and homeless people, and helped cook breakfast for them. The head chef was a recovering addict himself. Got into cocaine when he was 15, then tried other things, but really got into heroin. The amount of pain killers and the types that he was taking a day was unreal. Doing 50 bags of heroin a day, taking ridiculous amounts of pain killers, drinking, smoking, and doing other types of drugs left him homeless. He ended up getting married 3 times. His first wife left, and his second wife died from a heroin overdose. The third one was his gem. He has been clean of any drug for a year now. It was incredible to hear his story. With the more in-detail things he told us, he should have been dead. It is a miracle that he is still living. He just had a baby last week with his new wife. It was amazing to hear that he said the only way he was able to recover was when he gave his will to God’s. He said that he knows God preserved His life to give him a second chance with his new family and baby girl. It was so touching. This man was one of the most Christlike people I have ever met. He was so loving and genuine, and humble, because he knew how every one of those addicts and people without homes felt. What a great example of extreme change that only God can give us if we give him our hearts and do what He asks us (which leads to happiness anyways).

— We got our ex pro tennis player, Kenny, off of his morphine and also off of his anti-depressant pills. We have worked so hard with him relating the gospel to the game of tennis. He has come to church the last two weeks, the first times in the three years he has been looking into the church.

— We made this goal when I first got here to talk to everyone that spoke Spanish. So, if we saw a Spanish person, even if we had to pull over the car, we would go talk to them. Well, now we are doing this with everyone, Spanish and English. So we have been pulling up to people and asking them if we can give them a Book of Mormon. The different responses have been entertaining. We pulled up to this elderly lady yesterday and asked her if we could give her a book that could change her life. She looked back at us very offended and snared, "ABSOLUTELY NOT. NOTHING CAN CHANGE MY LIFE." It was quite funny. We have been able to give out quite a few using this method.

— We have been working out twice daily. Elder Hansen and I have been hitting the track, and then we have this intense 90 day workout that we are doing. It's by far one of the hardest workouts I have ever done. We are eating very healthy as well. It's really paying off.

— I have been thinking about how we can never come to know how Christ can change us if we don't have the faith to just do what He says. Some might think, "How can an individual that isn't here change my life more than anything else?" But I have realized that one can't know, unless they put their faith into trying, trying to do what He asks of us. It is only then that we can begin to see God working in our lives. Until we have faith unto works, we are doing this on our own. Faith is a lot deeper than we think, but it is the key to unlock the treasure chest of the life God has in store for all of us — in this life and the next.

Love you all,

Elder Celaya

Exploring in the Catskill Mountains

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"