Drew mail 6-7-2021: "This is the testimony, the last of all which we give of Him"

 

Brothers and Sisters, I am eternally grateful for you. I have been so greatly blessed by my Heavenly Father throughout my life and missionary service experience. It has been absolutely amazing, and I am so thankful for your love, strength, examples, prayers and support. I want each one of you to know that God loves you perfectly and has a perfect plan for you. That plan consists in steps of following the Savior Jesus Christ. I testify that as we do our best to give our all to Him, He will fill us with His love and power, change our hearts and make miracles for us and through us.

This week has been absolutely wonderful.  It's been very difficult at times as well but I testify that God loves and knows each one of us and I just don't have time to share everything that has happened, but it's been incredible.

I think more important than sharing things that have been going on is sharing my testimony with you. I want you to know that I have fasted and prayed much and worked much to know these things and I've still got lots of work to do and will be working to improve each day.  I know that Heavenly Father lives and loves each one of us personally.

Cada uno de nosotros tenemos un potencial y destino divinos. Jesucristo es el Hijo de Dios. Él sufrió y murió por cada uno y se levantó por cada uno también.  Él vive! Él puede darnos el gozo, cambio, luz, verdad, poder, y amor que todos precisamos al venir a Él.  Sé que José Smith es un profeta de Dios. Él vio a Dios y a Jesucristo y ellos por medio de Él, restauraron, o pusieron de vuelta todas las verdades, sacerdocio y bendiciones de vuelta en la tierra. Comenzó con él y sigue actualmente. Estamos en una gran época con grandes bendiciones y milagros por venir. Sé que esta es la Iglesia de Jesucristo! La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días es de Él y Él está a la cabeza. Él está trabajando con y por nosotros y nos va a guiar y ayudar a medida que confiemos en Sus Palabras. Testifico que El Libro de Mormón y la Biblia y todas las escrituras que tenemos son las Palabras de Dios y que nos van a guiar a Él si lo buscamos y lo seguimos. Cada uno puede obtener su propio testimonio y ser guiado en lo que precisen al orar, estudiar las escrituras, y actuar en fe. Hay tanto que quiero compartir, pero lo más importante que les puedo decir es que Dios vive, Jesucristo es nuestro Salvador y vive. Ellos le aman y le quieren bendecir, solo hay que buscarles y dejar que Dios prevalezca en sus vidas. Les prometo que grandes bendiciones están al alcance para todos los que lo aman y buscan. Testifico de todo esto y mucho más en el nombre de Jesucristo, amén. 

Que Dios les bendiga mucho, les amo!

~Elder Andrew McDonald

Drew mail 5-31-21: "Relationship With Heavenly Father!"

 

Hi everyone! I hope you have had a great week! Know that you are so loved by Heavenly Father and that He is aware of you, your personal struggles, faith, pains and needs! He loves you so much and will give all He's got to bless and help you as you put your faith in Him! 

We had a wonderful week, lots of great blessings and miracles, too many to count all of them to be honest with you but it has been incredible to serve and be witnessing these great things! I know that Heavenly Father has blessed and helped me so much and I am so thankful for Him! We were able to help Valentino be baptized on Friday, which was a great miracle and huge testimony builder that God knows perfectly what His children need and desires so very much to be involved, and He is, in each of our lives. He wants so badly to make promises with us and give us His love and power to be able to change, become clean and return to live with Him and our families forever and I promise you that as you put your faith in Him it is completely possible! I know that we can each keep progressing and learning and becoming better each day and that we will see great miracles and blessings as we give all we've got to Him! I'm praying for you and hope you have a great week, whatever I can do for you let me know! I love you all and know that God will bless you as you just keep taking one step at a time to move forward! Have a blessed week, you're the best!

~ Elder McDonald

#missionnotes #24 - Well Done!

 #missionnotes - Month #24 - Well Done!  

"And if it so be that you should labor all your days in crying repentance unto this people, and bring, save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my Father"  

D&C 18:15

Drew mail 5-24-2021: "God Loves YOU"

 

Hi everyone! I hope you've had a blessed week. You should know that you're incredible! God loves you so much and wants to bless and help you! 

This week we've gotten to see how great and powerful and important it is to know and feel that love. We were able to have a lesson with a lady who really was broken down and beat up with a lot of things that have happened and it was incredible to see the need she has for the love of God in her life. Each of us need that and we worked to help her feel that and feel like we're going to be seeing great changes and miracles happen with her and her family! I'm so very blessed and thankful for the great opportunities we have to be able to lives and hearts change and be opened when God's love is experienced. 

It's real and it's powerful! Don't ever forget or doubt that love, keep doing the best you can and love Him with all you've got and the rest will come little by little! Have a great week, I love you all!!

 ~Elder McDonald

Drew mail 5-17-2021: "Miracles Galore"

 

Hi everyone! What a great week this one has been! I really don't have time to tell you everything, but we've had some great blessings!! We've been finding some great people to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with and we had an amazing experience with 2 people in one lesson where we felt prompted to give them baptismal dates for the 29^th of May and the 5th of June! Prayers for them would be incredible so that we can keep seeing miracles and help them be baptized! Their names are Maria and Valentino and I'm very grateful to be serving where I am when I am!

I've had lots of thoughts and feelings going through me recently and I've been recognizing how blessed I have been by God throughout all of this and how important the Gospel of Jesus Christ is, and having a personal testimony and relationship with Him is to our spiritual survival and wellbeing! I know God lives and loves you and that we have a prophet on the earth today thanks to a restoration of the fulness of the truth! It can be so easy to get distracted or caught up in the focus/things of the world and it is so important we can learn to be and live like Christ so we can be with our families forever! I hope you have a great week and know that you are loved! Just keep trying to do your best each day and know that as you increase your faith in Christ you will be blessed with miracles! 

P.s. if you haven't heard or reviewed President Nelson's talk about faith from this last General Conference recently you should do that and apply it!   Love you all 😊

~Elder McDonald

Drewmail 5-10-2021: "Who would've thought that a bicycle would kill me 😅🤣"

 

Hi everybody! How's your week been? I hope everything's going great and that you've been seeing great blessings from God!

This week has been great! I'm so very grateful to be serving in Paysandú now for my last transfer! Its absolutely crazy to think that but I've been so blessed and am so very grateful for all I've been given from God! This is a great area with great people and my companion,  Elder García is incredible! We're definitely going to go out with a bang! 😁 We've also got bikes which is a great blessing even though I about died the first day (I guess I've got to get a bit more in shape 🤣). It's a great place where we're at and I'm looking forward to doing the best we can!

We're working hard to give all we've got to the people here! There are some great people who are getting prepared to be baptized and hopefully we'll keep them getting ready in the way they need to! Thanks for your prayers, you're incredible. Know that God loves you, and I promise good things are ahead for all those who follow and put their love and trust in God! 

~ Elder McDonald

Drew mail 5/3/21: "Heart, Might, Mind and Strength"

 

Hi everyone! Happy Monday! How are y'all doing? I hope you've been doing well and had a great week! This week we were able to have a few great lessons and be able to meet and get to know some great people that have incredible desires to learn and grow more! 

On Tuesday we had one of the Zone Leaders come to be with us for the week because his companion finished his missionary service. Among us three we were covering the whole area of Cerro and Colonia which use to be 2 zones back in the day 😅.  It's been pretty crazy but we've had lots of great blessing, one of the last ones being on Sunday night when it kind of hit me more that we had so many people to help and that we just couldn't help everyone so we had to decide where to focus our efforts I put in the last few minutes of the day to make some phone calls to people in our contacts that I felt like we needed to call. I really prayed that God would help us to find the people that needed strength and that we needed to help because we just couldn't do it on our own. I called a few people, the majority of whom didn't answer, but the very last person I called answered and said she had talked with missionaries before and sounded interested in being able to learn more. It was a great experience for me and I'm grateful for the love, direction and help that God gives to us as we fully put our faith in Him.

I was also thinking recently that God is going to be asking us a few questions when we come before Him at the last day and one of them will be if we gave all of our Heart might mind and strength to love and serve Him and help His children return to Him. I definitely want to give all I've got and I know that I definitely haven't been perfect and have made my fair share of mistakes and bad choices, but I want to give all I've got to Him and do the best I can! I feel like God can bless and help us more than we can realize if we just choose to love and follow Him. I think it's more about the direction we are heading and what we've been feeling and desiring in our heart as well and that we've just got to put all we've got for the use of the Lord! I know He will help and give all He's got for us which is such a great blessing, and I pray that we can do the same for Him! So I encourage you to think about that a little bit more; "what more can I give to the Lord/be doing for Him/increase in my love for Him?" I promise the love and strength, help and answers and blessings will come if we put all we've got at the feet of the Lord! Have a great week, love you all! 

~ Elder McDonald

#missionnotes - Month #23

 

#missionnotes - On to Month #23

"To bring the world his truth!"

Drew mail 4-26-21: "Its the Best!"

Hi everyone! How are you? I hope you're doing great! This week was a great one, lots of great blessings and great things going on! Just a few of the experiences I wanted to share with you…

First of all, we got to watch a devotional for all of the missionaries by Elder Holland. It was absolutely incredible and I'm so grateful for living prophets and apostles we have in the world today! He talked a lot about being worthy to have the Holy Ghost with us constantly and seeking that constant companionship. It was great to hear counsel from Him and look back over the course of my mission and see each of the ways he mentioned about how the Holy Ghost helps and blesses us in God’s work. Something else that I loved was a great blessing he extended to all of us missionaries and I've already seen the fulfillment of that blessing which is incredible!

Another great thing from this week, was that we were able to get in contact with lots of great people! We received quite a few references and have started teaching the majority of them which has been a great miracle! We had a great lesson with one of the people we're working with and we really were able to testify and focus on sharing from the scriptures. It was a powerful spirit we felt and I'm so grateful for the truthfulness God has given to us!

I've been think a lot about all my experiences and things I've been learning and it was a great experience for me to be able to stop and take a step back today and ask Heavenly Father, am I doing good? Am I doing the best I can, what dost thou see from me? I felt such an incredible sense of peace, comfort, strength and love and it was a great moment to be reassured that God knows and loves me personally.

I know that each one of you can have these personal experiences with God as well as you put your love and faith in Christ and give all you've got to Him. Each one of us need to learn how to live according to God's will and be blessed by Him. We can draw closer to Him by living the Gospel of Jesus Christ and learning to love Him and all around us as well. It requires time, effort and patience, but I promise it will come! I love you all and am so grateful for you, have a great week and whatever I can do for you let me know! Prayers are headed your way 😊

 ~Love Elder McDonald

Drew mail 4-19-21: Be focused on the Good!

 

Hi everyone, quick letter this week but I'm very grateful for the things I've been getting to experience and great lessons I've been feeling and learning! It's such a great thing that I've seen to be able to focus on the good and keep progressing and getting better little by little. Even when it's hard we can choose to see the good and feel God's love if we look for it! We were talking with a lady who's been having lots of struggles and were able to Express just how much God loves her and that she can choose to feel Gods love and see the great blessings or no. It was a great experience to feel and hear the change in her voice and laugh a bit as we had the phone call and I know that like the prophet has taught us, gratitude and love change and help strengthen hearts and faith! So know you're incredible and have a great week! I love all of you!! 😊