Cutting down a giant tree and baptizing one of my best friends...Jesus

This week has been so revolutionary my life is changed forever. This week I got to cut down a giant tree and I also got to baptize one of my best friends Jesus N. (I thought I would throw in the last name so no one got confused or anything).

Jesus N. has been one of the greatest examples in my life. He used to be mixed up in a lot of rough things and leading a life that was not for God, but for himself. But his whole life changed when he saw his baby daughter Aneya. He realized that he needed to change his life; he needed to be the example he needed to be. He then began to apply Christ’s atonement in his life and start to become the man he needed to be. Jesus began to prepare for baptism and took all of the steps he needed to take, leaving everything behind and start over and be new again. 

I was getting his clothes ready for him to be baptized in. I got him a nice white shirt and tie with white slacks so he wouldn’t have to wear the jump suit. When we told Jesus Najera the plan he immediately stopped us and said he was going to wear the jump suit. I was a little taken back by this, so I asked him why? He then began to say that in his life he had made some mistakes and had to wear a jump suit for a few years every single day. So he said, he wants this one to be the last one he ever wears (besides in the temple) to symbolize that he is never going back to that life.

Then on Saturday I was able to baptize Jesus. After he was baptized we went and got changed and I asked him how do you feel? And he said "I am a changed man." Christ truly does change our lives, he changes everything and he uses people to help us along our path. For Jesus his example, his angel, was Aneya. So look for those people who have changed your life. 

The next day Jesus got the Holy Ghost and I asked him how he felt.  And he said he felt like he was high, but with the spirit and he never wanted that feeling to go away.  And that feeling never will go away as long as you are with God and obeying him…As long as we put all of trust in God. I know it is so hard sometimes, it is almost impossible to think that things are going to get better. But we have to if we don’t we are nothing.  If we don’t we are only going to slip and stay exactly where we are in this life and never progress. I really need to put all my trust in God at this time so I can have that "spiritual high" and be on a cloud and just float peacefully and be groovy one with another :)

Really I am so blessed with the miracles that I have seen on my mission, the friends I have made and the experiences that I have had to make me grow, everything has changed in my life since day one of my mission... I truly have given everything to the Lord that I can and I hope that He can carry me the rest of this year I have left :)

And I know it is the 4th of July on Friday......God bless America......Patriotism is not dead down here... Really think about how blessed we are to have this county and this land to live in too. We are in the greatest place on earth.

I love you all hope you are all okay, if you ever need my help write me or even if you just want to talk…

Be safe my brothers and sisters.

Really seeing a tree and not looking back like Lot's wife....

I am staying in Portales and I am giddy haha, yep my comp is staying too and I am cool with that. We get work done here together it is so awesome.

The world is a weird place, filled with so much of everything. We are living in a time where nothing is impossible and the dreams of the past are a reality, as well as the nightmares. We are living on a planet made for us, by Jesus Christ himself. We have the beauty of it all around us, there is beauty in everything.

I was talking to a man on the street the other day and we were talking about Christ and what he has done for us all, because he is the center of everything without him this plan could not happen. But as we were talking to this man, he tells us to turn around and to look at the tree. He asked us what we saw and we said. “Well, it is a tree?” And he said, “Look deeper, the deeper you go the more you see Christ. He is in everything, we just have to look and see him”. God made that tree for me to see and to get joy out of. We seriously can find joy in anything Christ has made if we really look at it.

Its weird to think of me before the mission and who I was. I can’t really imagine what I was like. I feel like I must have been so lost all of the time. I knew about the gospel before I left.  I knew about Christ, but really I didn’t know. I am about to hit my year mark, but before I do that I am going to do some serious meditation on life. On the changes God has made in me in the last year. What He has shown me that I need to be. This last year I have been taught so much and now in this year to come I am going to take what God has given me, this gift of life and true happiness and give it all. Give me to God. No regrets, no looking behind. I cannot be like Lot’s wife. I have begun to find who I really am. Take what you know. Take what you have learned, think about it, pray about it, and truly think about why God has given you that knowledge. I know He has given it to you in preparation for something. Something big is going to happen soon. We all need to be ready with our spiritual armor. I am preaching right now I feel, but I want you to know how important what I am saying truly is. We need to be ready.

Take the time we have been given. Take this world we have been given and do something impossible. Overcome what you never thought you could. Do what you never thought you had the strength to do. I am so livid with the precious time I have wasted.  I know that by now I could have done such extraordinary things if I would have had this knowledge earlier. But now I am going to start. And I challenge you to start with me. It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day and it’s the beginning of everything. This is the First day of my life. So let’s Begin. 

Elder Keegan

P.S. The picture is exactly what it looks like…I dig frozen. 

As a missionary I am getting practice at being a dad in a weird way...

Happy Father’s Day to all the men out there!

Yesterday was your day… young or old, bond and free… but unfortunately your day is over and life has gone back to the days of the mothers :). Haha just joking, but really its weird to think that I will be a father some day and one day I will be given the opportunity to be a dad, to help someone grow, and always be there for them. I was pondering a lot of what kind of dad that I really want to be, I know I won’t know anything until it finally happens, but I still want to be prepared. I want to be the best dad I can be. I want to be the example that they need to be for them. I have grown up a lot on my mission…. spiritually, mentally, physically... and I know that if I hadn’t have served a mission there is no way I would ever have been able to be the dad that I need to be. Haha, as a missionary I am getting practice at being a dad in a weird way. The investigators that are learning with me are kind of like my children. I am helping them grow on their spiritual journey which at times can be the hardest part of our days on this earth. 

This week we have been teaching Jesus and Chelsea, they both grew up in different backgrounds. Jesus is a retired gangster and Chelsea had a nice life filled with love and stern rules. They were expressing to me this week the ways that they were raised and what they wish they could have changed about it all. I want to be the dad that his kids wouldn’t change a thing. I want to be the dad where in hard times I’m there, when life gets tough they have someone to lean on. 

And I was talking to Jesus and Chelsea we were talking about their daughter Anaya. They were saying how they wanted to be a better parent to their child, they wanted their 1 year old daughter to have the life they didn’t have and they were trying to figure out how to do it and they couldn’t come to any conclusions together about how they wanted to do it.

Before I go on I want to say I’m not a marriage counselor, I’m not trained in anything like that. I do not have a degree and I haven’t even gone to a single day of college before. But I am a representative of Jesus Christ. I have seen his hand in my life and in my family’s lives. With my lack of parenting knowledge, but my abundance of faith and the spirit of God which was in me, I then proceeded to tell them that the little things will come. The small decisions with Anaya will be made clear, if and only if you have a strong foundation. The only foundation that will not fall, the way to change the way you were raised, the way to know what you need to do for your daughter is through and only through the foundation of Jesus Christ. He is the rock. The gospel blesses families and keeps them together for this life and the next. We cannot change the past, but we can help our children’s future, if we build our foundation and help them to find theirs.

I am so blessed to have had such and awesome dad in my life. I truly could not have been here without him. I am so just overwhelmed when I truly think of all the good he has done in my life and I am so excited to have my own little family one day. So I can help them grow. I am going to build my home on the foundation that Christ himself has set for us and I know if everyone one of your families does that, they cannot fall. I know that the little things are what truly matter and if you read and pray as a family you will become closer and you will see your families’ lives be different. 

Jesus and Chelsea are now beginning to build their foundation for themselves and for their daughter. I challenge all of you to, before you try to change all the little things in your life, first go to the foundation of everything and see where you are built and then the little things will fall into place. With Jesus and Chelsea the first step they are taking is baptism. Their lives aren’t going to change completely overnight and neither will yours, but it will change and your life will be blessed.

I am so pumped to be a dad one day and be a husband and to live together forever with my family. To me that is one of the greatest gifts that God has given me. Now I just need to start my foundation and after these two years, my foundation is going to be a lot better than it would have been. I am so glad that I went on a mission. I would not trade this for the world. This is what I must do. 

I love you all so much, and I am so stoked to be with you for eternity…

Love, elder keegan

                                   

Trying to teach up a storm....literally!

Hello everyone one how is everything going? This has been one of the most intense weeks of my entire life… filled with love, music, tragedy and even a heart-throbbing tale about how two missionaries survived a tornado. Haha, but we will get there on step at a time. Haha, we are trying to teach up a storm here, but all of our daily efforts have caused a storm literally.

So my story begins at 6:00 Saturday, we were driving to our appointment with Israel, when we receive a call from our infamous district leader Elder Craigen saying there is a tornado watch so we should probably head in for the night, so naturally we decide to head in because we didn’t want to be caught in a tornado. But on the way we stopped and made sure all of our investigators are okay and they know what is going on haha, luckily they had all received an alert text saying to get inside, then we got home we then packed or bags and began to wait for the perfect storm. As we were outside admiring the beautiful sky and all of the lightning, I then saw a faint image in the distance of a funnel cloud coming down from the sky and it touching down and then a few seconds later it then breaking up and disappearing. Needless to say it was crazy, so Elder Marchant and I became men and went under the house into our storm shelter to then wait it out for the night. We came to find all of the black widows friends that we caught last week and they were not too happy to see us haha, but it was awesome so we waited in the cellar of doom for a few hours, watched for the storm to pass and crawled out of our hole and we were safe.

So it was kind of an anti-climactic story, but I saw a tornado this week and the after math was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. While I was looking at the sky and the clouds and the sun looking through it all during the storm, I was taken-back by the beauty of God’s creations. In New Mexico nothing is really pretty, but when I looked up at the sky I was taken to another place. I was thinking how there is a God, there has to be, that can’t just happen. I know there is a God and that He loves us, because even when we think we won’t make it through the day,  when life is looking so ugly for the longest time, He gives us something beautiful. He gives us that little glimmer of light that we need. With so much chaos and destruction around us, with the world turning up side down, with all the hate and all the pain with everything that ever gets us down…God will eventually give us all something beautiful, something to keep us going, He will open our eyes and our hearts. We just have to be patient. We just have to endure as a good soldier of Christ, and God will give us the greatest gift, we can’t even imagine, we can’t even fathom… eternal exaltation in the kingdom of God where we get to rest from the hard day’s work, where we get to feel the love. So remember even in the darkest hour God will stand by you :) and if you need any more help you can lean on me. Because we are unstoppable…. we have the power and the light to overcome the darkness! I love us.

Love, elder keegan

A few of Keegan's answers from Question Letter #3:

What is the nicest thing a comp has done for you?

 He told me I was a hard worker when we were falling asleep.

Is there anything you would change about your 1st year so far? 

I would not change anything about my life so far.

Rank order the best 3 things about a mission:

1) Missionary work 2) Endless sky 3) BBQ (I wish :-) haha we're not allowed)

Who would play you as a missionary in the movie of your life? 

Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Ryan Gosling or James Dean

What do you never want to forget from your mission?

 Who God has made me