Friday, November 6, 2009 at 1:13 PM |  
I am enjoying myself a lot more now. We had Elder Ringwood of the Seventy come and talk to us at Zone Conference and he gave me some really good perspective. He told us that as long as we're working hard and doing our best to do the work that the Lord will bless us no matter what. That's a promise. He told us that we may not always see the direct results of those blessings though, sometimes the Lord will manifest those blessings for our work in another area because we are all one mission and we are all working together to reach our goal of 1050 baptisms this year. That made me think about all of the blessings I have seen here, like the totally random referrals for really sweet people or the awesome random calls from members who are willing to help us and it made me realize something; the actual work that I do doesn't really have to accomplish anything. This is God's work, he wants people to come to him so it's going to get done with or without me, he will find a way. That in turn made me realize how lucky I am to be able to be an instrument in his hands, how much of a privilege it really is that he allows us to help him. Missionary work is not an obligation, it's a privilege, and now I'm finally starting to be able to see that. Before, I would think that I must be doing something wrong if I didn't see a lot of success but this different more broad perspective of all of us in the FJM really helped me see the fruits of our efforts (even though Crescent City is closed). I don't know why they closed Crescent City, I've heard there's a possibility that they might open it back up after a few transfers but I don't know. But yeah, we'll definitely have to go there after my mission.
My new ward is the Orange Park Second ward with Bishop Ross (I think that's how you spell it) what's your friend's name again? Yeah this ward is so awesome! Some of the coolest members I've ever met live here! Oh remind me to tell you about Small Frey next week. We are allowed to eat with the members, in fact it's encouraged, but there has to be an investigator we can teach at their house too. I have no idea how Thanksgiving is going to work or Christmas or anything like that. I don't know if it will be any different for us. I kept forgetting that Saturday was Halloween just because we don't do anything different than normal. Just work work work. I didn't even see any kids out trick or treating when we went tracting, it was kinda weird. Elder Perez and I live in an apt with the Zone Leaders Elder Terry and Elder Kasper, they are really cool guys I like them a lot. They are English speaking and we are Spanish so that's kinda weird, it almost feels like that's separating us sometimes just because we try to pray and plan and everything in Spanish and they can hear us down the hall and they do everything in English. It's not anything bad just different. Yeah there are actually a lot of four man apts. here in this mission. Our ward we're in has 8 missionaries in it. There's us, another Spanish companionship, the Zone Leaders, and Sister missionaries. It's a lot of fun for sure.
Haha space camp sounds awesome. I remember I loved Space Camp! We didn't have cool training like you guys are doing though. I'm sure parent teacher conference will be good. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a few unhappy parents just because you can't please everyone, and it also doesn't help that people are crazy. Just relax, fix what you think would actually be constructive and just let the rest of the crazy people deal with it. That sounds kinda mean but you can't please everyone so don't try to that will stress you out too much.
I can't believe it's already been four months! It's almost Christmas time! I'm really looking forward to calling home that will be sweet. But I think you should still send me stuff. I'm trying to find stuff that I can send home but it's hard because we NEVER have time to just look for stuff and we don't have a whole lot of money. Even on P-day we're ridiculously busy all the time but I really want to send stuff home. I feel really bad that I didn't send Dad anything for his birthday but I'm looking for stuff so I'll send something home eventually. Hopefully I can send home some little Christmas presents for everyone.
Well, I love you all! I love being a missionary, I'm so excited that I get to be a part of the Lord's work! There's no place I'd rather be right now than here in the FJM. That's more valuable to me than any prize; preachin' love and peace with other well dressed guys. (Name that movie!)
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