Only Three Weeks Left!

November 9, 2010 Email

All right... quotes of the week....."My dad always said, having dreams is what makes life tolerable"(rudy)....."Squints was perving a dish..I was not, so shut up....Ya ya you were, your tongue was sticking out of your head and you was swooning."(do i even need to say what this is from?..Sandlot)

This week has been super, super sweet. So last week I talked about how lucky we were about having the opportunity to listen to two apostles in a row, right? We got to listen to Elder M. Russel Ballard later that night....haha my bad...well anyways, it was so awesome. He talked a lot about being able to communicate as missionaries with the people in our missions. We must develop those skills now and further throughout our missions. He also gave a story about, two missionaries in England who baptized this really poor family. The family looked very poor and had very dirty/old clothes. They family was eventually baptized and at the baptism the bishop of their ward was worried about their physical appearance. Elder Ballard, told the bishop to make them "look like saints". The bishop then told the missionaries the same thing and the following Sunday, the family walked into church and sure enough they looked like saints. The father was wearing a clean white shirt, obviously too small for him, the top button was undone. The two young boys were also wearing clean white shirts but with the sleeves rolled many times to fit them. The missionaries had given their own shirts the family. The sister misisonaries had cleaned up the girls in the family. Everyone of the family members had the biggest smiles on their faces that day. The missionaries had made saints out of them.
I thought that story was awesome, it was given right at the end of his talk. The thing that impressed me the most though was the prayer given at the end of the meeting. She kept emphasizing that the people we are serving are our brothers and sisters and how we must love them and do all we can for them. It was awesome. During our district testimony meeting of the devotional I mainly talked about how much I loved the prayer, along with my testimony.
We also got to listen to Sheri Dew on Sunday and it rocked. A quick summary....."God knows our mission and exactly what we need to succeed. HIS way to accomplish this is most likely different then our way but its the right way."
1) Know who we are (I am a child of God), seek revelation about myself
2)Have personal witness that Jesus is the Christ
3)Increased purity increases the ability to receive inspiration and guidance from our Heavenly Father.
Whew...so money...."Now is a perfect time to learn how to listen and hear our Heavenly Father
It was such an awesome talk and applied to just about everyone.
I had a great conversation with my teacher this week. Basically I discussed some of the frustrations I've had w/ my comp. Nothing too bad but you know me, I get impatient really easily. He's probably the type of person, where at home I could not stand at all, but we're fine.
We learned a lot this week about recognizing the spirit. We had our LGM about it and several classes on it. The spirit will almost always come subtly and gently. We must take the time to listen to it and pray to receive it. Sometimes it is difficult to discern whether its the spirit or something else. Like Elder Bednar said "STOP worrying about it...if its good then its of God, Press forward and always stay moving".
ZL has been fun/interesting. The floor above ours has been so ridiculous this week. I caught a couple guys from their floor having nerf gun fights, of course I told them it was inappropriate and they said I was just being a robot misisonary...I kinda laughed it off later. We have a short meeting every Sunday with the ZL's in our building. When we brought up the nerf gun fights, they seemed to not know anything about it..haha so ridiculous because I know they knew what was going on. They have also been listening to music(no music allowed at the MTC period), doing the HAKA(very very loud) and dancing/wrestling. It's totally ridiculous....seriously. So of course the second floor zone leaders were lying or just totally oblivious to it all and on Monday they were doing it all again. Next Sunday I'm busting out all the stops...no more Mr. Nice Guy...well maybe a litte nice haha.
Well....I hope all is going well at home...I'm gonna write a short letter again in a bit...everything here is awesome...Only 3 weeks left!.....then we're in ITALY...we get new missionaries tomorrow which should be awesome. I'm excited for our devotional tonight because I think another prophet will be speaking(at least i hope there will be). I'm definitely jealous about the trip to California....

welll Ciao.....

TUCK