There Is No Better Cure For Problems As A Missionary Than To Just Work

One little session of skype and you all forget to e-mail me....I'm shaking my head right now. "Come On".....alright I'm only kidding. You're all lucky I felt the desire out of the pure love of my heart to write today haha. I could be sitting on my balcony out in hot Tuscan sun getting my tan on while writing letter to certain people but no...I'm here in a little cubicle that smells, or what my companion described as, "stinky dog" because he just absolutely couldn't type in this sort of condition. haha anyways...I know it has only been like 3 days but WHATS UP?

So, since Sunday we have experienced some down moments as well as some frustrating ones. We have also had some really good bonding experiences as well. We sometimes have frustrations arise because of the language. He can't understand English too well and the same for me in Italian and sometimes we just misunderstand each other. We were able to get over it though and talk about how we can stop this from happening. We decided we just need to have more patience with one another and start having fixed periods of time when we speak English and Italian. Inside is English and outside is Italian...It's settled! We are all good now.

Monday we had been doing casa all the day long and we just weren't having any success. We were asking what can we do better or what are we doing wrong?. The whole time I kinda knew that we really weren't doing anything wrong and of course we can always do better, but sometimes you just don't have success. The best way to not worry about these problems is to just WORK. There is no better cure for problems as a missionary than to just work. I have really realized one of my strengths as a missionary is that I just love to work. Sure it isn't always the funnest and we don't see the blessings of our work right away, but they will come. If we keep our heads up and push forward even in the hard times we will keep our reward, as the scriptures say. Whenever I am doing casa and I find my self a little bit down it is so easy for me to just smile and change my mindset. It is a blessing I feel so blessed to have but I know that I need to have the reason for doing the work. We can't just work because we like it, we need to have the actual desire for doing the work which I feel is progressing every day. I am beginning to have more love for those I'm serving and for the power and strength that Heavenly Father gives me to do it.

This morning I just got back from doing a scambio with one of the Assistants, Anziano Mangrum. It was super awesome and I learned a "butt load about the gospel." I also learned that their apartment is super, super huge and has lots of exercise equipment, so I'm a little jealous of that. haha But, anyway we had a super fun time teaching, talking to the people in Lodi(their zone) and we really taught each other a lot. We also woke up at around 5:50am and ran for about 30 minutes. The area in which we were running was so awesome and the weather was perfect. Too bad I didn't have my camera. We were really able to teach each other why we love the gospel so much and how we have learned to be better missionaries.

That is just about it for this email since we talked already this week. Thanks again ya slackers, just kidding, but really haha! Love you guys and write ya next week.

Love,

Tuck