"If you don't live the gospel, you don't love it."

Alright,  the letters I started writing last p day still haven't been sent yet.... I just always feel like I have no time!  So I am really sorry for dropping the ball on that. I'm gonna try and be consistent with that again. 

Life is just so good to me.  I know without a doubt I am exactly where I'm supposed to be, exactly when I need to be, doing the things I need to be doing.  My mission is my whole life now, and everything before this feels like before I was born.  Feels like a blur, just feels like I've been out here forever.  Some days are rough.  Yesterday morning was the most frustrating day of my mission thus far, EVERYONE flaked out on us, no one kept a single commitment, and we lost some people, but I went to bed knowing that I did everything I could possibly do.  Doesn't make it easy, but it helps.

 

 

The idea of emailing home what happens each week is just so tiring.  I don't even know where to begin.  BUT I do have that new SD card, so I'm gonna send the old one home in the next day or so, and I'll send some stuff in this email today too hopefully.

 

There IS one guy I want to tell you about though, and that's Evan.  We met him tracting, and he was just smoking in a stairwell.  We started talking to him, and one of the first things we found out was that he had been in a pretty bad car accident a few years ago, and that left him pretty disabled, and a little bit slower mentally.  We also found out that before he moved to Manette, he had met with some missionaries before, and his friend had actually been baptized.  I just asked him straight up why he hadn't been baptized then, and he was like "oh, cuz I was baptized when I was younger" or something like that.  And I just felt like the best thing to do with Evan was to be really straight with him, so I just committed him to baptism right then, for May 13, and he accepted!  I taught him the Restoration the other day ( it was actually my first time teaching that by myself!)  and it went incredibly well!  He already has a testimony of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.  He has trouble reading because of his eyes, but he discovered that when he reads the Book of Mormon he feels "enlightened" :)  so he is about 1/3 of the way through the book right now, he just opens it up, looks at each page for a little while, then turns to the next one :)  he is starting to choose reading the BoM over watching TV!  He came to a movie night put on by our district, and afterwards he bore a mini testimony about the gospel.  My favorite quote from him is "if you don't live the gospel, you don't love it"   This is a legit guy. 

We'll be teaching him the plan of salvation next, and I'm way excited!!!  

 

 

Darby......darby darby darby.... I can't handle actually filling you in on her entire story, I get too frustrated.  but to summarize, she has been wanting to go to church for a long time, but first she has been determined to get nice clothes.  A never ending series of complications prevents this from happening...  After finally giving up on members taking her to Salvation Army, I got really angry, and drove to Goodwill, where Elder C and I bought her clothes (sorry, I used the home account...)  and brought them to her.  (I picked out two cute outfits, and the Spirit led me to choose the correct undergarment sizes.  Really, I have no clue how I did it)  She then decided she needed makeup.  Womanette (the pair of women missionaries) gave her nice make up.  Then, Sunday morning, she decided not to go because..... 

 

 

I'm gonna try and send some pictures right now, to make up for the short email.