"Kick It In Second Wind"

Its so true that we can never be grateful enough for our trials and the humbling and learning power in them.
Haha TY….he is still a small little squirt huh? I can just imagine the dog all over him.
SHOOT! I can't believe T FUD is 19…CRAZY…I got an email from my boy Scott today and he said he saw Tuck at his homecoming…said he is looking real good…ok, well I guess his words were he looks a lot like me…haha same thing.

Hey everybody. This week has been such a SWEET week ! Miracles have happened and Elder Rodriguez and I have been kicking butt! This week has been a real testimony builder on how unfaithful it is to doubt, or to be negative. It was this last Tuesday when I realized how weaksauce I had been. Because last Sunday at church was the lowest we had seen at church in all the time I had been there, I think I had started to question a little bit about how effective the change of the Branch President had been. Elder Rodriguez is having to translate so much for President and all the other members(remember that half the branch is still French) and I had to do it to when Elder Rodriguez was busy…that things were not moving very fast. We have a huge activity planned for next Saturday and by Tuesday not much had been planned just because of communication problems. We had virtually no investigators, all had kinda of just fallen away little by little. And as Elder Rodriguez and I walked Tuesday in the pouring rain, I think I was feeling pretty sorry for myself, I felt a little useless about learning Spanish. I went to from being pretty confident in French to Greeny status in Spanish. And I think I was feeling kind of discouraged. As Elder Rodriguez and I walked in the rain, I started thinking about all the sweet blessings I had..at how much the gospel has blessed my life and the lives of millions of others. I asked myself, who am I to be discouraged? Of course it's sad when your investigators don’t accept what we are trying to offer them…of course it breaks your heart when you see members fall away and not come to church, but how do you think GOD feels? Millions of his children choose the world and iniquity over HIM and happiness every day. That’s just how it is! But we who have received so many blessings! We, who claim to have faith in Jesus Christ, KNOW that the scriptures are true, and if we endure we will be received into the mansions of heaven. We have no reason to despair. SO as we walked and I was thinking these thoughts, and thinking of what a loser I had been the last couple days. I started to have some fun with Elder Rodriguez, I wanted to get him loving his mission, even when it's hard. I bore my testimony to him a little bit of what I did just now and then we decided to be real full time buttkickers the rest of the week, no discouragement, or despair...but just good old fashioned buttkickin! HAHA its was the best week ever! We had some great lessons with some sweet refugees. We aren’t really teaching many French people, because the Spanish are much more humble. This Friday we taught two new investigators we found who just barely arrived from Columbia. One is named Jose, and was a police officer in the Colombian police(which is apparently pretty risky business). He was forced to leave the country by the rebels. He has seen a lot of suffering lately, and had to leave his family behind in Columbia. We taught him and the man he lives with, Celsar. They were both sweet lessons, and although its hard in Spanish, we are teaching 50 percent each one. Elder Rodriguez has a lot of patience for me, he is my boy … but little by little its coming. Aside from the Latinos, we are working with many French inactives. The Sebeloe family came back to church this last week. And the mother has started reading her scriptures everyday! It's sweet because when they were baptized(about a year ago) she was by far the weak link in the family, however now she has turned into the gears behind the family. Always pushing to get them to pray together.
We have a couple baptismal dates but they are in about 2 weeks…its good to see the difference it has made in changing the baptism criteria. President Gamiette and the zone leaders really raised the bar when we had our meeting in Trinidad…and since then baptisms have been really down, but the quality of baptisms has really increased. Because of the new criteria it requires that we be a lot better teachers, and to teach with the converting power of the Book of Mormon.

In another e-mail:

I have been thinking a lot this week concerning our reason to be here on earth. And and of all the experiences and trials we have here are really just given to us as preparation. We know that if we endure(which I think can mean learn as well) from all our experiences here on earth we will one day be like GOD, and like Jesus Christ. We must use our agency to learn to make the same choices Jesus and our Heavenly Father would make.

HEY
'how bout them jazz'

It's nice to see they are playing well...I cant wait to get a letter from Aunt Carol!

SO right now we are in KOUROU...we woke up at 4 in the morning to start the drive across French Guyana to go to SURINAME! Its going to be sweet! Because Chas is assistant to President I'll be seeing my BOYEE there a little later. So it will be fun...no worries I'll take plenty pictures of the boat ride!