Another Great Week!

Hyrum is doing so well and he says each week surpasses the previous one. 

Wowser!  I am never surprised, but always amazed how God is so mindful of us and our prayers.  This week has been amazing.  Perhaps the best week on my mission.  We surpassed our goals on "member presents" and on "other lessons"!  Each week missionaries have to set goals.  Some of those goals include how many lessons they will have with a member of the church present.  That means they have to make appointments with their investigators and then ask church members to come with them to those appointments.  They do this so the investigators can meet other members of the church and make a new friend who they might have things in common with.  The "other lessons" are times when the missionaries visit with someone at their door or on the street and share a little message with them about the Savior or the church in general.  We worked so hard to involve members in all that we did.  We tried to get as many return appointments as we could and then call a member to go with us!  Most of the time it worked out.  We had 10 investigators at church this week!  We do our best to be lead by the spirit as we find and teach; and this week God really used us.  It seemed like we met someone new who was interested in the gospel every day, we saw miracles by being in the right place at the right time, and we built greater trust and fellowship with the members.  Our area is doing well.  God is preparing people and He is preparing us.  God is so great!

Every week with my companion is better than the last.  We are beginning to recognize our differences, but those differences make the companionship so dynamic.  Elder Campbell has been a little too hard on himself lately because he can see how much he can improve on.  I try to help him understand that he has to be patient with himself and that feelings of discouragement, hopelessness, and frustration are not from God.  Elder Campbell has such a strong desire to be the best he can be.  He is amazing and keeps me enthused and stretches me out of my comfort zone (in a good way).  We are obedient and have no desire to be otherwise.

I have learned to exercise my faith.  When we set the goals at the beginning of the week, I didn't doubt that we could achieve that goal.  In the past, I felt like our goals were the number of what we could get if everything went as planned.  I knew that very little would go as planned and so I wrongly expected to not reach the goals.  However, this week I was sure that we were going to reach our "member present" goals.  I didn't know how, but I had faith and hope that we could do it.  Then, we worked so hard to involve the members and didn't even worry about the other lessons.  Appointments worked out and we even exceeded what we had hoped for!  That is how we exercise faith.  We put trust in God and work out tails off to do what He wants and He will do the rest!

This is what we had for breakfast.  Yummm!

We did 2 1/2 hours of community service this week.