Hey all! .....meaning dad probably right now haha. Mom's still in Pahrump with Nana right? I hope they're having a good time. Eli sent me pictures of when Heather went up to visit you guys, and she wrote me an email today and talked a little bit about it, she said she had a really really good time! She absolutely loves all of you and has so much respect for you. I just want to say thank you for being the amazing family that you are. I know you've all been a huge support for Heather, and I'm so grateful for that.
I got the package from you all a couple days ago, thanks a bunch! Elder Schank and I have been enjoying the Ghiradelli (I'm not even going to try on the spelling for that one) chocolate veeeeeeerrry much. Especially me. And I looooove all the pictures you sent me!!! I love pictures haha! I wish I had taken more before I left my mission and all throughout highschool and stuff because they're such great little memories to carry around! So, as I said this week our numbers have been all zeros and ones haha! It's been a bit of a rough week for us, more for Elder Schank than me. Mainly because literally our entire days we have nothing to do except contact. We had one lesson with our one investigator, who technically isn't even progressing yet, and we had one lesson with a less active man. Sooooo its been contacting, contacting, contacting. And for me, that's not exactly an easy thing to do. Walking down the street and talking to everyone I see is not exactly on my list of favorite or natural things to do, so this week has been a real stretch for me. I can't say that I succeeded in talking to everyone, and each day I think of all these ways I could have used my time more effectively, or how I could have talked to more people, or how I could have been more tactful with my contacting. But I guess that's how you progress right? You recognize your weaknesses and mistakes, and you work on improving them. I'm just trying really hard not to be hard on myself. You know me, I can be pretty self critical. In my patriarchal blessing it counsels me to be obedient with exactness, and at the end of the day I allways think of that, and I think of all these ways I could have done better. Hindsight is allways 20/20. That's probably one of the most frustrating truths about life that I have come to find, knowing that no matter what, there's always something I could have done better on. I always think back to when I was in sports and scouts, and in school I always worked really hard, and did my best in whatever it was, and it allways paid off. Out here on a mission I'm finding it harder to gauge whether I'm putting my all into the work, and whether I'm making the right decisions or the best decisions.
I got the package from you all a couple days ago, thanks a bunch! Elder Schank and I have been enjoying the Ghiradelli (I'm not even going to try on the spelling for that one) chocolate veeeeeeerrry much. Especially me. And I looooove all the pictures you sent me!!! I love pictures haha! I wish I had taken more before I left my mission and all throughout highschool and stuff because they're such great little memories to carry around! So, as I said this week our numbers have been all zeros and ones haha! It's been a bit of a rough week for us, more for Elder Schank than me. Mainly because literally our entire days we have nothing to do except contact. We had one lesson with our one investigator, who technically isn't even progressing yet, and we had one lesson with a less active man. Sooooo its been contacting, contacting, contacting. And for me, that's not exactly an easy thing to do. Walking down the street and talking to everyone I see is not exactly on my list of favorite or natural things to do, so this week has been a real stretch for me. I can't say that I succeeded in talking to everyone, and each day I think of all these ways I could have used my time more effectively, or how I could have talked to more people, or how I could have been more tactful with my contacting. But I guess that's how you progress right? You recognize your weaknesses and mistakes, and you work on improving them. I'm just trying really hard not to be hard on myself. You know me, I can be pretty self critical. In my patriarchal blessing it counsels me to be obedient with exactness, and at the end of the day I allways think of that, and I think of all these ways I could have done better. Hindsight is allways 20/20. That's probably one of the most frustrating truths about life that I have come to find, knowing that no matter what, there's always something I could have done better on. I always think back to when I was in sports and scouts, and in school I always worked really hard, and did my best in whatever it was, and it allways paid off. Out here on a mission I'm finding it harder to gauge whether I'm putting my all into the work, and whether I'm making the right decisions or the best decisions.
Anyways, sorry, I don't want you to think that I'm getting depressed or anything, these are just things that have been on my mind, and it just kind of started to all come out while I was typing. This week has proven to porvide some really awesome experiences! Last week, we had just walked into the main park when this group of high school kids started calling out at us saying stuff like "You speak English?" Usually kids will do this a lot to missionaries just to be punks, and we ignore stuff like that most of the time. But Elder Schank looked over and saw that one of them had a guitar, and he turned to me and said, "Hey, you wanna play guitar?" I was a little hestitant at first, but then was just like "what the heck, of course I want to play guitar" so we went over there and started talking to them, haha and once we spoke Romanian, the girl who had called out to us got super embarrassed and was just like "oh man they speak Romanian!?!?!?" So we just made some small talk, and then I asked the kid who had the guitar if I could play, he was like, "Can you play? " and I was just like, " Yeah." So I started playing some random songs, ended up playing them some of my songs too. I played Flipside, A Foolhardy Son, then Hotel California, and You and Your Heart by Jack Johnson, and the loved it!! I'm pretty sure they all liked Flipside the best. It felt so good to be playing the guitar, and to finally be sharing that talent with other people. We handed out a Book of Mormon, and got several phone numbers from those kids, and even while I was playing, at certain points, people walking by would stop and listen so there was a good-sized crowd of people around the bench where I was playing! That experience really made me want to write some music, songs that would be all about the gospel in my life, so that I can have an effective way of contacting that will touch people's hearts in ways that just talking can't. I also want to write them in Romanian as I get better at the language.
So that was probably the highlight of this week. That, and the past two nights we've been able to go over to the senior missionary couple's apartment to watch the first session of Saturday's and Sunday's General Conference on their laptop! It was sooooo good! I've never been so excited about coneference haha! I realy got alot out of the talks, and it really gave me a spiritual boost that I've been needing! I love how in Sundays first session, all the apostles were putting in little jokes here and there. If I got anything out of that session, it was beeing able to see that the leaders of our church are real people too, which might sound kind of weird, but I sometimes think what they're like in just everyday life. What kind of people they are, and what kind of personalities they have. And hearing President Monson talk about the Rome temple!! Wow, that will be so amazing when that temple is finsished! Elder Toronto told us that Great Grandpa or something like that was the first Italian convert to the church, and had pretty much given up everything he had to travel to America and go to the Nauvoo Temple, and now, over a hundred years later, a temple is being built in the most historical cities in Italy!
Oh yeah, and also, on Saturday we did district contacting with the zone leaders in the park, and we drew up a big daigram of the Plan of salvation in chalk on the sidewalk with our phone numbers and handed out Plan of Salvation brochures. It was really fun! I'm not too sure how many investigators we'll get out of it, but hopefully it won't have been completely in vain!
Well, that's about it for this week. Hope everything's going good over there! Have a great week everyone!
Love, Elder Myers
No comments:
Post a Comment