October 25, 2010

Dear Mom & Dad,

This past week has been a pretty good week. It's weird to hear that Andrew is home now. Is he starting to get a little more normal? That's good that Kelsey was able to play all five games and that they did well. It's weird that you don't have someone playing Varsity football. Is Korbin playing a lot. How has his season been doing? Hope he's doing well and working hard. He could be a way good athlete. I'm interested to see how Katie's athleticism has changed. Sounds like she is doing really well. Kory sounds like himself. Is he going to play basketball this year. He needs to make sure and play football with Korbin and Dad. How is Kiersten doing? That's sweet that you had two part-member/non member families over. Keep it up. Make sure that when you do have them over not to have them leave empty handed. Make sure you've got some sort of commitment given. It doesn't have to be something big but like going to the football game together is great. You've gotta keep the contact there and not let it go.

Our week was pretty good. We had a sweet story that happened to us on Saturday. We went out Saturday night and before leaving the apartment I said a prayer asking the Lord to lead us to our new investigator. When we went to the place we had previously planned I had remembered a smaller apartment building on the backside of a bigger one. We went there only to see a couple of lights on. We decided to do it. We started knocking and on the third door a student from Africa opened the door and invited us in. He went back into his room and brought out his laptop and showed us an email that he had received from his father that same day. His father had written to him to ask if he was able to find a church he could attend and to encourage him to keep praying and to stay faithful. What an amazing experience to be led by the hand of the Lord to someone who wants to follow the commandments and needs some place to feel welcome. It was an awesome experience. I've been thinking a little bit about all the cool experiences that I've had so far on my mission that they are so sweet. It's great to be able to learn and grow spiritually from all of them.

So I haven't gotten that Debit Card yet. Hopefully you haven't sent it and it got lost in the mail. We have a special zone training meeting tomorrow that is pretty much like a Zone Conference. It's great to get together as a zone and have President and the Assistants teach and train us on how to be better missionaries. It's always a good experience.

Yesterday we watched the Sunday afternoon Session of General Conference. It was great. I really loved Elder Bednar's talk. It's always an interesting experience to sit and watch everyone in church. I think its great how there are so many different types of people and how they all make up the church. We are all the Lord's Hands. Without one member it's not the same. It's just like the example of the body in the new Testament. Some people think that they aren't really a part of the church or ward but really they play a huge role. It takes the little things in order for the big things to function right. Kind of like a sheer pin on the fly wheel. (Don't know why, but that just came to my mind right then.)

I Love this work. It's crazy how fast it's all going. I look forward to being home but I wish that I could stay another year. That would really be the best. We are really busy now and we are trying to make our days even more affective and to use the littlest time to help those we can. Yesterday I started up a conversation with these two people and then it led to the Gospel and I was able to get their information and we will be meeting here soon. It's just little stuff like that that make it all worth it. We all have those experiences, all we got to do is make the best out of them.

Love you both. I thank you that you both write me every week. It's a blessing to have someone giving me encouraging words and cheering me up with funny stories and experiences. I'm thankful that I was born into a home where my two parents worked together to raise me up to be a bearer of the gospel with a strong testimony and help teach me to have a desire to build those around me.

"No Regrets"
Love
Elder Merrill