December 13, 2010

Dear Family,

It warmed up a bit and so the snow is gone now. It's kind of nice because I was sick of walking around in it. So I think I'll let you know. My left foot has been bugging me pretty badly. I don't know if you remember at all but I had a bunion starting and the mission has just helped it along. My big toe crosses over my second toe which puts some good pressure on it and my tendon to my big toe is tighter than you can believe. You can feel it and it doesn't feel good. So I just wanted to let you know that it might be something I need to take care of this summer and have surgery. No big deal though, I'm still walking just fine just with a little pain :).

So this week was pretty fun. We had a Christmas party on Saturday so they wanted us missionaries to sing a song. We ended up singing "I'm dreaming of a White Christmas". We found it on one of our Christmas CD's that we have and it was done acapella. We couldn't do it by ourselves so we had the CD player right behind us playing. It was pretty funny. We got a video of it so I won't forget it. It made everyone laugh and they loved it. I think it was good that they saw that we can be funny as well. I think a lot of members think that we have to be serious all the time and not have fun.

This week we taught several lessons which was good but we also had a bunch of things fall out. It kind of gets frustrating when people just drop your appointment and think that it doesn't matter. It would make life a lot easier if they were to just tell us no. Laura, the nine year old little girl and her Mom weren't able to come to the Christmas party because she had to work. Her mom is really nice to me on the phone and I'm hoping that we can start to teach them both. Laura came to church with a less active member twice and loved it. We did have this lady show up the first hour of Church (Priesthood RS) and then we spent the next hour teaching her with the High Councilor from a different ward. She was pretty emotionally unstable and she has made some pretty poor decisions in her life that hasn't helped her out too much. She stayed for Sacrament meeting and I think it was really good for her. She was able to calm down and to think about Christ rather than her problems that she was going through. She wouldn't give me any of her information but she said that she would come again to church before Christmas. We are mostly back to the finding point in the work. We need a bigger teaching pool because we can't teach a ton. Things are going well though. Elder Trujillo is doing well. His Interview with President really helped him I think. He struggles a lot with the language but so did I. I still learn something new all the time. I can talk fluently and understand everything but there is still certain grammar principles that are super hard to understand that I work on as well as vocabulary. I'm working on verbs and trying to get my vocabulary solid.

I still haven't talked with President about whether I can call on the 27th and I will do that this week. My guess is that it won't be a big problem. I got your package this week. Thanks for not sending useless stuff. I am super thankful for all the treats that you packed in instead, so are my companions. My favorite pretzel stick is the Reese's chunks. It was a little piece of heaven.

Here is what I studied about this morning. It's great to know that the Atonement is there for us. It must be there in order for us to reach the full potential. We sang the song "More Holiness Give Me" this morning and there is the line 'more tears for His sorrows, more pain at His grief' I was thinking about how powerful the Atonement is and if we were to totally understand the pain, sorrow, and grief that we wouldn't want to displease him and would have absolute no desire to sin. I don't have a desire to sin but sometimes I forget my potential and mess up. How great is the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I am so very thankful for the opportunity I have to serve the Lord and to be apart of this his Marvelous Work and a Wonder.

Well I hope you have a good week. Any new Pictures? I would love to see some. Sounds like kids have grown up quite a bit. Thanks for your love and support. It's great to be a missionary.

"No Regrets"

Love
Elder Merrill

p.s. Did you get my packages yet?