So first off Mom, I don't know what you really want to teach or to who you want to teach it to but I thought of 1 Nephi 17:36 and how God created the world for us. He wanted us as his spirit children to come to Earth and receive a body like he has. I also thought of Romans 8:16-17 we are all heirs of the Kingdom of god. Also Jeremiah 1:5 each and everyone of us has a personal relationship with God and he knew us all before we came to earth. The last is Moses 1:39 this is his work and his glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. Those are a couple scriptures that I could use but it would all depend on who I was teaching or talking with.
On Monday we had a zone leader meeting which is always great. The missionaries there all have way strong testimonies and love serving the Lord. I feel privileged to be able to work with them. We discussed the new year and the things that we want to achieve. We are going to focus on the next six months rather than the whole year because it's way better to have short term goals and measure our success more often than to wait until the end and possibly miss our goal by a long shot. This last year we did pretty decent. We didn't get close to meeting our goal but there was some things that came in between that kind of knocked us off track. We ended up having 156 baptisms for the year which is the first time in over a decade that baptisms have increased from the year before. in 2009 we only had 96 baptism so that was a really good improvement I thought. We are going to set a goal of 100 for the first 6 months which ought to be really awesome. 2/3 of our mission has been out on their mission less than 6 months so we are really young. They all have a lot to learn but they all seem to be doing really good. I need to better myself in increasing my skills and help others by increasing their skills. We had an appointment with a lady yesterday named Lesesca. She is from Cuba and very nice. We committed her to being baptized if she were to find out that the church is true. She agreed to it but the hard thing is going to get her to church. She works way late on Saturday nights and so she doesn't want to come to church. I hope that she will be able to come.
Sounds like you are all busy. How is school going for everyone? It's good to hear that it was a good Ward Conference. I always enjoy Ward Conference because we have some really great leaders in our stake. The Stake Presidency all speak really well and follow the spirit well. That's one thing that I really admire about all of them. I'm glad that Dad did a good job on his talk. Sounds like all the kids are doing well. Was Korbin not originally on the Sophomore team? How come he can't play with the freshman? Wasn't he at the beginning?
The weather is warmer here. All of the snow is finally gone which is a blessing. It's absolutely no fun as a missionary. It's still pretty cold and rainy but it's good. There is a lot of young missionaries in our zone which we are working with so we are doing quite of few splits this transfer. I hope that the missionaries will increase their skills faster and become better missionaries. We've stressed obedience and dedication a lot the last 8 months and I think it will start to pay off. The Frankfurt Mission is very obedient and dedicated and after the merge it was tough for the new missionaries and so there was a lot of rebellion and disobedience but I think that it is finally starting to go away. President Ninow is amazing. Every time he speaks it is something to feel you with the spirit. I love being able to work with him more and be in meetings with him. I am grateful for the blessing it has been to have a fantastic mission president and a great mission. I love it so much and I know that the Lord called me to this mission to not only have me help other's lives but for others to help my life.
Thank you for all you do and for you writing me every week. I love being able to read emails from you. it lifts my spirit and I'm grateful for all you've done for me.
"No Regrets"
Love
Elder Merrill
p.s. The pictures of my foot is how it is when resting. Hopefully you can kind of see. another thing is that on the big toe, I don't know if it's a callus or what but it really hurts if pressure is put of it.
