mehmehmehmehmeh‏

First of all, I tip my hat to dad for asking for a fried egg for fathers day. Well done.




Anyways, this area has been surprisingly hard and we can't figure out exactly what is different because some weeks are good and some are just miserable. So, I decided to try and use some of my talents that I might have that would be different than someone else's to try to find the answer being that I am the one who is here. So I got a notebook and started analyzing everything we have done in the last 2 months in every aspect of our work using math and trying to find correlations between the good weeks and differences between them and the bad weeks. Who knows if I will unlock the secret to what is going to work here. I have a lot of pretty crazy graphs and equations so I am happy even if it doesn't bring any significant fruits.



In other news, I was noticing that in the crazy desire I have to see week to week results I was grinding away without ever taking the time to stop and just think about life or anything like that. So one day I was studying in the missionary guide Preach my Gospel, and I found a couple questions that brought everything into perspective that I thought were pretty cool. The questions were:

"When the last day in the mission field arrives what do you want to say about what you have done as a missionary? What will you want to have become? What differences will you want people to notice in you?"

And so I started thinking about those questions for a few days. After a couple days I was able to sort out my thoughts into answers and then make plans to be able to do exactly what I wanted to, and I realized that things get a lot more grounded and basic day to day. In the end I realized that even if I never am able to make a significant difference in how productive this area is, I wanted to be able to look back and see the time I spent here as time that I dedicated 100% to doing what the Lord wanted me to do, and time in which I learned and grew to a significant amount. So that is pretty easy right? The issue is that I was getting soooo worried about getting some kind of change that I could measure or some kind of success that would satisfy my pride and show me how cool I am that I was forgetting about the things that would really be important to me in the end. So I made plans to make everything I do as a missionary more meaningful and sincere from the time I wake up to the time I go to sleep, and I put them in my pocket everyday and hopefully I can make this a permanent change. At least I am finding that it is a lot more rewarding live focusing on what is important.



So, that is probably something good that I am trying to figure out that can be applied to life later when I have a real job and stuff.



What else... yesterday at lunch we were waiting for them to finish cooking and just talking with the husband who is awesome and he was like "ELDER. I GOT HAIRCUTTING STUFF" and next thing I know I was letting him cut my hair even though I didn't need a haircut. Best decision ever. I am never paying for a haircut here again, and he did a pretty good job. Also his little kid walked up and grabbed the sissors and cut out a huge chunk of his own hair. Also the lasagna they made was incredible. Really it was a good day.



Besides that our bishop took a guy we are teaching who is together (living with/has kids with/isn't married still) a member to this seminar about getting jobs that just happened to be right next to the temple and the visited the temple grounds and stuff and our investigator came back wayyyy excited about it. I asked him if it was cool, and he was like "no. it wasn't cool. it was incredible. the temple way better than the seminar. I felt so good there. it was incredible." So they are finally going to mark a day to actually get married so he can get baptised and start preparing to get sealed as a family. Stuff like that always makes you happy. And not just those two went, but a lot of unmarried couples like that and they all came back amped to get married, baptised into the church, and then sealed. score.



So yeah that is it.



Lurve,

Elder M. Scott Christensen



P.S.- Debit card reminder. renew/send it to me within the next 6 months or so if you can.



P.S. number 2- Also I have started an extreme workout program that involves the goals of being able to do the splits, being able to walk around on my hands grabbing everything with my feet, and being able to do a backflip. I have it all planed out and I should be able to do all of that in the next 10 months. just you wait.



So that is it now.



bye.