Letter 77

January 2, 2013

Hola!

Well now that the craziness of Christmas and New Years is over things can get back to NORMAL! It’s super hard to do missionary work when people are out of town for the holidays. I'm glad. The only thing that I'm not happy about is the darn weather! It’s cold and wet... yes that means that the RAINS have returned. I just barely got over my cold that I had right after Christmas and I hope I don’t get another one!  Oh well… that’s the life of a missionary. In rain, sleet, or snow we'll ride our bikes and share the gospel with everyone.

For New Years Eve we had a CELESTIAL P Day which is basically a Pday that falls on a holiday and we aren’t suppose to go out. SO we had all the missionaries in the valley get together at the Chapel in LaVista and we played sports! Elder Williams and I played basketball and let me tell ya... I am out of shape! haha I was huffin’ and heavin’ after the first game! That’s what happens when you don’t play basketball with your friends for 3 hours every week. But that was really fun. Then at the end of the night President Trayner cooked up some hamburgers and hotdogs and I learned a new game called the sandwich game which has me super paranoid to eat sandwiches now. Basically if you know the rules your in the game and the game is if you don’t do certain things people can PUNCH your sandwich. After the food we watched FOREVER STRONG!! I forgot how great that movie was! It’s almost as good as Mountain of the Lord! hahaha.... ah man... it was so good to see and movie not made by the church. I love inspirational movies. I left wanting to be better than I am. Good thing for new years resolutions!

Everything is going well with the District this week. We brought more people to church as a district this week than we have since August! SO that’s pretty exciting!  We're still focusing on finding for February and I know that we'll be able to reach our goals if we exercise our faith and work our hardest.

Speaking of which President Trayner responded to one of my emails quoting Jose Smith saying that faith requires more of a MENTAL exertion. Sometimes I feel like I can be doing more as a missionary and as a district leader, but its not necessarily a physical exertion that I'm lacking, but a mental one. I know that I need to be acting in faith and thinking of ways to improve the district, but I also need to have the mental toughness to follow through with those plans and work hard to help my area and the district. I'll be sure to make that a focus for me this year and through out my life.

Mario our old investigator is out of the hospital and we visited him last night. He said that he wants to keep working towards his baptism. We're going to set him another date once he improves a little more in his health. He can’t walk at the moment.

Other than that Elder Williams and I are working with a part member family that came to church this Sunday and a referral from a sister for her sister that has lots of questions about the church!

I love you all so much and I hope that you are making goals to become the people that you want to be but more important the people that our Heavenly Father wants you to be. Remember to make your goals specific and measurable!

Sorry this is so short but I'm out of time! I love you all! Happy New Year!

-Elder Jordan Stewart