What I am grateful for Today...

  Well, what is on my mind today is how grateful I am to be on a mission. Hopefully this is not a topic that I have already covered. I would go check my other blogs to see if I have but I don't know how and this is what I am grateful for so it will have to work. As Elders, or men, we go out on our missions for 24 for months, 2 years. The Sisters, women, serve for 18 months. I have been out on my mission for over 18 months now and so the sisters that came out with us are home now. That is so weird, it feels to me like we left to come on our mission a few short weeks ago, not 18 months ago. Well, no matter how weird it is to think that we really have been out for that long doesn't make it any less of a reality. Thanks to this chance to do on line proselyting we can talk with the sisters that we came out with and see how they are doing. They say it is so weird to actually be home, to be with family and get to go back to regular life. The thought of that weirds me out just thinking about it.
  Another reason is because I know that the Lord takes good care of the missionaries. He may not protect us from all harm or bad things but He will give us the strength we need to make it through the hard times we face. The other day I mentioned how grateful I was that I was feeling good. Well sometimes good things don't last as long as we would like to but the Lord knows what He is doing. Thats why I am grateful to be here. I know that no matter how hard things get, He will always be there to pick me up. True I did know this before my mission, but my faith and understanding is so much greater now than it was before I left on my mission. As nice as it would be to always have the good times roll. I can see how the Lord is blessing me in so many other aspects of life. Such as people to teach, my wonderful family, my amazing loved ones who offer so much support, all of you that read this show that you are willing to support me in any way that you can. At this time I wish to give my thanks to all of you, and encourage you like it says in the book of Timothy chapter 6: 12 to "Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses." As you begin to do this in your lives the Lord will watch over and protect you.

Well Today I have a few things I am thankful for...

  The main thing I am thankful today is I feel good!! This is the first time in months that I can honestly say I feel good!! I know that this is not by my own doing, but by the wonderful loving hand of God. Every week as I read my emails or letters from my parents they say they are praying for me and I know that there are many others out there doing the same thing. I am so grateful for all of them and I am also grateful for the great faith in which they show. Answers to prayer come because of a few factors, one of course being the Lords will. Another by the faith of the children of men.
  This morning I was reading from one of my favorite books in the Book of Mormon, and that is the book of Ether. The book of Ether is an interesting book... It talks about some of the greatest examples of faith, and also the entire destruction of a civilization. The part of the book that I will focus today is the part about the faith. I know I have already wrote about faith once, but its one of those topics that the scriptures talk about a lot, and I have always heard liken the scripture to you so I will copy its pattern here. Ether 12:6 says; And now, I, Moroni, would speak somewhat concerning these things; I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith.
  We must hope for those thing which are not seen. These will help our faith to grow. If you are a downer all the time and someone is hoping for something better and you shoot them down or shoot yourself down, how are you going to grow or increase faith? In my situation, I know prayers are answered, I have seen them answered a number of times, but this time I was being tried harder than I thought I was going to. Now that I feel good today it brings me soo much joy and I am very grateful that I did have to wait, because now my joy is greater than it would have been if I would have only suffered for a few days. Now it also helps my faith to grow because once again I was able to see the hand of God work in my life!! We all must continue to hope for better things to happen. If everyone gave up hope, what a sad world this would become. Don't loose faith brothers and sisters keep hoping for the best and trust in the Lord, you won't be disappointed.

Today I am Grateful for...

 Today what has been on my mind most is the wonderful members that take the time and the effort to feed us. On our missions we live on a pretty tight budget. Here in this mission we live on 135 dollars a month. This is to cover all of food, laundry, new clothes (ties), stamps for letters or whatever else it is that we need to pay for. Near the end of the month, things tend to get pretty tight. Lucky enough for us though is that there are wonderful members of the church, and even people that aren't members of our church that sign up to feed us dinners. This is such a wonderful blessing to us. It is a blessing in more ways then just us not having to buy our meal, but because then we can begin to build friendships. There are quite a few very fun memories I have from being able to spend time with members, they begin to become our home away from home and those friends that we can go talk to when things are going as good as we would like them to. I have memories from when the missionaries would come over to my house when I was young and it was always a fun time. We know that it can be burdensome to have two extra mouths to feed, but I know we as missionaries are always so grateful to be invited into peoples home. So that is my entry for today, is how truly grateful I am for all of the wonderful support of all those that take the time to feed us and even talk to us.  I know the Lord will and does bless all those that take the time to help out the missionaries.