I AM SO READY!

Hey Family!

Honestly, even though I’ve been getting these e-mails every week for about 22 months, I still love them. HAHAHA Dad, let me just say that I’ve always respected Carl Bloomfield for his engineering skills and was thoroughly impressed on a number of work trips, but I could’ve told you guys that that was a bad idea from the start. I know that because of experience...let’s just say that we didn’t exactly get to that bend in the river on our homemade "pirate ship".  Mom, thanks for your Ava story and for the parts of that talk from Elder Uchtdorf.

I guess I’ll answer some of the questions that you guys asked. To be completely honest, I’m not sure when I’m going to the field, but I AM SO READY. Haha…I’ve been training Elder Miller super good so that he can just completely take over. Honestly, this week was really, really a tough one, not so much for things that happened, but it was more of just an internal battle. I feel like Satan really tried to get me down by saying that I had been in that area for too long to do anything else and that the people we were teaching probably weren’t going to get baptized while I was there anyways. Somehow we don’t have as many families to teach like we always did...a bunch of things. I spent a lot of time on my knees and in the scriptures and this is what I’ve learned:

A person’s faith is truly measured by how well he works after all the warm and fuzzies have gone away. Also, the true test isn’t about your diligence when things are going just fine but when everything is telling you to just give up. I thought about how Christ, the creator of thousands of worlds, the Son of God, could become weary as he approached his crucifixion. A lot of the time the Lord gives us tests that are optional...we can either stand up to them or just sit back and say...ehh, it won’t really matter if I go out and work a couple hours later today. I think the greatest lessons are learned though when we faithfully face up to those tests.

This week Ricardo, one of our recent converts, gave us a referral. It was a younger woman named Mariela, who explained to us that her child that was born with severe disabilities had passed away a couple of years ago. It felt so good to explain to her that he was automatically saved and to see her tears of sorrow turn into tears of joy. She told us that she was ready to change her life and accepted a baptismal date before we could even finish giving her the commitment.

Funny story from this week….remember Tonio?  Well, sadly he continues to drink, A LOT. Anyways, we were having FHE at Norma, Carlos, and Delvia’s house with lots of other members and investigators when Tonio shows up TOTALLY WASTED. He starts yelling something about how we were in a war...luckily we had just sang the closing hymn and it was time to play a game. Long story short, we ended up playing "escond te" or hide and seek.  We had finished for about ten minutes when we hear something fall from the mango tree on the side of the house. It was Tonio, and seemingly unphased by his 10 foot drop, stood up and screamed, " I WON, I WON, I WON!!!!!" It was super hilarious.

Well, I should probably finish. I love you guys a ton and love your lives!

Love,

Elder Ward