Monday, June 30, 2014

Dear Friends and Family,

This week was a bit of a flop...That happens sometimes. We had a ton of stuff cancel but we were at least able to have a few good things happen. We had a super good lesson with our investigator Sarah, who is dating one of the guys in the ward. She's super ready to be baptized but she needs to get passed off to a different ward before she can get baptized. We're going be having a lesson with her at the Mission home this weekend because Sarah lives like way close to it! It'll be sick. Her boyfriend Jake is the man! He helped us teach a bunch of the lesson. Also another fun little fact, Sarah plays water polo and yesterday her team won the Junior Olympics qualifying tournament for the US, so her team is the #1 team in the nation and will be representing the US. Sick huh?

We also received some great instruction from our leaders this past week. It was a really good meeting. I'm super pumped to try and implement some of the things that we learned from them. They focused a lot on how we can accurately get information down to all of the missionaries we're in charge of. It's not very easy sometimes. It's sort of like playing telephone sometimes but it doesn't have to be that way. 

We've been working hard and talking to everyone we see. Luckily people here seem to walk a lot. Not only do people walk a lot but the normal people walk too! In my last area in Long Beach plenty of people walked around but they were usually crazies... But here it's better. One of the things that Elder M. Russel Ballard told us to do while he was here was to have each companion contact 10 people each. So 20 per companionship. That's something Elder Renguul and I are really trying to work on and it's been great so far! Whenever we put in all our effort we have a promise to the best blessings the Lord has to offer. A common misconception about obedience is that there is either obedience or disobedience. That's not always true. Sometimes it is but not always. Our level of obedience guarantees our level of blessings. Disobedience does not cause God to turn his back on us and not bless us, He just can't allow us to receive his most choice blessings because He cannot go back on his work. "There is a law irrevocably decreed in heaven..." (D&C 130:20) God cannot take back his laws and we cannot afford to break his laws. When we do we "have no promise" (D&C 82:10) We need the Lord's promise. Let's make it so.

I love all of you great people. I appreciate your love and support. As Elder Jones says, "Be happy." Have fun! Heavenly Father gives us so much, use it! 

Keep it Real,

Elder Sanderson