Subject: Another Week Goes By

Date: April 28, 2014 8:02:14 AM PDT

Time just keeps flying. I never know where it went. Speaking of which.. Thursday will mark 6 months in the mission which seems kind of crazy for me. I still feel like I just left the CCM. But its good if the time is going by so fast right?

Brother Faitau who has been sober for 2.5 years now and who has not smoked in about 5 months is hoping to be able to Baptize his grandson pretty soon. He still has to talk to the Bishop about it but we have pretty high hopes. It'll be a wonderful experience for him and for the family as a whole. The Faitau Family is one of those families that I will never forget. I love those guys so much and they are growing so quick in the Gospel. They are super strong members now and are really motivated to do missionary work also. We love the Faitau Family. (I'll attach some pictures of them)

One interesting story this week, last night actually. We went to go see a pretty elderly couple (70's). They let us in and I went to go sit down on the couch. Well I sat down and I feel something poking me right in the butt and it hurts pretty bad so I lean over and feel around on the couch and what do I find? A 2 inch long sewing needle still half way in my bum. Well I pulled it out of my cheek and give it to the wife and her husband says "Well at least you found out tonight that we are pretty sharp". He had me laughing pretty hard but I think I still would have rather NOT sat on a sewing needle.

There was a 4-5 year old kid in Sacrament meeting a while back that was really rowdy the whole time. His mom wasn't really getting anything out of Sacrament because her Kid was so loud so she went the Bishop and asked what he could do about it. Well he took the kid into his office for a few minutes and when he came back out he told the lady that it shouldn't be a problem any more. Well for the next 3 weeks her son just slept right through sacrament meeting. The lady was amazed and so she went and asked the Bishop what he did to keep her son asleep all during the meetings. He said, "Oh it was easy. I just ordained him a High Priest"

Don't worry. Our Bishop didn't actually do that. Just thought you might like a nice joke ;) Got that one from Brother Maloney. He also let us know that the punishment for Polygamy is to have two mothers-in-law. That should keep people from wanting to participate in that :D

Something I learned this week that really made me think a lot. "We are not here to earn Heaven, but to Learn Heaven." Our whole life is a learning experience and every step of it is to help us learn how to become more like our Heavenly Father. How to develop more love, patience, humility, faith, etc... And the way in which we can do that is by facing our trials with faith. By depending on God more than on ourselves. By reading the scriptures and praying in order to know which things we need to improve in and change in our lives right now. Just an interesting thought that I heard this week.

So Mom told me about bad weather coming our way. Well... we did have a 50% chance of tornados here in Independence yesterday. You always know its going to be bad when its sunny and warm in the morning, drops 20-30 degrees and is pouring rain, and then warms up into the 80's again. All that temperature change is what really causes the tornados as far as I know. But Elder Javeloza and I have a basement in our apartment so we don't have to worry to much... as long as we hear the alarms :D

So I find out tomorrow what the changes will be this transfer. I've only been here for 1 transfer so I am pretty much guaranteed to stay. It's possible that Elder Javeloza will leave but I doubt that he will since we just opened up a brand new ward. I really hope he doesn't leave because we are doing really good work right now and have the trust of the members as far as we can tell. It's a pretty good atmosphere to be serving in when the members are calling you to volunteer for Team-Ups.

Well thats it for the week. Love You Guys!. Have a great week!