20 October, 2014

Hey guys!

It was great to hear about your trip to Arizona. I hope you had an awesome time. I think I'll have to make myself a homemade o- lineman sometime. Sounds delicious.

Our week hasn't been too interesting.  J. is still on date to be baptized but we had to move his baptism to the 26th because this week is stake conference, so we're going to baptize him on a Sunday.

This week the weather got down to 70 degrees for the first time, which was nice. Apparently there's still a huge problem with the drought though, so I hope we get some more rain this winter.

Other than that everything is going well. I have to translate for stake conference, so pray for me! It's going to be hard going from English to Spanish rather than the other way around.

This Thursday we're going to be doing something called a missionary blitz in Live Oak where all the missionaries from our zone go to work in a single area for the whole day. In theory this will kind of jump start the work in that area by visiting a ton of people and getting everyone excited about the work

One awesome experience that we had this week happened while we were in Live Oak. We were about to leave to head back to Gridley when a name popped into my head of someone else we could go visit.  At first I figured he'd probably still be at work, but I felt like we should go check anyway, so we went over. Turns out he was just getting home and he had some bad news. He's getting divorced from his wife because of differences over the church (he's the only member in his family). We shared a scripture with him (2 Nephi 4:26-31) and he broke down and told us how much he'd been needing to hear something from Heavenly Father and had felt like he wasn't getting any answers. We talked about testimonies and how the adversary is always looking for chances to pull us down if we let him, but that if we focus on moving forward with faith he can't do anything to hold us back.

So that was a powerful testimony to me of the spirit's guidance in missionary work, and I would encourage all of you to study that chapter if you get the chance. It's a good one :)

So that was my week. It was a pretty good one.

I've heard there's supposed to be a record snowfall this year, which hopefully means good skiing?

Mom:

I got the package! Thanks a ton! It was just what I needed. I also got Jess's letter and the 10 dollars. Thanks for adding to my food stores! Maintaining this much muscle mass isn't easy on a tight budget.

Let Jess know that after much consideration I've decided to be a missionary for Halloween, as the candy payout from members will likely be 50% higher, mitigating the doors slammed in my face and still allowing me to do missionary work.

I miss you guys too and I'm looking forward to seeing you all again!

Love,

Jake