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
