(The poor guy has been soaked constantly for a couple weeks now. Mission rules on the island are a little more relaxed. He does not have to button his top button and the sandals and rolled up pants are just part of walking through water all the time.)
I hope that everyone has had a good week! I was jealous to read your emails about the fun John Williams concert, sounds like all of you had a really good time. I'm also glad you were able to enjoy general conference! We were so lucky out here that we got to see most of it. We had to wake up at 5 on Sunday and Monday to go to the sessions, which was honestly really hard. We got up so early because the first session started at 6 am, and then the second started at 10. We had enough time as well after to work a full day, so that was tough. Either way, it was great to hear everything that the Prophet and Apostles had to say for us. We were very lucky to see it all live at a member's house. The signal was really sketchy, but we only missed the second half of the Saturday Afternoon session. Other than that everything ended up going really smoothly.
My favorite talk is hard to pick, I liked so many. I'll probably talk about a few in the next couple emails. One that really stuck out to me was Elder Bednar's talk, when he gave the story of the 4-wheel drive truck and the firewood. He talked about when we're "spiritually stuck," or when we're like that truck and we're not getting any traction to progress spiritually, what we need is a spiritual load, something that will give us traction. In the story, Elder Bednar talks about how the truck was spinning on all 4 tires up until the driver put all the firewood in the back of the truck. The weight of the firewood helped the truck to get the traction it needed to get back on the road, or to start making progress again. Sometimes even if we feel like we're doing everything we can, we might just be spining our wheels and going nowhere. In times like that, we need to make sure we have the right load. It was really cool for me to think about how oftentimes when we want to progress, and get out of a rut, we have to do something more, even when we feel like we're doing everything we can. It made me think about what more I can do, and how important it is to continue to progress.
The rest of this week was pretty good. Last week ended with crazy rain, and I got a bad cough. Instead of being smart and taking things easy though, I decided to work through it and ended up compromising my immune system and getting really sick. I had some form of the flu or something, and it was NOT fun. That made things in general really tough, but in the end I survived and I made it through the week.
We've been finding and teaching a lot of less-active families lately. It's harder for us to prepare for, because our less active people have already heard all of our lessons. We have to sometimes think outside the box, and we pretty much always change it on the fly. Whatever it is, it is working. We had 10 less active members come to church this past week, which was a big deal. We were very happy to see them all make it back and to enjoy church again.
Our biggest struggle right now is just finding people who want to listen. We have a very small teaching pool, and that makes it tough to really just go to work and not have down time. Rain doesn't really help with downtime either, because if it rains people generally just want their lesson re-scheduled. I suppose it's understandable, because soaking wet Elder's getting their house dirty is generally not high on anyone's wishlist. Either way, our goal of staying busy is often frustrated by the weather.
One really good lesson we gave this week was about staying focused. Oddly enough, I felt like I was teaching the lesson to myself more than either of our investigators who were listening. We read the story of when Christ walked on the water, and how Peter was able to exercise his faith and do the same. However, when the wind and everything around him started to get more intense, Peter started to get scared, and he began to doubt. Right when he started to doubt he started to sink. The most important part though was that Peter did not just give up and start to swim - Peter was a fisherman after all, he was clearly capable of treading water. Instead of relying on himself and just "surviving" Peter decided to look to the Savior. In doing so he again used his faith, and Christ took his hand and lifted him out of the water to stand next to him. The symbolism in the story really struck me for some reason, that when we rely on ourselves, we can survive. But we can't do anything more than that. We can get by, but getting by should never be our goal. When we look to Christ however, and choose to rely on Him rather than on ourselves, we can do so much more than we can ever do on our own. We'll all have bad days or bad weeks when we feel like we're sinking. But It's up to us to choose whether or not we'll rely on our own strength, and just get by or just make it through, or if we'll rely on Christ and truly overcome. I'm still trying to learn how I can do that everyda, and I'll be the first to admit I need work. But at least I know how I can get there, and I'm excited to try.
I love you all! Thanks for your prayers of support and guidance. I really need them. I'll talk to you all next week!
Love Dal
*PS... here are the baby kittens. They are surviving!
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