August 24, 2010 - Letter Home

Million Dollar Man!

 Hey all you awesome people!

So it’s another week. This one went super quick because me and Elder Simmons worked our tails off! Which is a great thing. I had always felt that I could have been giving just a little bit more effort if I had been directing the work when I was Junior (a little prideful this idea, yes), and the Lord gave me my chance. So we’ve been getting home sweating every day, but it’s a good sweat. 
I also was super impressed by Brendon’s success last week, so as a playful competition I was trying to see what my best would be. 
That’s an okay type of motivation, right? Anything that gets you to work harder... 
So we marked 2 batism dates here, taught 26 lessons (more than the recommended 20 lessons which is the standard here), went with members to deliver 5 books of mormon to different family and friends, and found 13 new investigators this week. Awesome! 
I just wanted to throw some numbers to you guys to show you the difference between the work with the Gauchos and Cearenses. But it was good. 

Our last zone conference introduced a new focus on trying to receive revelation and follow the spirit in all steps of the work, and it’s really changed how I am trying to work as a missionary, and I’m really feeling a big difference in how to be guided by the Lord. It’s not something like you’re walking along and you KNOW that there’s an elect family behind a certain door, but in two different occasions this week I just had the idea pop into my head to knock on two different doors, and I went to knock, not thinking anything big, and there were the families waiting for us who needed to hear our message. Sweet! I am really focusing on learning how to do this with greater accuracy. If you let the Spirit guide you, you really don’t need to worry about if you’re saying or doing the right thing, you just do it. Very cool.

So, the down side of this week is that we were all feeling super inspired and like we gave our 100 percent in the work, but we got to church and no one that we had invited to church showed up. I could let myself get discouraged about that but I’m not going to because it’s just a test and I know that if we do our part, the Lord will do his. We just gotta keep going and working hard not because we are seeing results, but because we want to do our best. In the end, the only reward we are promised is our personal growth, peace, and happiness, because God can’t take free agency from people; they have to decide if they want to follow the things we teach or not. But there will be success here, for surely.

Anyway, that’s our week! Sorry that there’s no photos or videos this week. We were just running too fast this week to remember about that, but I will remember this next week, for sure.

I’m going to correspond with all of you guys individually now, so don’t think this is it!

I love you all lots lots lots! Have a good week everyone!

Elder Con

...Basically there is a good chance that I won't get any new mail for 3 months, and no, I haven't received anything yet. Did you guys want to make sure it got here before I made a year or something? That's really too bad that it didn't come yet... :( Believe me, I am crying about this.

Life at the Muddy River is going great. Elder Simmons and I are getting along, we are working hard, we've been getting out of our comfort zone and talking to everyone and hitting doors and trying to follow the spirit, and it's been making results. The ward really is a great one. Just immediately you can tell that there are some really great people here, and I am for sure going to have a bunch of friends and people to visit from here. How is my house? Well let me just say that Elder Carpenter is... movin' on up! To a 3rd story apartment in the sky-y-y. It's the best housing situation I've had in the mission right now. We have just a lot of space, it's got quality lighting and plumbing and flooring and walls, a little balcony area, TWO bathrooms! A separate laundry area, and a little corner just for my table which is well decorated with Liahona cutouts and a picture of my fambly. It's great.