You want us to teach your family?

8/22/11

Hi
This week was good. It seems like I start all my emails off like that.... It’s like how mom would always ask me about my day and all I could think of was good. But it’s the truth. It was not a bad week, but it wasn’t a extraordinarily amazing week, it was just good. Good is a good word. Me and my companion have been getting along well this week. I now think I know why we stayed together for 6 more weeks. I have really worked on changing my attitude towards him and the work and I realized that a lot of the problems came from my own negativity. Humans are really funny in that they always think, ok once I get a new companion, life will be good. But then they get a new companion and they find another problem like ok, now, once I get used to this area, life will be good. And they keep doing this until uh-oh! They´re dead. There is a sweet quote by the Buddha that says: There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way. And it’s true. Once you make the choice: ok screw it, I’m gunna be happy with where I am at now, you suddenly realize, hey life is way better. But, it is super hard to do all the time and I am still working on it.

Finnish keyboard has (öä) and also a little swedish (å) but nobody likes the å. Little fun fact: Finland has two national languages, Finnish and Swedish, and all the street signs are in both. Now you know!

We are teaching this Russian with a cute Asian baby that I think I have mentioned before and it is all going well. Hopefully things will work out for her baptism in 2 weeks. The new Mission Prez wants the missionaries to find families and it will be good to get a mother and child. Because the mother and child reunion is only a motion away.... No, but seriously. We have also found 2 other families who we are going to teach this next week. They both have young kids and we are really excited to meet with them. One of the families we met while tracting... On a mission you deal with a lot of rejection and sometimes when people say yes you don’t know how to handle it. This is how I felt while tracting into this family. They said they were interested in learning more and in my head my eyebrows raised and I was like: "Wait?!? Really...? You mean, your NOT a crazy person and you actually want us to teach you and your family. Woooow. Ok. Um. I don’t really know what to do, I’ve never really gotten this far before...." Of course this is a slight exaggeration, but oftentimes I really do feel so thankful and I can’t really express it well enough and I end up saying Oh... thank you so much.... over and over. It is really important to not get in a rut and to have faith in finding people, because you never know who is prepared to accept the gospel.

Winter is coming. It is still warm, but getting cooler. I miss you all. Be safe. Those of you starting school (haha suckers...), work hard.

Love you all—Vanhin John Lythgoe Merkley