"A Disciple's Life"

Hello!

Well, I didn't realize that we would have one more preparation day before the New Year! It's New Year's Eve, but we really don't have too much planned at all, just a couple of appointments. One cancelled, so we're going to have to try and set up another one.

Anyhow, I've had a pretty decent week. We had a couple of appointments, and spent some time with the members. We worked on building a relationship of trust with the Young Men by having lunch and playing basketball with them. At the same time, we had a farewell gathering for Glen, our former ward mission leader, who has headed off to BYU Hawaii for four years. On Friday night, we had dinner appointments with two families. We were only going to be able to make it to one of them. Fortunately, the Assistants were able to go on splits with us. I went over to the Yow home with Elder Perrett, and had a great time there, including doing a short Christmas presentation. We spent Saturday planning, and had a decent Sunday. We went over the the Low family's home for lunch. I was able to give a farewell/missionary work talk, and it was gratifying to feel the Spirit as I bore my testimony about the truthfulness of the gospel. Elder Holland gave a talk about missionary work, that I used in my talk, and that helps me through some of the harder days. He said:

"When you struggle, when you are rejected, when you are spit upon and cast out and made a hiss and a byword, you are standing with the best life this world has ever known, the only pure and perfect life ever lived. You have reason to stand tall and be grateful that the Living Son of the Living God knows all about your sorrows and afflictions."

I am grateful to be able to serve my Lord, and as I said in my last message, that these past seven months have been both the worst and best days of my life. But through it all, there is nothing that I would rather be doing.

I also talked about the challenges that we face and missionaries, and the fears that members face as they try to do missionary work. But, Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles put it very well in the last General Conference, where he said,

"The Lord isn’t asking us to load up a handcart; He’s asking us to fortify our faith. He isn’t asking us to walk across a continent; He’s asking us to walk across the street to visit our neighbor. He isn’t asking us to give all of our worldly possessions to build a temple; He’s asking us to give of our means and our time despite the pressures of modern living to continue to build temples and then to attend regularly the temples already built. He isn’t asking us to die a martyr’s death; He’s asking us to live a disciple’s life."

I'VE BEEN TRANSFERRED! I'm now serving in the Clementi Ward, along with Elder Palfreyman from Laguna Beach, CA. He is a wonderful missionary and I enjoy doing missionary work with him. It turns out that my Elder's Quorum President from BYU is in the same home ward as him, so that was definitely a coincidence. Unfortunately (just joking!), he isn't a BYU boy, but studies at UC Berkley. The big thing about this transfer is that I'm now an office Elder. So, instead of tracting/proselyting the whole day, we spend about five hours in the mission office after studies, to do the paperwork and such needed to run the mission. It's definitely fun and interesting, and its definitely been nice not being so physically exhausted at the end of each day.

Well, that's about it for this week. I hope that you all have a wonderful week, and New Year ahead of you, it's going to be exciting!