CHRISTMAS

I'm not going to send much of a letter since we're talking on Friday.  I hope it's cool but I'm going to call Thursday night at 8 for you.  If it's uncomfortable there's not a whole lot I can do since I won't read my email until Monday.  Well I guess you can answer and tell me it's not a good time and I'll call back at night either way is good for me.  Have an awesome Christmas and I'll call you on Friday.  

Here's a cool experience I had on Saturday:

We had a really cool day on Saturday. We went on a weird member splits thing. I went with Y, he's a blind man in our ward, and Elder P went with The Olson's. I thought that it was a great idea sending me to a place I barely knew, speaking a language that sounds mostly like gargling marbles with a blind man. Where was my faith you may ask? I have no idea. It started out on a marshutni where it was so packed that I was pushed up to the front hovering over the driver and not even having enough room to turn around. I kept thinking about how if we had crashed I would've gone straight into the windshield. Scary stuff to say the least. About a half an hour into the ride people finally started getting off giving me at least a little more room to breath and I even got to turn around and a seat opened up for y to sit down. So at that point I was almost praising the Lord thinking about how I had survived and I would never complain about uncomfortable car rides for the rest of my life. But when I turned around all the people looked at me and started whispering and then they started asking me questions. So Y, chilling with me, we did the work of the Lord. It was cool because we were able to just bear pure testimony to the entire marshutni. By the time we got off I had no pamphlets, no Jesus pictures and no copies of the Book of Mormon. Every single person on the marshutni got something and a lot of them stopped to give me their phone numbers. One lady took two articles of faith cards so she could give it to her sister. I thought I was being super blessed because of the hard ride up.

It doesn't stop there though. We went to visit a member who is kind of falling into activity because it's so hard to come from Artik, and we met with a potential investigator at her house, and the entire time he was just trying to find out if we could help him because his daughter is really sick and is in a wheel chair. He wanted to know what money he could get, but by the end he was really listening to us and he wants to meet again next week. We'll tread carefully to make sure it's not just for the money, but he did take a copy of A's book of Mormon since I didn't have one and went on his way. We'll see what happens. Then between meeting with him and trying to visit our next investigator and going home we picked up four potential investigators and then to cap it off, one last one going home. It was a crazy day. A couple days ago I kept thinking about how whenever anything happens it's not because of me. It's because of my companion. That's a terrible attitude I know, but that's how it was.  I think that the Lord gave me that experience to let me know that I truly can be an instrument in his hands; it's not just my companion doing all the work.

The attitude we all need to have is that He can do it and I can be an instrument in his hands.  When nothing is going right, when you never feel like you're doing anything worth while, remember that God knows you and he can work through you if you allow him in.  Open the Door! He's knocking, just take out your ear buds and slow down long enough to realize he's waiting for you to open that door.  Love you all and I'll see you when I see you!

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