Sent: Monday, February 21, 2011 2:49 PM
Subject: Re: Doin' the Work
Hey!
Sounds like everyone's doing really well! Thank you guys for the
advice and news and encouragement! That's so cool to hear about RJ!
Keep me updated with what's going on with him!
Haley- I think you should compete in track. Competition helps you get
better. And it's fun!
Also, if you don't get VP, I recommend keep running for other things.
You don't necessarily need to give a speech for every position. But
for VP and social chair, if given the opportunity to speak, I would
focus on those. That's great to hear that WNL went well! And yes,
I'm happy! Happy, but not content. A letter to Austin and Jordan
would be great! I'm sure they would love that.
I'm doing great! It was a tough week, I'll explain more in a bit. But
I'm happy and I'm enjoying the mission. Things are so much better
than my first area and I love it. I'm not depressed or anything,
there are just some natural ups and downs with the work.
Dad- Thank you for your advice and all the news. Sounds like work is
busy and it sounds like Gospel Doctrine class is just awesome. I want
to sit in! Good luck with everything with work.
Brock- I already responded to you haha but thanks again for your email.
Okay, so this past week was looking great. We had four baptisms
scheduled for Sunday! I went on divisions with our district leader so
he could do the interviews with them. Everything went well. None of
them showed up to church and none of them got baptized. We went to
pick them up early to take them to church, but they weren't there. We
called them later to see what happened and they informed us that they
forgot to tell us that they would be gone. They then told us that
they went to a different church service. And they told us they aren't
going to be baptized. It was a painful day. But there was an
interesting lesson that I learned. I've been praying and fasting for
charity lately. I remembered Brock telling me about the importance of
fasting when developing charity and how he said he felt a significant
difference in his attitude toward other people. So I've been working
on it. I've felt a lot of excitment and love for people as they've
progressed in the gospel. But I realized that the gift of charity is
not always a gift of happiness. When Christ exercised pure love in
the Garden of Gethsemani, that wasn't a happy moment. I feel so much
more sad for our investigators that changed their minds and
everything. It made it so much more difficult after seeing them
progress and feeling that love and appreciation for them. So for
that, it was a tough week.
The thing with stuff like that, is when you feel down about something,
it magnifies everything else that doesn't go just right. So I was
determined to keep away from negative self talk. I focused on Luis,
our recent convert. We bought him a white shirt and I gave him a tie
this week and he wore them to church yesterday. He also received the
Aaronic Priesthood. So cool! That was the ray of sunshine through a
stormy day.
And P-day has been way fun. Lots of similar things happened in the
zone and everyone was just in a frustrated, goofy mood, so we all went
crazy and played basketball, volleyball, and soccer. It was so fun
and we had some long laughs. Some hard laughs too haha it was fun.
Now I'm really sunburnt, but I feel good aside from that. And I'm
going on divisions with Elder Maurer, our zone leader, on Tuesday.
I'm very excited for that. He's such a good guy, and it'll be nice to
just hang with him for a day.
My companion is still awesome. He is very consistent and level
headed. And it's such a blessing to be with him.
On Saturday we went to all of our visits with a guy that lives down
the street from us. he's our cook's son. He's been inactive in the
church for a long time and because of some really tough trials, he's
realized the importance of the church. He's 24 years old and it was
really cool to work with him. He enjoyed teaching with it and
hopefully that can turn into a desire to serve a mission. That would
be so awesome.
Question of the week:
How can I have more faith to receive personal revelation?
Thank you guys for everything. I love you all so much. You guys
often ask me if I'm depressed haha! Do I sounds depressed? There are
some really hard things to deal with here and there, but I'm still
happy. Whenever I'm in a bad mood, I can always pick myself up. But
thanks for worrying about me :) And thank you for your letters and
prayers.
Con amor y cariño,
Elder Austin Tyler
