Shule a rune away to waters by the sea

Zone Conference Eating

Just to be clear, the title of this email is a song that I sang my first year in high school choir.

I have found my stores of clever email titles running dry lately, so I thought that I might mix it up a touch. 

I also hit 18 months last week. So it's official, I have outlasted every sister missionaries called at the same time as me. 

I have been way too busy these pass few weeks. I have hardly had enough time to do my personal study. I feel as if time is speeding up, and now I can't get anything done. On the other hand we are visiting lots of people in person. A frequent problem we face is that we take too long in lessons.

 I love my companion, but he tells too many cool encapsulating story's, either from his mission or from his life from home. We end up taking 30 minutes of introduction and 10 minutes of lesson because we were already late. It's a work in progress and we are making lots of progress, but we have been slowed down considerably. 

We had 2 baptisms in our stake the other day. I got to interview one of them which was a first as a district leader. 

I was way more stressed about it than I should have been. For starters, this guy had rules that you had to follow when you talked to him.

The District in the Garage, enjoying the Sabbath

You can't say sorry, you can't be funny, you can't ask prying questions (which is hard for a baptismal interview) and to add up on all of this, he doesn't trust men! It all turned out well though, we had a good interview and I gained his trust I guess. Now he is baptized! 

We have been able to make an object lesson our of the whips my companion has, he jumps at every opportunity to show off his whips.

Not everyone may know this but the crack that comes from whips is a small feather-like frayed cord. The idea is that when the end of the whip is in the air, traveling much faster than the handle. When you change sudden direction of where the whip is traveling it makes a loop that goes through the rest of the whip, picking up more and more energy until it gets to the very end. At this point the end is traveling faster than 300 miles per hour and then it makes a cracking sound, which is the end of the whip breaking the sound barrier. 

The End of the Whip that Goes Crack

The object lesson is how small and simple things make a big difference. A little bit of energy traveling up the whip when multiplied can break the sound barrier and even draw blood. At this point we ask when are some small and simple things that that the Lord asks us to do, like reading prayer and going to church. We then commit them to do their best to let those small and simple things make a big difference in their lives.

Alma 37:6

" Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise" 

Comparable to the life span of a normal human being, a mission is not that long, in fact it is even less than 10%. A lot less than what the Lord asks of us.

The mission has made a huge impact on my life already, I hope that I can make the last 6 months of my mission better than all the others.