Monday

 

Nikoli, Grace's clarinet teacher, is the principle clarinet for the orlando philharmonic orchestra.  Or course with covid everything has been weird but they found a way around the problem...parking lot concerts.  He gave Grace two tickets to go hear them play! So we went. It was pretty fun.  It was nice sitting outside, especailly once the sun went down.  We watched the stars come out while the music played.  I always love to watch the conductors.  This one was very animated and I could see him from the front as well since it was in the parking lot you could see him in the glass fronts of the building.  They did play one piece that I didn't like.  It was an orginal compostion by someone I am pretty sure will never be famous.  It was atrocious.  

In other music news Grace is the new clarinet section leader! And Lettie made drum major!

The senior Crawleys are in Idaho visiting Ezra.  Their hotel has a pool so he got to try swimming for the first time.  Hannah said he loved it! Cute baby!

All the livestock in Utah is doing well💖

Yesterday it rained.  A lot.  Liked poured! We got soaked leaving chruch.

Bonus picture of Cora with her Cora Cooks book! I sent them books last week, a Cora book and a Ruby book.  Jenna told me that they had a lot of Ruby books but that was the first Cora one so I searched for a second one and she just got it!

Ethan writes great missionary letters.  I love each monday reading them.  I am going to put them all together at the end of the mission for him but I'm going to share this weeks letter here:

"This is going to be a long email so here are some sparknotes: 

A lady from the Spanish ward hemmed my pants this week so I had to learn some sewing vocab. I've adopted a new attitude of finding the good and focusing on that. We had a really good Sunday stake conference. A very cute and funny lesson with a little girl we are teaching English to. And someone who served his mission in Orlando as I left for here took us out to lunch, and some English members raced to get us food.

So the hem in one my pairs of pants fell out and I have been just taping it on the inside for a while to fix it. But I found out a lady in our ward Hna Fonseca has offered to sew for missionaries. So I asked her to sew a dobladillo in my pants and she said yes and then came through clutch.

I felt a bit discouraged that despite how hard we have been working, and how much I feel I have been growing personally, we hadn't seen much success with actually bringing others to baptism. I realize that this is a bit foolish, because all the good we do is at least planting seeds for future goodness, and the scriptures say to not be weary of doing good, but it was still frustrating. I had a lack of confidence in my teaching ability really. Especially in Spanish. But then maybe I heard a talk or read something, I can't remember. Basically the way I'd sum it up into what I'm trying to do is just find the good and focus on that. Another thing that helped is a book someone sent me. I read it this week and it talks about how aligning your will with God's is the surest way to find happiness. This can be difficult but the good thing is God I'd there to help us do this. If we come to him with a desire he will help make that change in our heart.

I feel like every transfer in my mission there has been something to learn each and every time over the 6 weeks. The first transfer was charity. Having a love for the people. The last transfer was definitely pacience and humility to. This transfer I feel like I have been learning to hope. Sort of like how I said earlier. 

And that hope was rewarded this week when a family moved in from Venezuela and like 6 of them want to be baptized! Whats very I interesting about this is that they were all ready to be baptized when we found them. Never in my mission have we found someone that isn't ready, or has the desire, and been able to bring them to a desire. It is always they come with that want. Really it is humbling to see our role in conversion compared to the spirit's. We just really help them along the path the holy ghost is already taking them on. 

One very fun experience this week is when we were teaching Mia English. Mia is maybe 8 years old and we really just do her homework. One section of the work was a little story about penguins that she had to answer some questions for. One part talked about how father penguins have to stay with the egg for 2 months and in that time they don't leave to eat or do anything, just living off their body fat so that the baby stays warm. We asked Mia why the papa penguin can't eat for 2 months. She didn't know at first but thought about it for a minute then confidently said (translated) "the papa has to fast for the babies health for those 2 months and that's why he doesn't eat anything" it was super sweet.

Elder Pihl who served in the ward in Florida left for home in Salt Lake a week before I came out here. This week he took me and elder Burns out for lunch. It was really fun and cool to see him as well as the role reversal. Usually it was me waiting in the car for him and his comp to come get food, but that flipped around here.

On Sunday, we hsd stake conference. Elder Kevin J. Worthen, an area 70 spoke. His talk was super awesome and talked about how the book of mormón is a book about families. If we read it from that perspective we can get so many lessons out of it. Anotber thing be spoke on was how the atonement is for everyone. He mentioned a scripture in Psalms 139:7-8. This says "7 Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

8 If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there" what's cool is the scriptures says the spirit is with all of us wherever. If we are doing all the right things living as righteously as we can, he's there. If we are maybe not doing so hot, he is still reaching out for what the second we look for Him."

1. Me and Pihl 

2. The hemming ladies food storage of bleach bottles