Hello again!
I had a fairly uneventful, but good second week. It went by super-fast, so fast that I forgot to write this email on P-day. It's ok, as there's a little more for me to write about since we've gone through most of the week. This past Friday, I had the pleasure of attending a baptism. The baptism was for two children of the same family. It was a really neat experience to watch the father baptize his kids.
Me and my companion were also able to participate in the laying on of hands to give those kids the Gift of the Holy Ghost. It was my first time participating in such an ordinance, and naturally it was kind of exciting.
Me and Elder John live in an apartment with 2 other missionaries. However, one of those missionaries had to go home last week, so now we are in a trio covering two wards. As a result, last week was pretty busy as we had to mesh our schedules together. Not only that, we are getting 35 new missionaries next week, so we are getting ready to potentially split up or have more missionaries in our apartment.
P-day in Texas hasn't been too eventful. To be completely honest, our district only really sits at the church building all day and plays frisbee or basketball, which is not quite up my alley. But that's alright, it's still fun to hang out with the other missionaries. However, one great thing I did this P-day was go to the local Daiso: a Japanese sort of convenience store. I bought a lot of treats I used to get when our family lived in Japan. It was a breath of fresh air for me. On my most recent P-day, we had a fun time carving pumpkins and hanging out at Cabellas. My district is filled with lovely people, and I'm grateful to get to know them more every day.
I meant to write more for my second and third week, but to be truthful it's slow going here in Texas. Don't get me wrong, I have plenty of stories from the relentless attempts at bible bashing to simply odd things I've seen throughout my day. The work is going slow in my zone, and at times it feels like I'm sitting here waiting for somebody to ask about the gospel.
In light of this, the talk given this last conference titled: "God Will Do Something Unimaginable" by Dieter F. Uchtdorf resonates with me. One of my favorite quotes from the talk was "Perhaps we were still building with sandstone when granite was already available." While he was referring to something else in the talk, one way I look at this is to not be complacent with where we are when we can do more to reach our destination. Although it has felt as if I have done all that I can to further the work, upon reflection I have noticed that I was building my foundation out of sandstone. I took 10 minutes tonight to think and look at what more I could do to further my missionary purpose and was able to find more than 5 things I could do right now. It's great to know I can do more, even if I may not see success immediately. If we take a moment to take a step back and ask, "what more can I do?" we'll be able to build foundations of granite that will carry us to our goals and beyond. I know I have a long road to travel, and much more foundation to build, but I encourage everybody reading this to not be complacent with "good enough."
Ich wünsche dir alles erdenklich Gute!
Elder Wilhelm
I had a fairly uneventful, but good second week. It went by super-fast, so fast that I forgot to write this email on P-day. It's ok, as there's a little more for me to write about since we've gone through most of the week. This past Friday, I had the pleasure of attending a baptism. The baptism was for two children of the same family. It was a really neat experience to watch the father baptize his kids.
Me and my companion were also able to participate in the laying on of hands to give those kids the Gift of the Holy Ghost. It was my first time participating in such an ordinance, and naturally it was kind of exciting.
Me and Elder John live in an apartment with 2 other missionaries. However, one of those missionaries had to go home last week, so now we are in a trio covering two wards. As a result, last week was pretty busy as we had to mesh our schedules together. Not only that, we are getting 35 new missionaries next week, so we are getting ready to potentially split up or have more missionaries in our apartment.
P-day in Texas hasn't been too eventful. To be completely honest, our district only really sits at the church building all day and plays frisbee or basketball, which is not quite up my alley. But that's alright, it's still fun to hang out with the other missionaries. However, one great thing I did this P-day was go to the local Daiso: a Japanese sort of convenience store. I bought a lot of treats I used to get when our family lived in Japan. It was a breath of fresh air for me. On my most recent P-day, we had a fun time carving pumpkins and hanging out at Cabellas. My district is filled with lovely people, and I'm grateful to get to know them more every day.
I meant to write more for my second and third week, but to be truthful it's slow going here in Texas. Don't get me wrong, I have plenty of stories from the relentless attempts at bible bashing to simply odd things I've seen throughout my day. The work is going slow in my zone, and at times it feels like I'm sitting here waiting for somebody to ask about the gospel.
In light of this, the talk given this last conference titled: "God Will Do Something Unimaginable" by Dieter F. Uchtdorf resonates with me. One of my favorite quotes from the talk was "Perhaps we were still building with sandstone when granite was already available." While he was referring to something else in the talk, one way I look at this is to not be complacent with where we are when we can do more to reach our destination. Although it has felt as if I have done all that I can to further the work, upon reflection I have noticed that I was building my foundation out of sandstone. I took 10 minutes tonight to think and look at what more I could do to further my missionary purpose and was able to find more than 5 things I could do right now. It's great to know I can do more, even if I may not see success immediately. If we take a moment to take a step back and ask, "what more can I do?" we'll be able to build foundations of granite that will carry us to our goals and beyond. I know I have a long road to travel, and much more foundation to build, but I encourage everybody reading this to not be complacent with "good enough."
Ich wünsche dir alles erdenklich Gute!
Elder Wilhelm
