Thursday P-Day 8/16/2012

   So, first of all, today is obviously not monday, and I totally forgot to tell you that our p-day this week was on Thursday=O.  Sorry.  My companion has a convert going through the temple today, so we got permission to go to that this week.  This will be my first time going to the temple in almost a year, which I am really excited about, and it could not have come at a better time I'm sure.  We have had a really hectic week and a half and it will be nice to get some extra spiritual energy that the temple can offer.  In the Moses Lake Stake, the stake presidency has made a HUGE push on families and couples going to the temple as often as occasion would allow.  He even exercised his priesthood keys as a stake president during stake conference in which he issued, in my mind, a pretty incredible promise.  He promised that if every worthy family in the stake would attend the temple at least monthly that he believed that divorce could be completely eliminated in the stake.  That is a pretty grand promise in my mind.  Anyway, I digress from my point.  My point was that having this huge push on going to the temple it has made me miss not being able to go to the temple as often myself.  It's something you wouldn't really think about sacrificing as a missionary, but it is a sacrifice only to be able to go to the temple once every three months at the most, and generally not even that.  We had, like I said a hectic week.  To start with the good, we met Forest last week, and he told us that he is ready to make the commitment of coming to church every week.  He is SOOO CLOSE to baptism.   We had a few good contacts on the street and from some referrals as well that looked really promising when we first met them, and after that, they dropped us.  Also, our investigator Amy dropped us on Monday as well because she said that she wasn't ready to make the commitments necessary.  We did have zone conference last week which was a great and needed spiritual boost.  Quite a bit of what President Mullen and his wife talked about was essentially not getting yourself down.  Too often we are our own worst critics and we beat ourselves up for every little mistake that we do or make.  He mentioned to us how much Christ loves us and recounted something that Elder Holland talked about in conference (now I'm about to butcher this statement but it's a good one anyway).  He said essentially that surely one of the greatest Joys of God is when he gets to be merciful.  Christ is a merciful being, not a judgmental being.  Ultimately he will inflict the least amount of punishment on us as he can( something he quoted from I think president Faust).  Our human nature causes us to fall short every day, but thats why we have repentance and the Sacrament.  So long as you are always trying to be better, you will be enough to the Lord.  They talked a lot about never giving up as well.  You can fail 1000 times, but the moment you give up is when Satan wins.  So ultimately his advice to missionaries,(and I think you can include anybody) who continually judge themselves for not being better was "You are a child of God and you are enough to Him."  This may be a sappy email this week, but I felt like maybe somebody could use it. that's about it for me this week though.  Love you all and have a good week.=)